THEBES-A-THON!, THEBES-A-THON!, THEBES-A-THON!!!!!!

[LarryC]

----------------

On 6/15/2005 12:07:57 PM rplace wrote:

Reschedule it for the following weekend and I can make it. Gosh Darn inconsiderate father in law (actually I love the guy) had to go and turn 80 on the T-A-Thon day and I got a party to go to in PA.

Have fun with out me guys. Larry C, I was hoping to finally meet you and you as well thebes. Ask Gary if he got anything strange in the mail.

I got 10 acres, a pool and a pool table, just not the stellar equipment that many of you seem to have, but no junk either….maybe you all can make a trek up to my place before the summer runs out say August-ish. I am about 1.5 hours up from D.C. in MD…pretty close to I-95. Easy trip down for the Philly types as well.

Any interest?

Rich

----------------

Absolutely, I'd be happy to make that trek and I'm free all of August! Indy pilgrimage is the weekend after Thebes's 'Thon.

Larry

[thebes]

Sorry you can't make it Rich, but sure I'm up for a drive in the country.

Istari, I'm in Reston which is just a few minutes from Dulles airport. You're always welcome just give me an email when you're coming to town.

[rplace]

Thanks for the invite T-man. For a year or so when I was a traveling consultant I "Lived" at the Marriott on Route 7 and worked in the Tysons Corner area.

I know about where you live. Too bad I did not know about the forum (or you) at the time. I was down every Monday through Thursday and could have used some decent speakers/music.

[LarryC]

BUMP -- A last-minute reminder before tomorrow's Party at Marty's (aka Thebes) in Reston, VA!

[Amy]

Ok, I'm curious....

How do you pronounce THEBES

Everytime I read it, my mind pronounces it differently.

[fini]

Not to hijack your thread, Marty, but I am having a stylus inspection party at my place in 10 minutes.

[LarryC]

I can't tell you how to pronounce it, but Thebes can. I always pronounced it THEE-bees. I found three possible originations or derivations:

1. Thebes -- one of the famed cities of antiquity, the capital of the ancient Egyptian empire, near Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, and Karnak (brought back to life by Johnny Carson).

2. Thebes -- major city and power of ancient Greece, the seat of legendary King Oedipus and locale of ancient Greek tragedies, still extant and the seat of the Greek Orthodox bishop of Thebes.

3. Thebe -- the subunit (1:100) of the basic unit of currency, the Pule, of Botswana.

Take your pick -- I didn't find a pronunciation for any of the three.

Larry

[Amy]

Thanks, Larry. All very interesting!

More often than not, I find myself pronoucing it THE bees. Like, "He's the bee's knees."

[Champagne taste beer budget]

Interesting... I always assumed it was pronounced the bzzzz, as in the-oretical and bzzz as in bees go bzzz, but not buzzz.

[customsteve01]

Thebes,

Really wish I could make it up to your place this weekend, but I'm working down in Houston thru Sunday night. Hope you have a good turn out.

Let me know if you might be able to do an open invite and some day when I'm out on the Harley I'll point it north and cruise up to your place. If your ever heading south and end up just west of Richmond your welcome to stop in. Just bring the Twins,haha.

I need an education from you on how to work the estate sales

Steve

[skonopa]

----------------

On 6/13/2005 6:55:05 PM thebes wrote:

They laughed, they cried, but mostly they will cry if Washington area members miss this once in a lifetime, or therabouts, opportunity to be bedazzled by THE Thebes (that's capital T, captial H, capital E) amazing and spledifourous music making wonder machines!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (yes that's plural folks)

----------------

Cool! I got some kick-*** metal I wanna try out on that! (j/k).

See you tommorrow!

Also to Add:

'customesteve1', next time you point that Harley up north, you are welcomed to stop by my place, and check out my Reference-7 setup. May not be Heritage and tubes, but I don't give a damn - still sounds awesome to me!

[fini]

I see LarryC made it out alive...

[LarryC]

We had a GREAT time! Gary was there when I arrived and Steve made it handily after being held up by No. Virginia traffic. Marty (Thebes, pronounced "theeebzzz" BTW) is a great host. Unfortunately -- well, not really -- no pics were taken. I took my camera in an unnecessary precaution (so I could stay behind it) and pics were not demanded.

Gary, Steve and Marty will have to fill you in on what jazz and other "non-classical" music was played, but I thought it was all excellent and extremely well chosen. I advanced only two classical pieces, just for appearances -- the lively last movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, and the vigorous, brilliant Marche Militaire Française by Camille Saint-Saëns, played by Ormandy and the Philadelphia O. Make no mistake, though! -- Marty, Steve, and Gary are very well informed about the classical literature, and Marty had many classical LPs picked up at thrifty locations.

Marty has a vast array of very interesting, great equipment. The Marantz 8B is the electronic centerpiece of his upstairs system, in which the Cornwalls are the king of the house! These are only the 2nd pair of CW's I have heard, and I deeply respect their full, powerful, ultra-clear musical quality. For the pre, Marty has a conrad-johnson phono/aux pre to compare with his 7T.

His downstairs system is an extremely comfortable-sounding and -looking setup with a Scott 299 driving a pair of KG 5.x's (?5.2 or 5.4?), for which he sub'd a pair of KG 3.5s while we were there -- both models sounded extremely good! Personally speaking, I felt the Scott carried through a tube-like tonal purity in a way the SS 7T did not, but that's just MHO, as is my suspicion that the I/Cs in his upstairs system, made by Joesssportster from 3D's silver wire, contributed to its great clarity. Grain of salt required here, naturally.

Thanks for asking,

Larry

[garymd]

Yes, a great time was had by all. Marty's really acquired some COOL gear!!! We heard many of his system combinations and I got a chance to hear the KG series for the first time. I was VERY impressed, especially with the 3.5s(?). Those little babies can really sing.

First we listened to the cornwalls with the Denon and DVD/SACD/DVD-A combo. Didn't do the corns justice but in my experience, HT receivers never do. The Marantz with the Conrad/Johnson tube pre was very nice. A significant improvement. Nice soundstage and a very, very warm sound. Both CDs and LPs sounded very nice. Marty then switched to the Marantz 7T which was suprisingly warm sounding for a SS pre. The bass really tightened up and the clarity improved. You could hear a tinge of graininess but not enough to distract IMO. I thought it was the best combination. After hearing the 7T, I thought the C/J sounded a tad mushy in the bass department. We also toed in the corns just a little more and to me, it improved the soundstage a bit.

I brought over quite a few LPs and CDs. Some of the LPs/CDs I played were:

Art Pepper - So In Love - SACD

Sonny Clark - Cool Struttin' - Classic Reissue LP (Stereo)

Helen Merrill & Clifford Brown, 1954 LP (Mono)

Ray Brown - Solar Energy - 200 gram Audiophile LP Reissue

Lou Donaldson - LD+3 - Original Blue Note LP (Mono)

Frank Sinatra MFSL LP

Elton John SACD

Eva Cassidy CD

Could have been more but that's what I remember.

Thanks for being such a gracious host Marty. Lunch was great too. It was also nice seeing Steve again, especially since I'll be missing the Indy trip this year. I'll be curious to hear Steve's impressions since he's got a reference 7 set-up with top-notch SS separates.

I think instead of giving my son the heresys, I'll be searching for some inexpensive KG 3.5s! They've got to be one of the best value speakers in the Klipsch line-up!

[garymd]

C'mon Marty! Speech....Speech

[arfandbark]

Not a Harman Kardon on the list..... Maybe Thebes needs one for DaddyDay.....

Woof!

P.S. Have one fine time, friends!

[fini]

What did you guys do to thebes?? Maybe he's still trying to get Cheeto bits out of the CD player. Who all was in attendance?

[LarryC]

----------------

On 6/19/2005 8:44:34 AM fini wrote:

What did you guys do to thebes?? Maybe he's still trying to get Cheeto bits out of the CD player. Who all was in attendance?

----------------

That's what I'm wondering! Besides Marty, attendees were myself, Gary, and Steve Sknonpa. Now I wish I'd pulled out the camera. His excellent living room CD player, BTW, was a Marantz-badged version of the Tjoeb (sp?) Ah! player, and I believe his LP player was a Rega w/RB-300 arm and a frankly unremembered brand/model of a green cart. I spent a little time aligning the cart with one of Gary's excellent Shure alignment protractors and a very helpful (IMO) $7 ACE Hardware illuminated magnifier.

Marty has many, many other electronics including Fishers, Knights (!), and an unbelievable, huge Grundig console radio w/reel-to-reel tape recorder under the hood. What a collector! Fini, you'd go ape!

Larry

[thebes]

Sorry to be checking in so late but I've spent msot of the day getting out of trouble with The Twins.

They had spent the day out shopping and the evening out clubbing with one of their entirely too numerous uncles (I'm definetly getting suspicious). They come in all happy and bubbly and one of them heads to into the main level powder room from which shortly emits a really loud "eek". Seems that one of the lads had left the seat up.

I think I made a small tactical error by laughing out loud, so I've spent the day in some serious damage control mode, and I also had to remove and drop in a new radiator in my truck which completly blew out on Friday.

For me the day was absolutely great. It's really wonderful to have some folks who know their way around music, good gear and Klipsch in the house to give the new system a solid veting. There's also the thrill and joy of sharing and being exposed to new music and developing and enhancing new friendships.

Gary and Larry have most of the particulars right. The main system consists of 1977 Cornwalls with Bob Crites restored crossovers and new tweeters; a Craig restored Marantz 8b running a new but now borken in set of JJ EL 34's, a Conrad and JOhnson PV3 Pre with a Mullard for the phono and JJ Telsa for the line stage; an Ah! Tjoeb '99 cd player with two Amerpex Bugle Boys rolled in my yours truly; a Rega P3 with the RB300 tone-arm and the basic

Rega cart. Interconnects are 3dZapper magic silver wire with plugs provided by and assembled by Joesporster. Doing surround duties are a KV2 in the center and KG 1.5's for the rears run through a Denon 2803 and a Phillips universal dvd player.

The downstairs setup offered up two flavors of the KG series, 5.2's with the Dean crossover mods, and a stock set of KG 3.5's run by a Craig rebuilt Scott 299 with a dual supply high end Yammie 18 bit cd player from back in the day.

My approach to the music was to learn something new so I basically sat back and let the guys play what they brouhgt, with only a small contribution of my own, one being a song by Cris Isaak, a quick piece by Concrete Blond, a cut from Willie and Lobo and a classical/rock combop piece from The Alan Parsons Project.

Larry and Gary have already covered their music and I'm sure Steve will be checking in to describe what he shared with us. If I had to pick one tune out of the mix that was my favorite it Saints-Saens Militaria piece. It sounded just astonishing on my new setup and affirmation that I had indeed done good in building this system. I'll definetly be buyng this cd!

Gary's selections were primarily jazz, and quite honestly I go in and out with jazz. I thinks it's because some jaaz doesn't come naturally to me and so it requires some efffort to get into the nuances and develop an appreciation. But it's one of those genres like classical that I want to devote more time getting to know and Gary's selections certainly helped with that process and all of them were thoroughly enjoyable.

I deliberatly did not reveal my preference for a PRE, but for what it's worth I like the 7T better than the Conrad Johnson but will probably keep both and swap them in an out. Besides it's stunning good looks, wonderful range of controls, it does tighten the bass, and I think it adds some depth and a slight edge or sharpness with suprisingly little SS grainyness. It's certainly the warmest SS gear I've ever heard. Of course, this may change over time, the new system has only been with me for a month.

Gary was the first out the door with family obligations, followied about an hour later by Larry so Steve and I settled in to jaw awhile, then we threw on a few more cuts, had a little dinner, played a few more cuts, jawed some more, played some more (he started getting ansty when I broke out the last track of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly). We then ran across some 80's lp stuff I had picked up somewhere so I loaded him down with a few lps and off he went around about Midnight!

For me it was a great day, and I also want to thank Larry for dialing in my car and firming up the tracking, and Gary's minor adjustments in toe-in made a nice difference ot the system.

I hope it was a good warmup for the folks heading out to Indy and I can't wait for next getogether (there's rumors of a monstor RF7 system to be heard).

[fini]

Marty,

Sounds like a good day indeed! I wouldn't mind having Gary and Larry and Steve over to dial-in my vinyl nightmare. I'd even pour some of the "good stuff!" Well, at least my CDs sound great...

Very interesting about the 7T. I've heard nothing bad about them. Did you fire up the Grundig?