Today I had a really nice afternoon taking a jazz guitar lesson from David Gitlen, and afterwards hearing a terrific couple of jazz albums that David had brought along for us to listen to.
After David and I finished up with the jazz guitar lesson, we followed our usual ritual of having a couple of espressos, and cueing up some jazz albums.
The Triode Lab 45 EVO integrated SET amplifier.
Ode to Frankie in this post's title is referring to the Triode Lab 45 EVO integrated amplifier that Frankie at Triode Lab in Toronto built, and that I wrote about for Positive Feedback HERE.
Listening to jazz with the Triode Lab 45 EVO at Jeff's Place.
As soon as David saw the 45 EVO he said, "You put my favorite amplifier back in the system!"
Being a jazz guitarist, David is particularly well-attuned to how music is supposed to sound and feel, and there really is nothing that makes jazz sound and feel more real than the 45 EVO on my Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers, with the Audio Note (UK) CD 2.1x/II 'Level Two' Red Book CD player serving as a digital source for our listening session (more HERE).
I've had the privilege of listening to a lot of really superb amplifiers, and I have to agree with David, the 45 EVO that Frankie built is really something very special, and its performance is at a level above any of the other great amplifiers I've heard with my Westminsters.
As I described in my Positive Feedback article about the 45 EVO, when you buy a 45 EVO from Frankie of your own, Frankie tailors the voicing through an insightful choice of components so that it best matches the loudspeakers you'll be using in order to provide the most synergistic result possible.
In my case that's my Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers, with their Duelund CAST crossovers, that Frederik Carøe of Duelund Coherent Audio and I built for the Duelund-Westminster Project in 2013.
When a talented designer like Frankie builds a single-ended-triode 45 amplifier that is customized to be the best match possible for your loudspeakers, you can get really amazing results, just as David and I experienced while listening with the 45 EVO in the system this afternoon.
Murley, Bickert & Wallace 'Live at the Senator'.
To make our Canadian Rhapsody listening session complete, we listened to the phenomenally well done album Live at the Senator by Canadians Mike Murley (tenor saxophone), Ed Bickert (guitar), and Steve Wallace (bass), from the Canadian jazz record label Cornerstone Records.
Roman Pokorny (left) with Ed Bickert (right). Roman is holding Ed's famous Telecaster.
David and I are both huge fans of the late jazz guitarist Ed Bickert. In fact I even built a 'replica' of Ed's famous Telecaster jazz guitar for my own jazz guitar studies.
Unless you're a jazz insider you might not know of these gentlemen, Mike Murley (tenor saxophone), Ed Bickert (guitar), and Steve Wallace (bass), but they are all phenomenal musicians.
I included the link to their album so you can get one of your own should you so desire.
Murley, Bickert & Wallace 'Live at the Senator'.
As the title implies, this album was recorded live at The Senator in Toronto.
The 45 EVO is absolutely brilliant, and it made it feel like a tangible bubble of naturalness descended upon the listening room, placing David and I at The Senator for Mike Murley, Ed Bickert, and Steve Wallace's performance.
Murley, Bickert & Wallace 'Live at the Senator'.
If you haven't heard Mike Murley play his tenor sax, you need to, he's brilliant. Ditto for Ed Bickert on guitar and Steve Wallace on bass.
The presentation of the 45 EVO was really something, and I felt myself relax into the music with a comfortable sigh. Life is good with the 45 EVO providing the amplification.
Even though the 45 EVO is very natural sounding in terms of tone and timbre, it is also very, very, resolving of musical - and other - nuance in the recording. For example, as David mentioned, "Listen, you can even hear them breathing as they play. I don't think you'd even be able to hear that if you were there."
It's amazing the level of nuance that microphones are able recover from a performance, and as we listened we could hear them breathing, that gentle slap of the strings upon the neck of the bass, but mostly we were just blown away with how real and musical the 45 EVO was on this album.
When I listen to the 45 EVO I am convinced that the 45 tube is the ultimate direct-heated vacuum tube for a single-ended-triode amplifier. There's just less in between the music and the listener to deal with. You've all heard that 'power corrupts', well there's just a lot less 'corruption' going on of the music signal with a low-powered vacuum tube, than with other more powerful vacuum tubes.
Another thing that the 45 EVO excels at is bass reproduction. I continue to be impressed at the level of prowess the 45 EVO exhibits in that regard. Simply the finest bass I've ever heard, and that's from a 2 watt per channel amplifier. Mind-boggling.
Mike Murley's sax tone was utterly natural in timbre through the 45 EVO, and Mike's playing is just beautiful.
David and I were both so impressed with what we were hearing from the 45 EVO, and the incredible musicianship of Mike Murley, Ed Bickert, and Steve Wallace, that I just felt compelled to offer special praise of Frankie's design talents with the 45 EVO, and of the grand musicianship recorded for Live at the Senator. Wow. Just wow!
This afternoon's listening session was a prime example of the joy of listening to great music on an amazing high-fidelity audio system that got us all interested in this grand hobby of high-fidelity audio.
Canadian Rhapsody: Ode to Frankie & Live at the Senator!
A special thanks to Frankie at Triode Lab for building such an incredible amplifier in the 45 EVO, and to the nice folks at Cornerstone Records for such a superb album of jazz.
Vive la Canada!
As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!
