[Berndt]

I brought my ultra 4 to the first meeting of the NORcal club.
It sounded great, everyone asked, 800$???
It made my media server sound good.
Hopefully some other attendies will chime in?

[TheChairGuy]

Amen to that, Bill. 

A couple of the folks weren't around to hear it as Bill put in in towards the end....but that is one fine pre-amp, Dr. Lloyd 

We weren't much impressed with Bill's Olive Music Server...then he put the Mapletree 4a in-line and it was fun, fun, fun.  The center fill/image was about the best I can remember hearing and the bass was both substantial and very tuneful.  As was the whole presentation 

Dr. Lloyd, why does your phono stage have a gain of 50db...most bog standard phono stages are 40db or thereabouts?  I would think 50db would not be right gain for MM/MC's over, say, 2.0 mV?

Bill tells me his vinyl sounds great, so there must be something to it  (fyi - I'm a Marketing major, not engineer, so please dumb down the explanation for me, good doctor  )

I brought my ultra 4 to the first meeting of the NORcal club.
It sounded great, everyone asked, 800$???
It made my media server sound good.
Hopefully some other attendies will chime in?

[Berndt]

Look forward to your pictures, John.
I told Jimbo I'd let him have the U4 for a week or so if he wanted to try it longer, I'd be happy to offer it to you as well.
I'll let you try a bunch of different tubes as well.
I want to make a new umbilical for the power supply, what is that dern connector?

[TheChairGuy]

Look forward to your pictures, John.
I told Jimbo I'd let him have the U4 for a week or so if he wanted to try it longer, I'd be happy to offer it to you as well.
I'll let you try a bunch of different tubes as well.
I want to make a new umbilical for the power supply, what is that dern connector?

5 or 6 pin DIN, maybe?

I totally forgot while I was there, but the umbilical between my phono stage and battery supply (that was there this weekend) may have fit your Mapletree straight up.  I didn't think of it until I was well on my way home.

Revelation Audio Labs (Brad Vojtech) made a couple umbilicals for me in the past two years....they have absolutely been the most substantial wire changes I've ever bought.  Far more benefit than anything derived from speaker cable, power cable or interconnect swaps - which tended to be subjective, rather than objective, changes for the most part.

You just tell Brad what you need, and he makes it custom for you. All silver wire, cryo'ed, air core...great stuff.  A 0.5mtr is $169 for the Passge Cryo-Silver umbilical.

Dr. Lloyd, feel free to delete this link (or contact me to do so) if posting Revelation Audio Labs web address is offensive to you on your forum, but I don't think it interferes with your product line, and may even help to enhance it 

http://revelationaudiolabs.com/cables-power/index.htm

[rajacat]

Has anybody substituted Sonicap for the Auricap coupling caps?

Raja

[Berndt]

Has anybody substituted Sonicap for the Auricap coupling caps?

Raja

For an extra 60$ Dr Lloyd put larger value black gates in mine.
I believe the rest are all auricaps.