Luv_sum_Horns

Why do SETs sound so good?Has something to do with harmonics. Don't really care for harmonica music so I guess it will remain a mystery to me. -bill

Lol, that's exactly my type of "luck". Thanks for all the replies. I'll have a lights out session with a popsicle stick. Wow, that came out wrong! -bill

On the bright side, I picked up a Hisense 7" tablet that runs android whatever. Build quality seems very good and I have had no issues with it. Haven't really found a use for it yet though. Sometimes these things turn out alright. When they pick up and move the current production facilities, thats your first clue.

Having done a little Cornwall research, if you are talking about the horizontal mirrored pair decorators, those that have those and the conventional verticals swear by their imaging. I'd say if all the drivers are firing and the cabinets are in good shape, they would make a great and worthwhile refurb project. Plant rings, I refer to that as "original patina". They usually don't make it through a vigorous rubbing with restore-a-finish and 0000 steel wool. -bill

Yeah, that was my next step. I'm in no big hurry as that Torii prematurely added to my sig arrives on Wednesday and my other amp still isn't broken in. If push comes to shove, I'll drop it off at the shop. Failing that, there's always a use for a mono somewhere.

I applaud your dedication and look forward to seeing what you're up to! -bill

Thought I attached a jpg? Its this one: http://www.amazon.com/YAQIN-MC-84L-Vacuum-Integrated-Amplifier/dp/B00A7IZV22/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438534039&sr=8-1&keywords=yaqin+mc84

It's a Yaqin MC-84L (EL84). The sound is definately left channel and sounds to me like a just slightly audible tick. Sometimes they are single ticks, sometimes a burst of ticks and completely intermittent. My friend who actually has electronic skills refers to it as an arc. I arc frequently on light switches but the tick is more subtle than that. Like some component getting a little too much juice and releasing into the left channel. It is at a steady volume meaning it remains at a low level as I increase volume. That seems to indicate it's not power supply related but a component in the chain. Replaced caps on my Heresys so I have an idea how out of spec caps affect sound and they definately don't cause ticking. Bad resistor, no idea, same with the transformers, I was using it in a biamp setup on my Cornwall woofers and it was even more subtle but still there, so it's in the roll off (guessing 600-800hz) area.

I knew I was rolling the dice buying the Yaqin referred to in post 16 above. I was out of line by suggesting a QC issue. It's a long transit pipeline and obviously was shipped air from China to a port and trucked from there. Took about a week and a half and a lot of handling, packaging looked fine though, and was well protected inside. Having seen the statements like "if you sell bad products in China they kill your whole family". Pretty good marketing. It's just easier and less complicated to buy American. I'd rather pay extra for a work of art and peace of mind than get something cheap tossed together from acquired IP.

Maynard, I anxiously await your write-up. Being curious to hear the "tube sound" and having nothing available locally, I purchased a Yaqin EL84 based SET. Unfortunately, it took a whack on its head during transit and has a subtle ticking in the left channel. Being new to tubes I blew if off as something happened to a tube. Replaced the el84's with JJ's and the 12AX7's with Sovtecs. Improved the sound quality that was already pretty good, but the ticking persists. OK, maybe it took a really good whack and an already suspect joint came loose so I reflowed everything I could find on the left side. Ticking persists. Suspecting a faulty component at this point and I am tapped out as far as my electronic skills go. Luckily have a shop not too far away. Lesson I learned here, if you get an amp with an issue, just send it back and eat the shipping. The company I bought it from was willing to replace so they are on the up and up, but I figured it was something obvious as it wasn't flaming out or blowing my speakers up. The other lesson learned was don't over estimate your fixin' skills.

I've done the Moray James mod to my kg's. As he outlined above you simply pull your passive and glue 2.5 to 3 ounces of weight to the center of the back (of the thing that would be the magnet if it wasn't passive). Two big washers from Home Depot did the trick on each passive. I recommend a silicone adhesive for re-moveability. If I've missed anything I'm sure Mr. James will jump in.

OK, so your basically doing a Chris's Greatest Hits. It took me about six months to get through about 50gig of my 650gig collection, and yup, I dorked a few up as well. I ended up with two curves, your classic missing octave curve, and one that did that and reduced mids and highs on a slow curve up from -6db @ 100hz to -3db. That seemed to cover most cases. I chilled out realizing I may not get through the whole collection. I guess I'll regroup and take your approach. I have a playlist of favorites that weighs in at about 5000 tunes, problem is I just started that recently. This is the only time I ever acknowledged that yes, you can have too much music! Never understood what the heck a phono preamp did until looked at the curve in Audacity (think I called it Ardour in an earlier post). -bill

Got to appreciate those type of folks who think so far outside the box, that they can explain stuff that is difficult for normal folks to wrap their head around, so thanks for the tip on Mr. Heyser. I'm sure the answer to my question of why one's recorded voice doesn't sound like your voice when played back to you is somewhere in the many PDF's I grabbed. How can one not be familiar with ones own voice? This has GOT to be some kind of voodoo audio trickery gone wrong somewhere between ear and brain.

Scary enough, just wait till they fill those AI driven robots with seeker bullets that have your dna programmed into them!

You're hitting on all cylinders today my friend, as I too notice my setup sounds better with about a half a bottle of 12 year old scotch in me. Sorry to all for goading Steve into a conversation in this mighty fine thread, so to the OP and thread topic: Cornwalls with a six watt tube amp is overkill. But Maynard already knew this. I got an extra cup of coffee this morning if you couldn't tell...zero to 600 posts in half a day! -bb

I use my 105 as a digital hub for various file servers, er towers with a bunch of drives in them, using free desktop software (Linux Mint 17 all around). Client box in the rack connected to the TV from a low end Nvidia HDMI out. Nice audio card connected to Oppo via fiber. I can read directly from the networked Oppo to the servers. Or I can push stuff from where ever. Have my main system where I do all ripping and transcoding on an eight core AMD. Again, Linux Mint and all the extra software I need is right there in the repository. FLAC support in all the players, VLC for any video tasks. Steam even ported a couple of my favorite games which I play on my I7 Haswell with an Nvidia 660 running, you guessed it... Mint 17. Easy? Pretty much point and click easy.

Are these guys concerned about the headroom needed for musical peaks, or do they listen at 110dB+ continuously? That's akin to running a table saw with no hearing protection... Peaks only, for me, and brief ones at that, in orchestral music. Usual loud levels in the low 90s in dB SPL, peaks up to 110 dB very, very briefly -- theoretically higher than that. I don't know if this is a factor, but the old Klipsch data sheets listed the Cornwalls as having 3 times the Frequency Modulation distortion as Klipschorns, and at a lower SPL. I like Cornwalls, but maybe they don't push cleanly as far as Klipschorns. Two completely different types of bass, horned bass vs direct raidated bass. Fast and clean vs slow and sloppy...

I originally started my bit perfect quest on Windows. I gave up. Being a computer nerd, I can't handle the needless resampling or the license fees, so I switched to Linux because it was just easier. I actually ripped 1200 cd's into Ogg Vorbis before I found out about FLAC. Using a high end sound card, everything works out of the box practically and I can switch back and forth between the digital coax out of my soundcard, or HDMI out of my Nvidia video card. I've settled on using Banshee as a player as it supports gain leveling and gapless playing, and really big libraries. Being unencumbered by file formats...priceless.

As a child, I was drug to many, many orchestral concerts. Noticed quite early on, that when it sounded really nice I would get goose bumps and the hair on the back of my neck would stand up! When you reach the point where all your stuff gels and resolves like that, sit back and enjoy because you have arrived!

Yeah, hard to imagine what someone else is hearing. Does everyone hear 20hz to 20K? I'm afraid to test my hearing because I don't want to know my ears only go to 12K. I think I can hear well therefore I do! Lol. My question is does HF diffract and diffuse when they hit the hair growin' in your ear? Would make sense you would want a straight shot there. When I try to ABX the one I turn up is the one I like.

Wow Steve_S, just looked up your DAC. Got a pair of those Sabre chips in my Oppo which is the front end for lots of digital to tube amp connectivity. Love to hear your impression of how it sounds on the RF-7s.

My Panasonic 50" plasma is 7 years old. It will be a sad day when it goes. Guess my second favorite are IPS screens. LG's are stupid easy to calibrate and make good all around monitors. And they are a heck of a lot lighter than the panny at 130 pounds.

Those two could get up and sing in sign language and I would enjoy the heck out of it!

gaaaa! Norah and Alison...well played sir!

Female vocals do it for me. I'll get some Amy Winehouse on my next amazon blitz. I'm a dedicated rip from CD to flac kind of guy. If you haven't heard of Susan Tedeschi, that's my recommendation of the day. -bb