Dear Danny,
I'm mad.
My hobby has been audio for over 60 years. I built Heathkits, Dynakits, and the Harmon Kardon Citations I, II, and II, and a number of speaker systems. And I was forever upgrading, tweaking and all-around just messing with my system to make sometimes only marginal improvements; sometimes even going backwards. But that was part of the fun. Some of my "improvements" were inspired by ideas I got from attending audio shows. Also, I have subscribed to nearly all of the audio magazines for nearly all of those 60+ years, starting with High Fidelity. I discovered Stereophile back in 1966 and Absolute Sound not too long after, and totally devoured them.
Today I still go to RMAF, but spend only a few seconds in most of the rooms. Stereophile and Absolute Sound come every month, but I barely glance at them now.
The problem is that my system sounds so good now that I no longer wish to mess with it and "messing with it" was a great part of the fun and satisfaction. I was at a friend's house yesterday and he has an all-digital system with top-rated electronics and speakers connected by $3000 power cords and other exotic goodies, but I could hardly wait to get back to my own system to experience the "a-a-h" factor again. I have optimized my system around your wonderful GR speakers. The good news is that I am enjoying consistently superb sound; the bad news is I am no longer a rabid audio hobbyist. I have not, in fact, messed with it for something like three years now.
I did do four tweaks to my speaker system before I stopped messing with it, however.
1. I rewired the panels to give a higher-impedance load to my Atmasphere OTLs.
2. To my ears, the wire you sent resulted in a very noticeable "whang" effect. I swapped your wire for Marigo wire (fairly expensive!) and the whang went away.
3. I sent the bass amps to Jeremy Folsom for his mod and there was a very nice increase in articulation and punch.
4. I put in some Jupiter caps.
I'm still mad, but I'm getting over it.
Thank you and congratulations for putting together a speaker system that is as good as any I have ever heard, including some of the ridiculously-expensive behemoths that today's audio writers drool over. No thanks. I'll keep my wonderful GR's.
