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Do It Yourself (DIY) paradise for tube and SET project builders.

RE: another ...

OH! But it IS a math contest! Thing is
is I only play the game when it actually results
in a WHOLE AMPLIFIER that does everything right.

Same thing gets done with sources & wiring.
People even rave about ('---'s) vinyl setup.
It seems it outperforms most everything out
there while playing 33 RPM records.

The mind buster is what it consists of-- parts
chosen & modified to play music right, and do
it for thousands of hours. How many hours of
FIRST RATE performance do you get from a given
phono cartridge? I never could top about 750 hours
until I heard of a certain German high output cart.
People who had one were saying it outperforms
$37,500.00 Moving Coils, and RUNS THOUSANDS OF HOURS.

THAT got my attention! Guess what! With all those
millivolts, one could really drive the interconnects
going into the Phono Stage, could simplify that stage,
and further, we eliminated a pair of interconnects when
we ran Cardas Silver tonearm wire straight from the
cartridge all the way to the Phono Stage inputs.

I used a Disc Jockey turntable. $600.00 bucks. How can that
deliver world class results? Well , it DID when a
SME headshell was used on the re-wired tonearm,
and a carbon-fibre layer AND a piece of Montana cowhide
with the hair-side contacting the carbon fibre, was applied,
with the record to be played sitting atop the natural
underside of the cowhide-- the hair side contacting the carbon
fibre sheet.

What had we wanted?

(1) Speed stability. Easy-- Direct Drive.
(2) VASTLY better tonearm wiring.--- Got that done!
(3) A cartridge THAT WORKS. HIGHEST output. The HIGHEST fidelity.
(4) Cartridge isolation. SME headshell and a cartridge so well engineered that it DID NOT NEED a fancy, totally-isolated tonearm.
The high output also aided that. Signal-to-Noise Ratio-- you know.
(5) A GREAT phono preamp. Bought a good tube unit, modified it until
IT WORKED. Wasn't too hard-- it was for Moving Magnets-- not too
many gain stages-- a distinct advantage. It did receive a lot
of power supply kind attentions also, and
some really lovely RIAA mods. NO feedback circuits.

I always pay attention to the tried-and-true
formulas that deliver the best calculations.
The people who adhere to those regardless of whether they
are the best solution or not, aren't always
wrong, and I acknowledge that and we all study it-- but
not to the point of losing performance... or reliability.

The discussions around here (and all over the country
and a few parts of the world where my stuff is present)
include mostly "what can we do or change to get even
better musical reproduction and reliability"?

The answers to those questions often involve-- but
not always-- bending the rules-- to fit an OVERALL
situation, where ALL factors are to be considered.

A balanced approach THAT WORKS day-in-day out EVERYDAY,
with NO failures, adjustments or other fuss & bother...

Thanks to all of you for your patience, and Thanks to
those who continue to think-out solutions that
apply to individual cases, but not necessarily in all cases.

They don't have to apply to all cases.

-Dennis-



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