Starting at the top, I'm arranging a system for my brother, who'd like to get back to a nice audio system. He isn't really an audio nut so he's asked for my help to assemble a system for him (maybe he is a nut, of a sort, after all
). I admit to having a bit of an evil interest in all this in this in that I'm going to put together a system I think will sound just great, be a great performance value, but one that will involve stuff I'm also going to enjoy playing with a bit.
He's got Snell Type E II speakers, which I think are plenty good sounding. And we've got a line on a nice pair of Snell Cis, which after having lived with these myself for more than 10 years, selling them only a few years ago, I think this is still to this day a superb speaker. Bro' doesn't want to deal with tubed amplification so we've got an Odyssey Stratos (with powersupply capacitance upgrade) amplifier on the way. I think the Stratos is an excellent value and powerful enough to drive a wide range of speakers.
So, we need a control center, digital and phono source electronics. Got the go on tubes for any of these pieces. I've been considering super-simple, well-designed pieces that could also make good experimenter's components to play around with. A few dB of tube gain would be just great for a linestage. For preamps, line and phono, I've been leaning towards Bottlehead (Foreplay III linestage and Seduction phono pres) or Hagerman (Clarinet or Castanet as linestages). For digital I've been looking at Hagerman (Chime; though we no plans now for the USB connection), Channel Islands (no tubes but I really like Dusty's VDA DACs, and other stuff, too), and anything from MHDT Labs. I have a lot of experience with the DAC products from the latter two. I have no experience with the Hagerman DACs.
I'm interested in peoples' opinions on these Hagerman components, any experience people may have with the Hagerman components compared with the Bottlehead, CIA, MHDT stuff, or even other suggestions.
I'd also like to get a handle on the total cost of building a Chime from a kit/2 with parts spec'ed by Jim in the assembly manual. From there I can consider the endless options.
I've already got loads of different tubes to roll through any of the mentioned Hagerman or Bottlehead components, except for the Castanet. I don't use the 6H30 in any of my tube gear. But, the Castanet looks potentially quite attractive as a linestage. I'm interested in trying this tube, plus the low gain and quality headphone capabilities are big bonuses for me. Any one using theirs as a linestage? I can assemble anything, and assemble it well, but I'm not sure what it would take to add some additional inputs, outputs, and a switch to switch between them. It doesn't sound too difficult to do, but speaking with Jim H. a bit he suggested a different, larger, chassis than is spec'ed for the stock Castanet would likely be required to fit the extra jacks and switch. Okay, got it. But then I'm not exactly sure how to wire everything up.
Thanks!
- SJ
