I went a bit wild today and decided to rearrange all my bedroom furniture so I could set up the new-to-me vintage Altec Corona loudspeakers as my bedroom system. The speakers look small in the photo above because of the size of the room, but they're really 3.5 feet tall and 3 feet wide, so... Read More »

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I laid down my guitars a few years ago and haven't played them since then, as the focus of my time was helping my Mom and Dad through some difficult times healthwise. I decided I needed to pick the guitars back up as I was really missing that... Read More »

It's been far too long since I've done some tube rolling, so I was delighted to hear from Sue & Richard at Sophia Electric that they wanted me to give their new Sophia Electric EL34-ST vacuum tubes a review for Positive Feedback. I'm a real pushover for the ST bottle shape, I just love the way... Read More »

It's bright and early on Saturday morning and I'm up drinking espresso, as my custom is lately, starting my mornings with two café allongés to get the morning rolling. It works! My primary music system has achieved such a nice overall balance musically & sonically of late that I'm just sitting back, settling in, and enjoying the fruits of... Read More »

It's always fun to get together with good friends, and I was delighted to have pals Leo, Pete, Ron, and Santos visit me for a frivolous Sunday afternoon of laughter, music, and hi-fi tomfoolery at Jeff's Place! Besides a nice selection of food & wine to nip & sip on, the menu included: 1) Finalizing the crossover... 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 »

It's been a fun & interesting time here at Jeff's Place, with an overwhelmingly positive response from all of you to the posts about the DIY projects of Western Electric WE16GA wire for use as speaker cables, and the Belden 8402 microphone cable for use as interconnects, that Mr. Yazaki-san of SPEC told us about. Thank you... Read More »

It was a true pleasure to have my friends Stephæn Harrell (left) and Pete Riggle (right) stop by for a little hi-fi tomfoolery on Saturday. Stephæn brought by some tasty pizza from Greek Islands Cuisine, and we had a grand time sipping a little Pinot Noir from the Sonoma region of sunny California, along with  some Newcastle brown ale... Read More »

Here's my listening impressions for the Duelund CAST Silver Capacitors and Duelund CAST Silver & Copper Autotransformers. I hope you enjoy it! Listening Impressions The Stock Westminster Royal SE Loudspeakers Let me repeat myself a little, with excerpts from the Part 1 article of the Duelund-WRSE Project, to put everything in context for the Part 2 changes... Read More »

I had my friends Leo, George, Ron, Stephaen (6Moons), my girlfriend Rosalie, and Santos, over for a listening session last Sunday afternoon. First we listened to some interesting grounding loops from Mark Coles (Sablon Audio) that can be used on speaker cables, interconnects, and the Duelund-WRSE connections. Mark says the grounding loops are basically short loops of... Read More »

It has been a busy couple of months here at Jeff's Place, with lots going on across multiple fronts. On the hi-fi front it has been non-stop excitement with the Duelund CAST components from Frederik Carøe in Denmark as Part 2 of the Duelund-Westminster Royal SE External Crossover Project kicks into high gear! Duelund-WRSE external crossovers... Read More »

Hello everybody! I've been missing in action for a while now, with it being a month to the day since my last post. Thanks to those of you who dropped me a note to check up on me to make sure I was ok - appreciated! It has been a rough go for a while... Read More »

The end of 2013 is arriving rapidly and 2014 will be on us in no time! I thought it would be fun to take a look back at 2013's notable moments and to take a look behind the veil of 2014 to see what might be waiting. First up are those treasures that I wrote... Read More »

It's Christmas morning here in the Americas. I've got a fire burning in the fireplace, a hot cup of good coffee in my hand, and I've got Northwest Public Radio playing a lot of really great Christmas themed material today through my vintage McIntosh MX110Z's vacuum tube tuner. Heaven. At the moment NPR is playing... Read More »

As I've promised in earlier posts, I’m archiving the Duelund-Westminster External Crossover article here at Jeff’s Place so you can find everything in one place for reference purposes (Part 1 - Intro, Part 2 - Breadboarding, Part 3 - Final Design). The full version of the article was just published in Issue 70 of Positive... Read More »

The Duelund-Westminster Project is live on Positive Feedback Online in Issue 70! As I mentioned in an earlier post, the article is huge with over 40 pages of text and 137 photographs. Editor Dave decided to break it up into two parts to make it a little more manageable to read on the website, and... Read More »

Today's Fresh Catch is a vintage Johnny Smith Phase II LP on the Verve label that my buddy Leo picked up for me while cruising the record stores - thank you Leo! Wait until you hear it on the Westminsters, Leo, it'll blow your mind - it is an awesome album! I'm sitting here listening... Read More »

I have achieved a level of musical nirvana over the last week that I haven't experienced since the departure of the wonderful ASR Emitter II Exclusive Version Blue amplifier designed by the talented Friedrich Schaefer in Germany. In fact, my system is performing at a level quite a ways above even what I was experiencing when that... Read More »

Hi everyone! I hope you're having a nice weekend! I was out of commission part of this week as a victim of a stomach bug that's been going around, so you could say this week is ending a lot better than it started. Last weekend was an awesome vintage weekend of listening to Ron’s quad of... Read More »

My survey article of the Sablon Audio Corona family of power cables, designed by Mark Coles, is now live in the new issue of Positive Feedback Online, Issue 68, here. Here's a few snippets from the article: "I think its pretty cool that Mark practices the philosophy of continuous improvement for his cable products. You... Read More »

Here’s what’s in my current review queue and what you can expect to see reviewed at Positive Feedback Online in the future. The last reviews to be finished up were of the wonderful ASR Basis Exclusive phono equalizer and ASR Emitter II Exclusive Version Blue amplifier (above). I'm still in withdrawal after their departure - wonderful... Read More »

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this post, I got back from Idaho yesterday afternoon where I had joined with my family to celebrate my Dad's 90th birthday! It was awesome! After getting home I unboxed the Panatela WRSE internal wiring set that Mark Coles had sent for the Duelund-WRSE Project. This project has... Read More »

I was excited to the see the package arrive from Mark Coles containing the custom internal Westminster Royal SE Sablon Audio Panatela wiring harness that Mark made for the Duelund-WRSE Project. These are the exact same custom Panatela Special Edition Component Speaker Cables that Mark optimized for the WRSEs with Paul Mills' input that I reviewed in... Read More »