I get really excited about vacuum tubes! When Sue and Richard at Sophia Electric contacted me about doing an article about their new Sophia Electric™ EL34-ST vacuum tubes I was quite intrigued. I don't know what it is, but every time I see a vacuum tube with the 'ST' style of glass bulb shape I just swoon, I... Read More »

This morning I'm writing the introductory part of the Lefson resistor article for Positive Feedback while listening to music, with plans to write up listening impressions on how the Lefson resistors performed in my Altec A7 Voice of the Theatre project crossovers tomorrow, and hopefully write a summary & conclusions section before the end of the weekend. I hope... Read More »

Yesterday after I rewired the high-frequency circuits of my Westminster's Duelund CAST crossovers with the Duelund DCA20GA tinned-copper tone wire, I was so excited by the results that I decided I wanted to rewire the low-frequency circuits too. It was spur of the moment decision to rewire my crossovers, so I didn't precondition any of the... Read More »

I'll start with the other stuff. I traveled to Washington, D.C. this last week, where we received a Secretarial Award for our US Belle II High Energy Physics project at KEK, the particle physics laboratory in Japan. A little bit of background: The Belle II experiment’s global collaboration involves more than 600 members, 65 institutes,... Read More »

It's always a treat to hear from Jim Smith, and as many of you know, I have the greatest respect for Jim and his many contributions to the worlds of music & audio, and am just generally a big fan of Jim's! Jim's demos at CES over the years have always been impressive, and you have... Read More »

This is the fifth post I've written about the Lefson resistors that are manufactured by Xavier Lefebvre in Wormhout, France. Let me summarize what I've written about Lefson until now: In my first post I introduced the three product lines of carbon/silver audio resistors that are available from Lefson, the Premium, the Supra, and Ultra. The Premium resistor from Lefson is... Read More »

Happy Weekend! I was really glad to see this weekend arrive, as during the week I had come down with a nasty cold and had been only working half days trying to get feeling better. Ugh. I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but right after co-worker Melanie gave me some Cold-EEZE lozenges to try... Read More »

In Parts 1 & 2 of my Today's Fresh Catch series of posts about the new Acoustic Revive AC power supply components, I introduced the RTP-6 Absolute NCF six-outlet AC power distributor and the Power Reference TripleC NCF AC power cords, respectively, which you could rightly consider to be the exotic bespoke Aston Martin DB4 GT Continuation versions of the AC power supply world.... Read More »

It's always fun to get out and about for an adventure, particularly when it includes music! Friend and fellow Westminster owner, Leo, and I were in Seattle yesterday for a brief visit and stopped in at Jazz Alley to catch the Bob James Quartet's performance, and it was awesome! You might remember that multi-Grammy winning... Read More »

I've mentioned before that I get pretty excited whenever I hear from Yoshi-san & Elia-san (father & son) of the MuSon Project in Osaka, Japan, who export Japanese audio exotica to The World, because it means that something exciting is about to happen audio-wise! Yoshi-san told me that he had a new phonograph cartridge that he... Read More »

There's so many new readers at Jeff's Place these days, that I thought it would be a nice idea to go over the purpose of my Jeff's Place audio blog again, describe where it fits in my spectrum for audio reviewing and reportage, discuss my reviewing methodology, my biases & preferences, and give you a 'master list' of... Read More »

It's always exciting to start a new audio adventure with vintage hi-fi electronics, and I'm particularly excited about my new vintage audio adventure with the vintage monaural McIntosh C-8 'Professional Audio Compensators' as McIntosh called them, or phono preamplifiers, as the rest of us call them. I read where the original principals at McIntosh thought... Read More »

As I posted earlier, I'm really looking forward to trying friend Yazaki-san's ideas for modifying my vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers. It's always fun doing audio adventures with Yazaki-san, as his insight, knowledge, and experience have really changed the way I think about audio performance, and for voicing my system at the 'DNA level' using resistors,... Read More »

I introduced you to the Acoustic Revive RPT-6 Absolute in Part 1 of this post, which allows up to six AC power cords to be plugged into it, which is enough to serve as a central point to coordinate all the AC power cords for my entire system, with two extra outlets to allow for a pair... Read More »

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this post, there’s so many good audio things happening right now I thought I’d better write a quick survey for you about all the things that are in play, culminating with my ‘roadmap’ for writing about it all in the near future. ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ I introduced Xavier Lefebvre and Lefson Analog... Read More »

There's so many good audio things happening right now I thought I'd better write a quick survey for you about all the things that are in play, and my 'roadmap' for writing about it all in the near future. ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ As you know, the last year or so has resulted in a significant revelation for me... Read More »

As I mentioned in my article for Positive Feedback about the Acoustic Revive RPC-1 Power Supply Conditioner, I am always intrigued when I get a message from Yoshi-san or Elia-san from the MuSon Project in Osaka, Japan, who export Japanese audio exotica to The World. Every time I get a message from Messrs. Hontani I get... Read More »

While I was working on the review of the Lefson resistors, the elderly OPPO BDP-83 Blu-Ray player that I was using for my reference digital source in my A5 Voice of the Theatre system quit working. I disassembled the BDP-83 and determined that the transport, which had been acting up for quite a while, finally died. The... Read More »

What do you do when you wake up at 2:30 a.m. with your mind working overtime about all the possibilities in life? My approach this morning was to fire up the espresso machine, have a double shot, and then continue with the Lefson resistor adventure! I listened again this morning to the 10R Lefson Premium silver/carbon resistor in... Read More »

If you read my previous Lefson post about the Lefson resistors provided to me by Xavier Lefebvre, who owns and operates Lefson, you know that I am gearing up to write about the three lines of custom and hand-crafted Lefson resistors for Positive Feedback. I asked Xavier if he would tell us a little bit about himself... Read More »

First off I want to give a shout out to one of my audio heroes, Jim Smith, who gave Jeff's Place and Duelund DCA16GA a mention on his blog, Get Better Sound, is this issue of his Quarter Notes news letter: "Jeff Day is a trouble-maker! He keeps finding things that I have to try.... Read More »

I've got good news! I just heard from Chris at Parts ConneXion and he told me that he's now stocking the Switchcraft 3502AAU RCA plugs at the same price as Mouser ($3.99 USD each) to offer an affordable alternative for those wanting to build DIY interconnect needs. I also just heard from Frederik Carøe at... Read More »

I received a message from Dr. David Robinson, Managing Editor of Positive Feedback, asking me if I could write about the three new ranges of carbon/silver audio resistors from Lefson in Wormhout, France, and he put me in touch with owner Xavier Lefebvre so we could talk about the possibilities. Lefson makes an impressive array of high-performance... Read More »