The Duelund Coherent Audio DCA16GA has arrived at Jeff's Place! If you've been following this developing story, you know how excited I am about the Duelund Coherent Audio DCA16GA wire from Frederik Carøe in Denmark. "Why?" you ask. I'm glad you asked, so let me give you a brief recap of events up until now to help explain why I am... Read More »

It's been a crazy busy time for yours truly, with travel, work, looking after my 91-year young Mom, getting ready for some memorial services for my Dad, keeping up here at Jeff's Place, and the like. Sometimes 24 hours in a day seems woefully insufficient. But I wanted to check in and say, "Hi!" and... Read More »

I've been traveling in England the last couple weeks and got home last night at 1 a.m., and am now trying to get caught back up on everything, including some sleep and some music listening. I was on a tour with Rick Steves' Europe that was a lot of fun. Rick is a cultural treasure... Read More »

I had intended to spend quite a lot more time listening to the gorgeous sounding vintage Sprague Bumblebee 0.22uF capacitors in the C93 & C95 and C94 & C96 positions of my MX110Z to establish a 'baseline' before trying any more capacitors. The Bumblebee's are my favorites of all the capacitors I've tried in those positions for the MX110Z... Read More »

I have really been having a lot of fun listening to various capacitors in my vintage McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier. At the moment the vintage Sprague Bumblebees are at the top of my list for capacitors in the C93 & C95 and C94 & C96 positions for my MX110Z for their sheer musical prowess. The half a century old Bumblebees have... Read More »

It's always a pleasure to meet a like minded music lover like Jesper, who loves music and is having fun putting cool hi-fi gear throughout his home. Jesper has a nice mix of vintage and modern gear that fits right in with me and my pals here at Jeff's Place! Jesper told me: "At the... Read More »

After getting up this fine Saturday morning, while drinking a couple cups of my favorite coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters, I set about pulling off the bottom of my vintage vacuum tube McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier so I could do a little surgery on it. I had two things I wanted to do while under the bonnet, the... Read More »

If you read my recent post about tone capacitors you know there are three vintage capacitors that are very highly regarded for their tone, the Sprague Black Beauty, the Sprague Bumblebee, and the Mullard Tropical Fish, and they represent a sort of 'holy trinity' of tone for electric guitarists, as well as being at least partly responsible for the rich, musical tone,... Read More »

I'm not often gobsmacked by audio gear anymore, but when I laid my eyes on Markus Klug's Klughoerner hand-crafted wood replicas of historic multi-cell horns I almost swooned and fell out of my chair! Markus' Klughoerner multi-cell wood horns are stunning! To the right in the photo above, you can see Markus' hand-crafted Klughoerner wood replica... Read More »

I had a nice day of music listening yesterday afternoon with Leo, Pete, and Ron, as we did some listening comparisons with the Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers and their Hiraga-san inspired crossovers. The Jean Hiraga designed crossovers are about as perfect a match to the Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers as one could hope for,... Read More »

A lot of you (and me) have been lamenting that the superb Western Electric WE16GA wire has become essentially extinct, and I am down to the last little bit of WE16GA I have left, which is what I am using to wire my new crossovers for my Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers project.... Read More »

It is with sadness that I report that our friend and fellow audio traveler, Bill Van Winkle, has passed after an extended battle with cancer. Pete Riggle sent me a message saying: Finally Bill has reached escape velocity, not just from earth, but from the Milky Way. I walked out last night and looked up into... Read More »

As I have gotten older I've found myself becoming more interested in history in general, and our audio history in particular. Over the last ten or fifteen years I've become increasingly fascinated with the vintage Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers that started their storied journey into theaters back in 1945, as World War II was winding to... Read More »

I've been thinking a lot about tone lately, and in particular, vintage tone. If you look up 'tone' in the dictionary you'll see half a dozen definitions for it, but what I'm referring to when I say 'tone' is more in line with what musician's mean when they say 'tone', and what I think music lovers & audio hobbyists mostly... Read More »

I am delighted to say that the vintage Altec-Lansing A5 Voice of the Theatre Project is now moving forward again! In the first phase of the project I commissioned Gary Fischer to restore a vintage pair of Altec-Lansing A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers, which I described in three parts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.... Read More »

While doing the vintage McIntosh MX110 tuner-preamplifier adventure we experimented with several brands of new & NOS metal film resistors in the circuit in various places, but basically I always ended up preferring the vintage 2-watt NOS Allen Bradley carbon comp resistors that Andy Moore had suggested I try. The vintage 2-watt NOS Allen Bradley resistors had better tone,... Read More »

The Vintage Beat It sure has been a wonderful experience dipping my toe into the waters of vintage hi-fi gear, like with my original Garrard Project (1, 2, 3) articles: Or with my restored vintage McIntosh kit like the MX110Z tuner-preamplifier, stereo MC240 amplifier, stereo MC225 amplifier, and MC30 monaural amplifiers: Or the world of vintage... Read More »

Ron-san and I got together today to celebrate the joys of audio & music and to listen to the latest iteration of our Real Sound Adventure with the vintage McIntosh MX110 tuner-preamplifiers. To complement our listening adventures, we had a couple of superb bottles of regional wines to sample, a 2013 Walla Walla Vintners Cabernet Sauvignon, and a 2013 Anelare... Read More »

A good alternate title for this post would have been "The Real Sound Education of Jeff Day" because that is the result of Yazaki-san's and Ron-san's influence on me during our mutual adventures with the vintage McIntosh vacuum tube gear. Due to Ron's influence, I have now made the transition of being a modification observer... Read More »

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with a major revelation? In my case my major revelation came at 2:53 a.m. last night, according to the screen on my iPhone. It was three thoughts coming together that triggered my overall revelation, but I want to tell you the story in the sequence that it occurred... Read More »

If you read my post about Rafe's and Don's road trip to Jeff's Place (and Rafe's Part-Time Audiophile trip report), you know that one of the demos we did was a comparison of one of my Schick tonearms to the Woody SPU tonearm using a Ortofon SPU Classic GM Mk II stereo cartridge. I really like... Read More »

I sure have been busy lately, it seems, and I haven't been able to keep up with the blog posts I've been wanting to write for you, or to respond to your comments as speedily as I'd like to. If I forgot to answer a comment you directed at me, ping me again, because it... Read More »

Ron, Leo, and I got together to do a little listening to a variety of vintage preamplifiers last weekend, the Audio Research SP-6B, the Harmon Kardon Citation 1, and the McIntosh MX110. First we listened to Ron's vintage Audio Research SP-6B preamplifier so we could get a performance baseline for it, as we are getting ready to... Read More »