[bacobits1]

How did you do that?
Re-connect, by soldering on new spade connectors with both the ends of the cable and GH end in the spade connector?  Some of the descriptions are confusing. Sorry.

D

[HumanMedia]

Yes, that's the idea.  Although on my speaker cables I have spades I connect by hex nuts to the crimped cable (think WBT).  I just unscrew them, put 1cm of the GE lead in the collar with the crimped cable and lock them in with the hex nuts.

For my setup, 1 GE on the speakers negative bass binding post is the best.

They really emphasise the midrange eh?
Taking them out really gives another perspective on what they are actually doing.

[BobM]

I wound up getting some banana connectore and screwing the GE's into them at the very tip of the copper wire. Then plugging these into my speaker binding posts, after cleaning everything (plyug, wire, post-hole) completely and tying the bottom end of them to the wire with the supplied cotton string ( 2 sets, I bi-wire). Voila!!! No high frequency hardness. No overt forwardness. Nice and smooth and spacious. I'm done and enjoying them now.

My nervosa will probably kick in at some point and I will experiment with them on the back of the amp as well, but right now I'm happy as is.

[BobM]

So I played with them a little bit this weekend. To begin, they are on the + speaker terminals in a bi-wired installation, because my preamp inverts. This sounds very good with no forwardness or top end emphasis since I installed banana plugs and hooked them at the very tip of the copper wire.

I did move them to the - speaker terminal, but heard that forwardness immediately.

I took them all off and heard the soundstage compress.

I put them back on the + terminals and heard the forwardness. This disappated over the course of an hour back to the pleasant sound I started with.

So this leads me to believe that any quick A-B test is pointless and the GE's need some time to "acclimate" after being moved. I will have to repeat this test on the - terminals and maybe on the amp when I can give them time to do so.

[standman]

I found a delayed response with the makeshift loops as well.  I went through the in and out comparison blind testing and came up with no difference however feel sure I hear the difference when they are in for a period of time. It's frustrating when this type of stuff happens with no apparent reason. It reminds me of the cd test sweep to condition your stereo.  I have never tried that one but it is supposed to clear out the grunge while playing the sounds.  In any event just because I don't understand it doesn't mean it doesn't work. It does make me feel a little more comfortable when I can relate to what is happening.

[eclein]

I have had mine on a bunch of different speakers and they take time for me also to acclimate when changed. Of all the tweaks I have made since starting this hobby this easily is the coolest, cheapest, and easiest one yet with the largest payoff. I'm enjoying the fact that we don't absolutely know why they work, but work they do!!! I'm into my third week with these installed and hear no reason to take them out of my setup. Its just one of those things you gotta hear... and my rig is fairly straighforward.
 Equipment: Virtue Audio TWO.2 amp and Piano M1 CD Player
                 Grant Fidelity Tube DAC-09/Pre-amp
                 Wywires all around
                 JBL 4312A Control Monitors where these little ground enhancers will live until they fall off or fall apart...
 

[pis99]

Hi Ric,

I have been waiting for my order for over a month. I do not have the chance to get your email response even after reading this post. The money was paid on Nov. 09 with shipping to Taiwan for 6 prs of bare wire and 2 prs of Telos RCA jacks. Could you advise when the parcel will be sent?

Regards

Daniel

Sorry guys, I have been swamped with work (finishing the last 3 Oppos and a few other things too) and also my emails were not being delivered.  This includes emails from Paypal that I had received a payment.  I took my spam blocker off and called Comcast today and now I just got an email from Paypal so maybe its OK now.  I will answer all emails that I have in my system tonight....so, if you do not get a reply then you need to resend....cuz for the last week many emails have not gotten to me.

I don't think there is one post about damping the GEs.  The GEs are mounted to a vibrating thang (speaker) by a single solid core wire.  This wire is going to vibrate and so is the GE.  Please use the cotton string supplied or whatever and damp the thangs.  I think some of you will be pleased with the difference.  There are no hard fast rules here and I will have pictures soon on the website showing this done, but I can describe here some possible scenarios:
Tie the string relatively tightly to the GE near the heatshrink closest to the connector...then tie the other end of the string to the speaker wire that it is laying next to or just tightly wrap the string around both the GE and the speaker wire.  If your GE is sticking in the air not near the speaker wire then you can use some magic tape on the back of the speaker (leaves no residue when removed...also bend one end of the magic tape under so you can easily remove it) and use some Blue Tack to hold one end of the string to the tape on the speaker and tie the other end of the string to the GE with a little tension.  You can do this on the back of the amp as well.  Also you can kill some resonances in the GE by tying some sting around the GE tightly in two places (on the cotton) and then tie it with some tension to something else with another string.  You could also just use some Blue tack and scrunch it between the GE and whatever.......use your imagination. 

When I first played with this technology over a year ago I had them soldered to the output jacks inside my modified Oppo and they were just sticking out in the air right above the circuit board.  I tightly tied a piece of string around each one and with some tension glued the strings to the circuit board.....way better sound.

I have had four people comment to me that damping them made a noticeable improvement.  What do you hear by damping them?

At this point from all feedback received directly and on the web (here and other forums) it seems that about 80% of the customers receive direct immeditate improvemnt with the GEs.  Another 15% seem to need some overnight burn in for them to be beneficial and maybe 5% are getting a difference they do not like (none of these people to my knowledge have tried damping and some are dismissing it without break-in).  Not one persion has yet said they hear no difference.  My sense is that with damping, experimenting with how they are mounted and break-in that the number of people in the last group will drop.  There is nothing in audio that is absolutely universal but this comes pretty close. 

The only one returned for a refund was by someone who is using a PS Audio GCA600 Ice Power based amp that has no true ground.  He said it veiled the sound and made the images fuzzy (the total opposite of what almost everyone says).  I do have other customers with Ice based amps that love them....so not sure what is going on here.  Remember, if you do not like them then just send them back for a complete refund.

Another thing to try is putting them on the hot.....along with putting them on the ground or by themselves without any on the ground.  These things maybe work in mysterious ways so maybe they work just as good on the hot......I want to sell you more....he he.  I know of no one who has done this including myself.....Who will be the first to try it?  Who is is mister "Tweak"?

I had some wrong wire delievered so this is holding me up a bit but I should be caught up with all orders taken by this last weekend by mid next week.  I should have some time this weekend to finally start the customer comments page and put some more pics and info up.

[satfrat]

Hi Ric,

I have been waiting for my order for over a month. I do not have the chance to get your email response even after reading this post. The money was paid on Nov. 09 with shipping to Taiwan for 6 prs of bare wire and 2 prs of Telos RCA jacks. Could you advise when the parcel will be sent?

Regards

Daniel

 
Hi Daniel, I think you'd have better luck emailing Ric than posting here as he's only posted here a very small handful of times in the 4 week lifespan of this thread. In fact I just emailed him with a question on my order a little under 2 days ago and got an answer today from Ric. I think he's finally getting caught up on his back list of orders so if you've already emailed him, I'd email him again or maybe even consider calling him here.
 
You didn't mention how you paid for your order but if it was by personal check, that in of itself could be the cause for delay. 
 
Cheers,
Robin
 

[pis99]

Thanks Robin,

I already emailed Ric twice. I will do it again tomorrow morning on my office laptop. The payment was made through Paypal a month ago. So no problem on the money side.

Regards

Daniel
 

 
Hi Daniel, I think you'd have better luck emailing Ric than posting here as he's only posted here a very small handful of times in the 4 week lifespan of this thread. In fact I just emailed him with a question on my order a little under 2 days ago and got an answer today from Ric. I think he's finally getting caught up on his back list of orders so if you've already emailed him, I'd email him again or maybe even consider calling him here.
 
You didn't mention how you paid for your order but if it was by personal check, that in of itself could be the cause for delay. 
 
Cheers,
Robin

[satfrat]

Thanks Robin,

I already emailed Ric twice. I will do it again tomorrow morning on my office laptop. The payment was made through Paypal a month ago. So no problem on the money side.

Regards

Daniel

Taking into account how buried he's been with orders, I'd give him 1 more shot at answering an email. If Ric hasn't answered in 2-3 days, call the guy. Ot just call him now which is what I would do given the length of time that has gone by. The trend has been for Ric to fill orders in the order that he receives them. Could be he already filled your order and there's a shipping issue. Only Ric can answer that one and this thread probably won't accomplish that for ya.
 
If my experiences are any indication, the wait will be well worth it for ya. 
 
Cheers,
Robin

[ted_b]

Ric emailed me several days ago that mine were shipping last Monday, then emailed again that the wires were incorrectly sourced, so he committed this Monday.  Voila, a USPS notice was emailed Monday, and the GE's arrived yesterday.  I have their installation on my to-do list today. 

[satfrat]

Thanks Robin,

I already emailed Ric twice. I will do it again tomorrow morning on my office laptop. The payment was made through Paypal a month ago. So no problem on the money side.

Regards

Daniel

Hi Daniel, any luck in contacting Ric concerning your order? I've been hoping you'd update your post here with some positive progress with your order. 
 
Cheers,
Robin

[scp2]

Got mine yesterday...ordered on the 22nd. I emailed Rick twice during my wait and he usually got back to me within 24 hours.

Haven't installed yet...hopefully this weekend.

[satfrat]

Well I don' know how Daniel's faring on his 5 week old order but I got my email shipping confirmation on my 2nd order for 7 more hooked Enhancers and 2 RCA Enhancers. Depending on how my experimentation goes with the RCA's, I sorta suspect there will be a 3rd & final order. 
 
Cheers,
Robin

[ted_b]

Well, I was contemplating not giving any feedback until I tried the GE's in several different iterations, but then i thought...what if my initial feedback hits a note with another user and I am spared the "n" number of iterations I could have to go through!   

First, my setup.  I have Modwright KWA-150 monoblocks that feed SP Tech Revelation custom external mundorf crossovers via ASI Liveline speaker wire.  The crossovers are jumpered and the output of each lf and hf signal path then go to a set of Aether Audio (formerly SP tech) magic boxes which are closely umbilicaled to the crossovers.  The output of these magic boxes use Aether Audio custom speaker cables to the HF and LF binding posts on the speaker.  Although one would assume that this presents about nine different GE location scenarios I have come to the conclusion that my most effective scenarios are all negative-terminal -speaker binding-post-based, and are one of the these five:
* single or dual GE's on HF
* single or dual GE's on LF
* one on each
I've discounted putting them on the amp end cuz it is full range and likely the GE placement there would be more difficult to isolate, but I'll try after each of the above...if someone has strong feelings one way or another..

So...I installed them last night and they are in a typical setup, scenario 5 (one on each hf, lf).  How do they sound??  Well...the good: incredible micro detail and ability to hear into the recording, as if the noise floor dropped 3db or more!!  Incredible.  I am floored at the instant "never heard that before" results.  The bad:  imaging, especially center fill stuff like female vocals, has become almost as wide as the soundstage...as if that aspect has had it's polarity inverted (and yes, i tried invert polarity on my remote, to no avail).  I will listen again tonight after some long break-in, but my next step will be to follow Big B's idea and take them off the woofer posts and double them up on the tweeter ones.  I'll report back before I do too much else.

Any opinions?

[satfrat]

Ted, before I placed a 2nd order, I took the set of Enhancers off my 2 centers (I initially got a set for all 6 loudspeakers only) and placed them on the amp end of my mains. They have never left and my 2nd order will effectively cover both ends of all my speaker cables. Definitely try them on both ends of your mains. 
 
Cheers,
Robin

[tvad4]

I have GEs installed on both negative binding posts of my bi-wired speakers, and on the negative posts of my amplifiers.

The improvement is not subtle.

These are perhaps the most significant tweak I have tried.

System:
Audio Note AN-E/SPe HE loudspeakers (Audio Note AN-E stands)
Audio Note Conquest Silver monoblocks (18wpc Class A Parallel SET)
George Wright Signature AU-15 monoblocks (15wpc Class A, 2A3 Push-Pull)
SMc Audio VRE-1 preamplifier
Esoteric UX-3 Pi universal digital player
Modwright Transporter wirelessly connected to MacBook Pro
Gabriel Gold Revelation II XLR ICs
Analysis Plus Solo Crystal Oval XLR ICs
Oyaide PA-02 balanced ICs
Clear Day Double Shotgun bi-wire speaker cable
BMI Hammerhead MK III power cord (preamp)
Shunyata Anaconda Helix Alpha power cord (Modwright Transporter, Esoteric UX-3Pi)
Shunyata Anaconda Helix Alpha power cords (amplifiers)
Alan Maher Designs Reference Power Center
Several Alan Maher Design PE wall filters
Two 20A isolated ground dedicated outlets
Environmental Potentials EP-2050 whole house AC filter/surge suppressor
Salamander Synergy Cabinet w/ sorbothane treated shelf supports
Neuance shelf for digital source
Grand Prix Audio Apex footers (preamp and power supply)
Synergistic Research MiG footers (Esoteric and Transporter)
Stillpoints footers (amplifiers)
Timbernation 2” Maple amplifier platforms with 2” heavy brass cones under the platforms

[ted_b]

Tvad,
On Audiogon two weeks ago you concluded:
"In my system, to both my wife's ears and mine, the EVS Ground Enhancers emphasized treble to a degree we found unpleasant over time. We believe the tonal balance without the EVS Ground Enhancers is more natural."

What happened since then?

On the same A-gon thread a user talks about "diffuse imaging" and "loss of image precision" with his GE's (as opposed to his more expensive AP GC's, btw).  I would use the same terms, although no one else on any of these forums has described that phenomenon (unless that is what Brian Cheney referred to as "cloudy" during one of his less successful setups). 

Robin,
i'll try them on the amps then, but will need to pull them off one of my speaker drivers, HF or LF.

[rhyno]

evidently great ears hear alike (props to you BCheney).

tried the EVS GCs in the following locations on my speaker /amp setup
Watt, Puppy & Amp
Puppy & Amp
Puppy
and Puppy *2
(always on negative)

simply put, best sound was achieved w/ 2 pair in parallel on Puppy. more liquid, relaxed top end, very musical. what a great tweak.

i also tried on ground of CDP (EMM CDSA) and Preamp (Audio Horizons 2.1). in both instances it was better WITHOUT the GCs. (in a buddys rig, his DAC sounded better w/ the GCs on the ground post, but his AC ground was disabled on the DAC). YMMV

rhyno

[satfrat]

Your SP Tech connections are way over my head Ted so I can't help ya there. But from what Brian Cheney and you have stated, it makes me glad I'm only working with a single set of speaker terminals.    Guess you'll just have to experiment Ted and see what works and what doesn't. Have fun, you still have 26 days left to audition them. 
 
Cheers,
Robin