CWelsh

I'm planning to do a little experimentation today. I'm going to see what happens when I feed my Forte IIIs directly from my ACP+ preamp.

I'm jealous.

Those are beautiful, @Turnip! Love the Zebra wood.

It will be fun to see what you come up with!

I'm going to look for those. I still have a couple of the Discworld books that I can't get from my library, but I haven't read any of his short stories, so that should be fun.

I thought seriously about the NuTube, but after doing a lot of reading on both in the DIY Audio forums, decided to go with the ACP+. I've been running my ACAs in the parallel mono mode, but switched them to the bridged mono mode yesterday and I'm really impressed. I feel like the bass presence drops a little, but the mids and highs seem better. Maybe it is because the bridged mono is single-ended. Whatever it is, I like it a lot. I look forward to hearing more about your preamp project when you get it finished.

I finally pulled the trigger on a preamp. Picked up a Pass designed ACP+ from the DIY Audio store. Hell of a nice preamp for $250, and pairs really well with the ACAs. I see this as a foundation to build on. I'm thinking I will ultimately add a phono section, a selector for four inputs (including phono), and a remote volume control in a single chassis. I could have had all that by just going with the Tubes4HiFi SP 10, but I think this will be more fun to build. Now I want to play a little with the different non-balanced options for running the ACAs in mono.

You might also want to check out Bart Ehrman.

It's a copy of a Martin D28 from Stewart McDonald. This is my second and the rosewood is gorgeous. I've built several electrics from either kits or just assembling parts from various sources. I've also picked up a few damaged or non-working guitars that I've rehabbed. Now I have a bunch of guitars hanging on my wall that I never play...LOL

HA! I can totally relate. I've got a guitar build that I started a few months ago and haven't done a thing with while the weather has been good enough for golf. And, before I started, all of the components sat in a box for over two years waiting for me to finish my work bench.

Nice sounds!

@The Dude Did you ever finish your preamp project?

Maybe, but it isn't the collaboration in and of itself that leaves me cold. It's the collaboration with a designer without audio engineering credentials to produce a speaker that is more about looks/style at a "luxury" price point than it is about quality sound. At least that's the way it comes off to me. Maybe I'm wrong. Plus, no one asked my opinion. I think I will just go enjoy listening to my Fortes. 😁

I'm not sure why I'm having such a negative reaction to all of this, but I am. I haven't heard the speakers, of course. I assume none of us have. Maybe they sound spectacular, but that doesn't seem to be the objective of the enterprise...the objective appears to be design cool and marketing.

Nice post! I don't know much about the 299C so I had to look it up. Sounds like your experience with the Scott is similar to mine with my Fisher X-101-B. I even relate to what you're saying about the comparison with the ACA. Between the Fisher and the ACA, I can't say that one is better than the other. They are very slightly different, for sure, but I couldn't say one is clearly better than the other.