Well, yes, the specs are indeed quite vague, on purpose...I have not been a single day out of at least a 3 weeks back order since January 2001 !!!!!! What I learned with making over 5,000 amps since then is that because every amp is pretty much build to order, I am able to customize the hell out of the units, making it very special for every customer, if I can get some corner stats about his / her systems...And this has been UNBELIEVABLY successful so far. And in that I mean the fantastic feedback and true gratefulness of many of my customers....So, now I can customize the amps in literally dozens of different ways...It would be impossible to state all of the different upgrade paths on the web site without it being super confusing. Rather, I'd like to take my time and talk with every customer a bit first, to see where the budget, system synergy, and taste trends to. Then, and only then can I go into the Nitty Gritty of specific tweaks....
As for the heritage of our boards, here it is:
1998 introduction with Green Boards via OEM manufacturer
2002 still Green Boards, but in house manufacturing
2005 introduction of Red Boards. Many upgrades, thus "new" generational start with the color of the boards
2009 introduction of the Black Boards, which are the reference boards for the Kismet designs.....started final developments of the Kismets.
As for the regular red boards vs. the SE boards (for the most part, in general, but as I said, many versions out there) the SE and SE+ boards have many of the parts upgrades of the Kismet boards.
It took me over 3 years to mess around and develop and mature the Kismets....During that time, I outfitted many red boards with some of these upgrades, and to be honest, I received a ton of fantastic feedback from my customers, which helped me big time....As for the Glass Ceilings, or the Full Gary amps, this is terminology that has been coined by some guys on the Forums, not me. The Full Gary was by a customer (not Lazydays, some other Gary) who started to make his own tweaks, first by me making some amps to his specs, and then he himself going crazy....Never heard the final versions, so I have no idea here....With the Glass Ceiling, this is actually a term that Lazydays came up with. He also wanted to have his amps tweaked, so I obliged. In this version, I believe there are 6 pairs of GC's out there.
Ultimately, newer amps especially with the SE+ which have the reference caps and the TS Premium cables, are quite a bit better than the GC's, as they are closer to the Kismets. All of the different mods and stages were designed to get to the ultimate summit of this design, KISMET.....
What does that all mean ??? Who knows, and really up to you. If you're happy with your system, then you are there, regardless of what specs you have. And to be brutally honest, I have heard our old amps sound better in a couple of systems than the tweaked ones....why???? Synergy, synergy, synergy...even though the newer ones obviously spank the old ones 99 % of the time.
AND !!!!! Never forget about the correct bias (ours or other amps for that matter). Supremely important, and can make a good amp sound mediocre if out of whack. I believe we are the only manufacturer in N. America who actually asks the customer to go to work when ordering an amp, and measuring his/her voltage over aperiod of time, so that we are able to 1. correctly set the bias, with or without custom biasing for a specific speaker, and 2. Keep that bias 100 % correct because we can nail down the bias on the exact voltage that the customer has. Bias is directly depending upon Voltage, so, if it goes higher or lower than the Voltage where we sat the amp up, so does the Bias. US average is 119.6 Volts, but lately we have seen higher and higher averages from our customers measurements. Anyway, I am very proud of the 100 % customer service in every regard, and the 100 % customization available for each taste, electrical, and system....
Now, as for tweaks that our customers do (and there are a lot of them due to the sheer number of amps), this is dicey, but again, if the customer is happy, cool. Just a little uncool when selling the amps used as "upgraded". As with every design, (if the design is basically solid and if the designer has some good ears) the final results of the sound of an amplifier is like a puzzle. You have to put the parts together correctly. Different designs, different results, obviously. EG. the Black Gate caps and the now defunct reference, ultra expensive and rare Panasonic tops had a world class reputation. Incredibly good. However, in our amps it simply didn't work. By themselves or in combination to each other. To make it short, the BG's took out some bass definition, and the Pan's had some restricted sound staging in the outer corners. Again, very small differences, but nevertheless there, which, when designing your upgrades and when intimately familiar with the feel and sound of your babies, is a bad thing....
I also learned something about myself, in that I am unable to listen for more than 10 - 15 minutes. I mean really, really listen before you're going cookoo.....
Hope that this helps you guys out,
Klaus
