So I was on a business trip this week. Got home late Friday (3 hours later than I expected, thanks to Philly airport) to find my upgraded FetValve Ultra had arrived back from AVA in one piece. I knew it was coming, but it was nice to see UPS had not used the box to prop up a bunch of cinder blocks.
Opened it up this morning and took the cover off to admire the handiwork. Looked like a lot of new stuff in there. Hooked it up. I'll bottom line it by saying it does a great many things better than my old FetValve EXR5. Low end is... even lower than before, or it may seem that way because it is SO much clearer and more articulate than the EXR. The EXR5 is no slouch; I read through the Ultra posts for a year before deciding to upgrade because I was afraid to mess with a great sounding amp. Having said that, I knew the FetValve for all its beauty was not as articulate in the low end as other amps I've heard in my system. The Ultra puts this to rest big time, without seeming to lose the "organic-ness" of the sound. And as Frank said, the high end is equally improved in both extension and resolution. I'm ashamed to admit that when I played Dire Straits' "Iron Hand" I actually started welling up at the emotion of the lyrics (for those of you who don't know, it's about a miners' strike in GB during the Thatcher years, which was put down in a rather brutal medieval fashion). I hadn't responded to that tune like that ever, but what the Ultra does in letting you "see" into the space of the recording was a surprise to me. I felt like an idiot when the song was over.
Many of the tunes I know so well sounded that much closer to being in my room; it's quite something.
Now here's where I need to duck from Frank...
I think from Frank's comments about break in that he feels, apart from warm up and stabilization, the issue of break in for his amps is really a non-issue. As we know his amps get burned in pretty thoroughly at AVA (his comments from other threads) before being packed and shipped. But my question to those other Ultra owners is: have you had any significant or noticeable change to the sound of the Ultra as it gets some hours on it? I ask because when I bought my EXR5 it was used, so I don't know if Frank's amps are just by their nature a less "changeable" design. I'm not a DBT type guy, and I have heard other components change in my system over time. I do this typically by playing well known tunes several times when I get a new piece of gear (tunes that I've heard so many times that I can remember every note even while I'm sleeping) and then letting the system run for quite some time before listening to it again. So does the Ultra "break in"?
