As many of you know, I am a Modwright shill.
I love Dan's work and the value derived from first his mods and then later his own products. When I bought his early version of the SWL 9.0 SE I was quite impressed at the sound I was getting. It was my first tubed preamp and I was worried about all the negative things tubes might do to a signal path. But when I broke in the pre, it was as neutral a preamp as anything I'd ever heard. Some might even say it sounded more ss than tube.
When Dan talked to me about his LS 36.5 plans (balanced, higher gain, phase inversion, etc.) I was envisioning a preamp with the SWL sound, but more organic and buttery. What I got was a completely different preamp, with BALLS! The dynamics and overall sense of "live" was astounding. Oh, and the tube rolling can squeeze out some additional "wetness" or organic sound, too. A very nice combination of dynamics and organics.
Well........I just received back my retrofitted LS 36.5 and the new PS 36.5 (actually, as truth would have it, it's a new LS 36.5 cuz Dan was going on vacation and the work required on my specific pre, which was an early version before the XLR boards for HT bypass, etc was too cumbersome at the time, so we worked out a deal on a new one...with the PS 36.5 external power supply!). The two box solution has some 60 hours on it from Dan's place, but only had 2 hours on it in my music room before I began to listen.
You know that "different preamp, with BALLS" comment I made about the move from the SWL to the LS? Well, here we go again! Within only two hours from being unboxed from its snow-covered FedEx delivery cocoon, the new LS/PS sound is simply this: more there there...everywhere. I envisioned the original LS as listening to master tapes, with a distinct sense of all the ambient cues in the recording space, and the weight of every note moving air in my music room. Well now, I've been allowed to open the door and step a foot inside the actual recording space. The sense of spaciousness, the sense of depth, the soundstage "liveliness", the weight of the kick drums and acoustic bass plucks, the smokiness of the vocals, the static in the air from the amps and equipment....all of this is so much more evident with the PS 36.5 that it took all of 2 hours of warm up to sense it. Over the next few weeks I'll report back on how much further I get to step into this recording space. It's a very nice place.
