There's nothing quite as satisfying as an impromptu listening session on a Friday afternoon with good friends like Ron and Leo. Ron always brings over a nice French wine, and Leo a very tasty vino from Napa (Ron's French Bordeaux was a 2009, and Leo's Napa Cabernet Sauvignon a 2005!). It's great to have friends with such good taste! I supplied the snacks & hi-fi rig, and we had a blast listening to music!
A couple of posts ago I mentioned that Ron was bringing over the completed vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers with the 'resistor adventure' installed to complement the earlier 'capacitor adventure', that was inspired by Mr. Yazaki-san. I promised an update on that listening session, but unfortunately, that listening session ended abruptly with a failure of one of the Russian capacitors that Yves uses in his restorations, which you shouldn't consider to be a bad reflection on Yves, as sometimes things just happen. Ron got that nasty little capacitor replaced, and we were good to go for another listening session today!
The completed vintage McIntosh MC30s with the Capacitor Adventure & Resistor Adventure that Ron-san installed are astonishingly good. Ron, Leo, and I were talking about how the transformed Mac's might be the best tube amps we've ever heard. Maybe the best amps we've ever heard, period. It's really very impressive what Yazaki-san has wrought with the MC30s. As good as Yves' original restorations were (really good), the Yazaki-san modified MC30s are at a totally different level of performance.
Leo brought over his new 45RPM ORG remaster of Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah Um and it was amazingly good. We were blown away listening to Mingus Ah Um with its incredible musicianship and orchestral-like production. If you don't have a copy you'll want to get one ... I know I'm going to.
We listened to album after album and the result was always the same: the 'real sound' of music emanating from the loudspeakers was the best I've ever heard, with Ron & Leo saying the same. I don't know how Mr. Yazaki-san does it, but his recommendations for capacitor & resistor upgrades (and tubes!) have had a remarkable effect on the performance of my already very good vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers.
I'm not quite sure what to say, as the results today were beyond extraordinary. Ron, Leo, and I experienced the best sound we've ever heard today, or as Mr. Yazaki-san would say, we heard 'real sound' in the performance of the vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers.
Mr. Yazaki-san's recommended modifications to the MC30s, as well as his recommendations of the Western Electric WE16GA wiring (used as speaker cables and for my Duelund CAST crossovers), and the Belden 8402 microphone cable as ICs, has produced the most musically involving presentation of music I have ever heard.
I'm really impressed. I'm going to write up all of the audio adventures I've had with Mr. Yazaki-san as an article for Positive Feedback, because I think it's important for fellow audio enthusiasts to know about Mr. Yazaki-san's vision of 'real sound' and what is possible by implementing them. I've asked Mr. Yazaki-san to write more about his thoughts of 'real sound' and exactly what that means, and he is working on that now.
I would like to thank Mr. Yazaki-san for his inspired recommendations, and I'd like to thank Ron-san for all the hours he's spent installing the 'real sound' upgrades - the combination is magic!
Stay tuned - I'll have many more exciting things to share with you!
