Great night out. Red is a great host, and Ray did a top job organizing the programme. Lots of Yello on LP using the Goldmund turntable and Supex cartridge, RIAA by Colin F’s phono stage. Pre by Audio Research LS2 and power by the previously mentioned Ebony amp. The amp did sterling service driving the 15″ Tannoys to quite extreme levels, the sound and bass was excellent.
Red’s Tannoys now have quick-change port tubes to change the damping to suit a variety of amplifiers and recordings.
Wednesday 17 in the Willis Room
Listening to the first pressed CDs and an original Sony CD player (1983) and comparing the sound with an Oppo. As expected the modern player and DAC were MUCH better, equipment used was a Mark Levinson 331 amplifier driving a big pair of Duntech Black Knights. The preamp was an excellent modern (valve) McIntosh. All present agreed that good recordings and the equipment used today are far superior. Nick also played a modern recording that was horribly compressed! So not all new recordings are better.
Starts at 8 pm.
The Absolute Sound shop (in Hawthorn, Vic) and Surya supplied real high end gear as well as offering a great service. One of their unique products was the TAS system.
Now Surya’s own system as installed in his home is for sale. In part the system is made up of speakers using the best drivers available including Raven ribbons, Esoteric mids and tweeters and others which will be listed later. All electronics and cables are included, as are four Ebony 4-channel 450wpc amplifiers. The build of the amplifiers is impeccable, and uses high grade components. Be prepared the amps are heavy due to the large power transformers. We listened to one on Saturday, and more listening is planned for Red’s “Yello” meeting.
Front and some of the components
Before the small (10″) Tannoy DC was sold a dew days ago we powered them with a little Thorens PR24 amplifier.
The Thorens uses 13 valves, ECC83 (12AX7) and 6973 (6CZ5) in the output stage. These are pretty rare amplifiers, Kevin in Sydney was rebuilding one, this is the only one I’ve seen.
The sound was so good the Tannoys were sold on one demonstration, The little Thorens is not very powerful but with Tannoys or similar quite efficient speakers it is a gem.
Another picture
Front view of the Thorens
Jadis pre and power amps don’t come up very often, here is the comment from the seller:
"Hoping to get $4.5k for power n $2.5k for the Pre? Pre retails at €4600 currently"
Listening to the (just arrived) pair of Tannoy dual concentric Stirlings was interesting. The speakers handled vocals very naturally, and typical Tannoy imaging. Amps used ranged from a Weston 12w valve amp, Luxman C02 and M02 and even a nice old Teac. The 10″driver sounds really good, and the cabinet work is excellent.Even speaker repair expert Atilla is impressed with the quality of the driver, and he’s hard to please!
This is the SE model
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