Stopped by Hallsville on the way back from Columbia. Jim had the Merrill-Williams R.E.A.L turntable playing. It was using the Ortofon tonearm and an Ortofon Cadenza cartridge and was feeding a Sutherland PHD phono preamp. Vinyl noise was very slight and tones were just big and beautiful. The Merrill-Williams table is better looking in person than in the pictures I’ve seen and has the solid, heavy-weight sound that a $$ table offers. Don’t remember what was on when I walked in the front room, but it sure did sound nice.
We only played one lp on the big vinyl rig before switching over to cd. Jim and I are big fans of Maynard Ferguson and we dove into his collection of recently released live recordings on Sleepy Night Records. The Lost Tapes are for the true rabid Maynard fans and he is in fine form even though the sound quality is somewhat primitive. The Music Fidelity cd player did its best to make the cds sound good, but that’s too much to ask of any player. Jim told me that the next version of that cdp (not sure which model we were listening to) will have a more advanced USB input based on the V-Link and that could be a nice way to keep a cd player in a system that is moving towards all hard drive based digital.
Jim switched us over to the cool looking Thorens 295 table with an Audio-Technica 95E cartridge. Some of you guys know I’m a sucker for cheap tables. This little combo was killer. The 95E shaves off some (a lot?) of the resolution, extension and weight from the sound of the big Merrill-Williams/Ortofon rig and that’s exactly what made it fun. I didn’t have to think about audiophile qualities and I had a blast spinning some ECM records. Smooth sound with a bit more surface noise, but who cares? The table even turns off at the end of the side, but doesn’t lift the arm??? So now it looks cool, sounds great and even has a major quirk in its operation. What’s not to love? ( on a side note, I had a similar reaction to another “less than audiophile” vinyl experience lately. Ask me about listening to 78s with Scott. F sometime. It was killer!!!)
The rest of Jim’s gear was an E.A.R. 864 preamp feeding the little Quad 909 amp (I want one of those) and his new speakers; the Vienna Beethoven Concert Grands. The Beethoven’s woodwork is so good that it could raise the property value of your house. Everything on that speaker fit so well and was so smooth you just want to touch it. I’m sure Jim wiped my greasy pawprints off it once I left. The three 7” woofers per side can surprise you with a subwoofer low note every once in a while and bass was “bouncy”. I wish the speakers could have been pulled out farther in the room to open up the midrange, but that just can’t happen in his living room. And the tweeter was very smooth and easy to listen to. And that’s coming from a guy that hates tweeters. Hah!
Sorry Bob, no pictures so I guess it didn’t happen, but I sure had a good time. We need to get over Jim’s way more often. If you can make to my house, I’ll drive the rest of the way. See ya’
