BREAK UP, TO MAKE UP, THAT'S WHAT WE DO... To me, audio has some semblance to the game of basketball. These two, coincidentally, are 2 of my greatest passions in life. In both of these endeavors, one needs to assemble, in the case of audio - build up and match gears to form a system. In basketball, assemble and build a bunch of players to form a team. The goal for both, is to form synergy, or, a more popular term in basketball - chemistry.
After rebuilding a team in basketball, one gets to win some games, and maybe a title. And after that, rebuilding takes place, since many factors will set in (age, contracts, injuries, etc.). As they say, nothing is permanent. Not too long ago, my audio life took a big turn when, 3 years ago, I changed
THIS
TO THIS
ARC VS110 to VS115.
The reason? I felt my 7 or 8 year old amp was 'aging'.
In short, I demonized myself.
Shorter yet, I wanted to scratch an 'itch'.
Time to change for a newer and younger bloodline, I thought. I wanted to feel what new tech had to offer. Little did I suspect that this move would create an audio 'domino effect' as far the rest of the chain is concerned.
The most telling difference between the old amp and the new amp is tonal character. The old was warm, smooth, sweet, 'musical' though a bit deficient in ultimate detail and frequency extension while the new has lightning fast transients, fantastic sound stage and incredible dynamics albeit the vocals lack the warmth, sweetness and lushness of the old. That change, I thought, was a fair one. I win some and lose some.
What I didn't expect, or prepare for, was the slow demise of my precious long plates and industrial grades Mullard tubes in my Jadis JPL Preamp.
On one given night, the sound suddenly turned bright, virtually lit up my listening room as though I had to run out and get my sunglasses in the car.
The tubes had been there and serving its useful life for like 7-8 years running, logging in many hours a day through the years. The system sounded 'broken'.
I had them tested and they were weak. The soul and the body of the music it created became 'Coke Light'. And sama ng lasa.
My mistake was I thought the tubes could do another 7 or 8 years and didn't stockpile. But it didn't happen.
And so, the Stylistics song (modified) started to sing in my ears:
Tell me what's wrong with you now , tell me why 'you'
Never seem to make 'me' happy though heaven knows 'you' tryRepeat 3x:
Break up to make up, that's all we do
First 'I' love 'you', then 'I' hate 'you'
That's a game for fools So this fool replaced the Jadis tubes with some more recent production tubes and took in the offer of Morita-san to try the Minimax Phono, hoping that it would solve the 'thinny and bright sound' problem that has plagued my system and at the same time get to try something newer, again. The 'break-up-to-make-up' act had begun. Somewhere along the way the 'centuries' old VPI turntable and ET2 arm conbo also saw the changing of the guard, into pivoted arm and an Avid table. There were some really good things that happened with the changes, notably mechanical ones, as the ET2's age caused it to get stuck in the end track. I forgot to mention that the ARC PH3 tubes also had thinning white hairs and got close to getting totally bald themselves.
What's worse, I had no 'reserve army' and had to scurry for some quick telegraphs for the hawks to find me some real deal tubes. But times have changed and good tubes are very hard to come by, I was told. I had to wait, with not much choice at all.
I shifted the battle plan to order premium tubes for the Minimax Phono instead, and when they came, they sang, and created great music. But something was still not right with the overall presentation of the system, I felt afterwards. I suspected the impedance mismatch of the Jadis pre and the Minimax Phono. The Jadis pre has a very high gain. Like there was an overload on some albums and instruments. Again, I tried some tube rolling again, mixing and matching to the tube complements of the Jadis to try to find a solution to the overloading problem. This dog was still spinning to get its own tail. The sound stage is a bit more upfront and 'forward' and there is a bit of grit and grain in the sonic spectrum with this combination. I have always tended to blame the ARC VS115 for that but in the meantime, tried to 'fix' it in another part of the chain.
In came the Minimax Line Preamp, from the docks of Morita-san.
It had a lower gain of 12db compared to the Jadis' 35db. While he tried it briefly here, I wasn't taken by it initially. Lower gain, better depth, but un-involving, I felt. After a few weeks, we struck a deal for me to procure the Minimax line as I suddenly felt in my guts that with a little more burn in and tube rolling into my all-time favorite Mullard Long Plate tubes, there may be hope. I felt that synergy will be good with both the line and phono stages being the done by the same designer. And so the die was cast, and the Mullard tubes came in after some waiting. ALL stock tubes of the Line and Phono stages were replaced wtih NOS Mullards and a pair of Red Tips Telefunkens. The final piece of the puzzle came a few weeks ago with the arrival of the Mullard 6X4 square getters. I should say that when they were fitted and with a little more weeks of burn in, the sound finally set it to what I want it to be. Smooth, warm, very involving, melodious foot-tapping music was produced, with delicate decays and sensual lushness that just makes my head nod in agreement and glued my back to my chair. Each and every recording shows its character and it's not difficult to notice sonic differences from stamper to stamper, thereby creating my own sort of 'hot stampers'.
I thought that this is the time when after all these 3 years of 'break up and make up' exercise, I finally gave my system the highest approval or satisfactory rating thus far.
The 'pulse' meter has ticked higher, my pulse.
I venture to say that all these improvements would not have been achieved without the presence of the vintage tubes that I rolled into the Minimax gears. I cannot forget what an old tube hand in the 90s, Andy Bowman, said when he told me my tube gears are only as good as the kind of tubes I put in them. And even until today, he has been proven right by my own experience.
Like basketball, team rebuilding is done for a higher goal. And right now, in my audio life, this system 'rebuilding' also has my own humble goal and I feel that goal has been achieved. The sound is not perfect by any stretch as there are still some pros and con vis-a-vis the old system prior to the break-up. The process was slow and at times frustrating and challenging. There were afternoons when Morita and I would try out 8 brands of 6X4 tubes with a few albums to see which is best suited for the system. I never imagined that a couple of teeny weeny tube electronic gears would be part of my audio life at this point. I was set to put the blame game to trade away the amp (VS115) that triggered the 'break-up',
but at the moment, it's staying. (I dream of the VAC amp every month).
I'm happy to have walked the road with Morita in this journey. It hasn't been easy for him to 'push' his stuff into my room, (maybe the past 3 years)
but those surreptitious tea meetings helped.
A long time ago, I thought I had built a synergistic audio system when I bought the ARC VS110 amp to mate with my Jadis preamp and ARC PH3 phono stage. What I didn't know, nor expected, was that by selling that amp and buying its successor, I would be hurled into another rebuilding process that would take 3 years.
But as they say, all's well that ends well.
Below, a 'warm' view of the front end. And a notable change is that, before, with the Jadis/ARC combo, they had
GREEN lights. Now, the Minis have
BLUE. But it doesn't mean anything really, as both green and blue were ELIMINATED from the UAAP finals a few weeks ago.
And I don't need no sunglasses no more.
P.S.
Morita, after hearing the 'make-up' after the 'break up', told me to try his top dog Proteus in the Transfiguration line. I told him:
1. I am not in the rebuilding mood again.
And
2. I will have to
'prodeus' more $$$$ before getting his Proteus.
Thanks for reading.