Garrard 401 in custom plinth made by Bob Thompson (here in Portland, Oregon). His business goes by the name of "Bobland". I went for a gorgeous veneer of unknown origin (perhaps Sapelle?).

12 inch tonearm

Wow. Just got this to replace the Shelter. I really liked the Shelter 901 but I happened to switch back to my Dynavector 17D3 for a while and it sounded great.

Nice cd player. It's back in the system because of its ability to read a home-brew cd compilation from my brother that the Cambridge CXC couldn't read.

All tube, point-to-point hard-wired, tube-rectified, tube-regulated preamp. Currently running one Tungsol round plate & one other vintage 6SN7. Often have been running CBS 5692 (right? memory hazy this morning) mil-spec red-base 6SN7s.

Fully serviced by Ken McCollum, owner of Electrostatic Solutions. Most recent service was on-site here in my listening room. My advice, even with the original Quad shipping boxes don't trust your Quads to UPS or FedEx. They don't treat them the way you want.

I compared these 1.5 watt amplifiers to my much-loved AES SE-1 300B stereo amp. The Alan Eatons had better bass (at the listening volume/level that I listen at) and were generally just a more wonderful experience, all the way around.

Wonderful solid state power amp. Perfect match to the Quad 2805 speakers because it's designed to work properly with the 2805s "crowbar" protection circuit.

Good sounding unit. Serviced. Reliable.

Nice unit but it appears to me that Sony compromised when they decided where to locate the tonearm pillar because I'm not able to obtain a proper Baerwald or Lofgren alignment.

Vintage studio monitors. 93dB efficient. Very nice speakers. Cabinets show some wear and tear.

Approximately 4,500 phono albums.

Lead acid battery generator. Reduces the noise floor to nothing by generating a perfect 60Hz sine wave.

Required equipment

Nice little compact streamer that allows me to control Qobuz via my cell phone, iPad, laptop, etc. If Qobuz had a feature like Spotify connect I'd probably use that. I have a hard drive attached for downloaded files from Bandcamp and I *hate* the way that Qobuz interfaces with those files. It is not convenient.

The JENA Labs cables are now my preferred reference. The Valkyrie SPDIF replaced a lovely sounding Cardas Clear SPDIF cable. The Valkyrie is, IMHO, a better sounding, more highly resolving cable.

Wonderful cartridge. I have it installed on the "big Sony" 2251. It feeds a Plinius Jarrah phono stage.

MM/MC phono stage. Lovely unit with the early, hand-fitted Jarrah wood enclosure.

I love this thing. For one thing, the dispay is excellent. And the sound is very acceptable too, though I think it sounds better when run through the MHDT Orchid, even though they basically have the same DAC chip

These are the A7 VOTT manufactured for domestic use. I don't know who could have originally fitted them into a domestic environment, because they are absolutely HUGE. The are gorgeous to look at and sound wonderful. I doubt that they will displace my JBLs or my Quads. But they're fun to have.

The Topping E70 Velvet replaced my stock MHDT Labs Orchid. The Topping uses a top-of-the-line Asahi KASEI Microdevices (AKM) 4499 chip. It can process high resolution digital files. I compared the E70V to an MHDT Labs Orchid that was modified by Grannyring - in fact, it was his personal unit. The E70V was more transparent and resolving than the Orchid. The Orchid is a lovely sounding DAC - I like to compare DACs with the Philips TD1541A chip to Ortofon SPU cartridges. They have an intrinsically "right" sound, but can suffer in comparison to more highly resolving technologies. Note: I also had auditioned the Soekris 1541 DAC in my system but did not care for it. I found it fatiguing. I was originally planning to replace my Orchid with the MHDT Pagoda. Now that I have the E70V I no longer consider that a priority.