[SteveFord]

Last night I weathered the hurricane by listening to a great 3 hour blues program on my newly refurbbed Harman Kardon F50x tuner through my Stax Sigma headphones driven by an old Harman Kardon integrated amp which I moved into the upstairs bedroom.  I FINALLY have a good system for my bed which I've been trying to accomplish for the past year.  Life is good but the Sigmas sound like crap with NO highs whatsoever.  After around six hours of use they came back to life and the highs returned.  Weird. 
I guess they didn't appreciate being left unused for a decade.  I fall asleep a happy camper as the storm raged past.

My wife is coming back from Florida shortly and it's been a long week so after spending a few hours doing chores (four hours spent cleaning snakes cages, doing laundry, grocery shopping and cleaning up some of the debris from the hurricane) I figured that I'd treat myself to a few hours of listening to the 3.7s as I tried to undo the mess that I made over the past few weeks screwing around with the MMG/DMW combo.
That stereo (3.7 sysem) has been sounding a bit "off" for a while, especially the right hand speaker which has been kind of "flat" sounding and today it was especially bad.  It got to the point where I've been spending a lot of time scheming on how I can swing an Audio Research preamp as maybe the old Sonic Frontiers unit was holding it back.  It just didn't sound right.

Today it was especially bad and it got to the point where I decided to see what the deal is: maybe it's the old Harman Kardon F500x in that system which is on the fritz.  I wonder what went wrong with it?  Try different stations, flip from stereo to mono, same thing so I put on a CD and same deal so nope, that's not it.  Back to the right hand speaker and I change the fuses, nope, screw around with the jumpers on the back of the speaker and better but not it, let me try switching the amps around and damn, there's the problem.  Ugh.  That's all I need, a monster repair bill plus the system will be dead for a couple of weeks.  Hunka junk.

Swap out the little Mullards and that's not it so time to swap out 16 power tubes and that's not it so maybe it's the interconnect no, that's not it, swap out the speaker wires and that's not it WTF sez me so I'm all dejected as that means I've gotta take an amp into the shop to see what's screwed up with it.  I'm too lazy to move 20 tubes back where they came from so rebias the power tubes and nope, that ain't it.  My amp has turned into a boat anchor.

It's always something.

I don't know why but I pulled off the r/h VTL's interconnect off at the preamp and shoved it back into the preamp.  I have the cover off the preamp during the summer as it runs pretty hot and at the back of the RCA jack is a silver bar that the center pin in the interconnect contacts.  I see the bar jump - eh?  What the hell is that?

Turn everything on and it sounds better than it EVER did.  It sounds great, actually!  Success!

There's really no point to this story except that sometimes it's the stupidest thing that's driving you crazy.

[josh358]

Last night I weathered the hurricane by listening to a great 3 hour blues program on my newly refurbbed Harman Kardon F50x tuner through my Stax Sigma headphones driven by an old Harman Kardon integrated amp which I moved into the upstairs bedroom.  I FINALLY have a good system for my bed which I've been trying to accomplish for the past year.  Life is good but the Sigmas sound like crap with NO highs whatsoever.  After around six hours of use they came back to life and the highs returned.  Weird. 
I guess they didn't appreciate being left unused for a decade.  I fall asleep a happy camper as the storm raged past.

Self-powered polarizing voltage? Maybe it took a while to recharge the membrane.

[SteveFord]

I don't know but I was sure they were toast so I was really dejected. 
Right now I'm seeing if I can get them upgraded to 404 drivers and possibly a better cable.  I think this is going to lead to them being shipped overseas. 
If you've never heard a set, they are THE most relaxing headphones ever made. 
Not the best headphones but there's no listening fatigue and the sound comes from in front of your ears not like headphones but like, well, planar speakers!
They're also the goofiest looking things you'll ever own.

[josh358]

I don't know but I was sure they were toast so I was really dejected. 
Right now I'm seeing if I can get them upgraded to 404 drivers and possibly a better cable.  I think this is going to lead to them being shipped overseas. 
If you've never heard a set, they are THE most relaxing headphones ever made. 
Not the best headphones but there's no listening fatigue and the sound comes from in front of your ears not like headphones but like, well, planar speakers!
They're also the goofiest looking things you'll ever own.

I actually haven't. I do have electrostatic phones, though, a pair of ESP-9's. Shows how up-to-date I am!

[SteveFord]

My victory was short lived as the left channel on that preamp is just about dead.  Off to the shop it goes.
The good news I was given an NAD integrated amp by a buddy and pressed the preamp section into service.  Not quite in the same league as the Sonic Frontiers but I do have tunes on that stereo again which is a good thing.

[josh358]

Glad you have something to fill in. My computer got zapped a few weeks ago, apparently by a voltage surge. I ended up having to replace the UPS, the power supply, and two of the drives.

[SteveFord]

Bad news with your computer; mine got a mild jolt and needed a new card to get the modem to work.
This is a good question for the Power Conditioning Circle.
There's a lot of good people in this hobby - got some refurbbed NAD amps and old tube receivers coming, I do believe.  You can never have too much old crap to fool around with.
If I can use the tube receivers just as preamps in a pinch that would be a good thing.
Oh yeah, I found my hurricane damage last night - the screen from the window by my bed got blown into the bushes!  I was going to call FEMA but managed to pop it back into place after all.

[josh358]

Heh, the sum total of our hurricane damage amounted to some leaves on the lawn. We were lucky, most of the people around here lost power and many still don't have it back.

I actually mentioned my blown up computer to a cabbie and it turned out he used to work as a service tech for APC (don't ask). He said it's not unusual to get surges too big for the surge arrester when power comes back after it goes off. Which happens pretty frequently here during thunderstorms. I try to unplug the computer when I hear thunder, but most of those momentary blackouts seem to occur even when the storm is too far away to be heard.

[richidoo]

Maybe that movement in the back of the RCA jack you saw is a bad jack? That would kill the channel in the preamp. If you saw something move at the rear of the jack, it could be bad. Glad you narrowed it down.

I can sympathize that the weirdest things can drive us nuts. I have a clicking sound in a corner of my listening room. It's from the sun heating and cooling the walls and causing nail stiction clicks in the frame. The corner is directly behind the speaker from my sweet spot. I blamed every piece of gear I owned, speakers, preamps, amps, tubes, wires, different speakers, different wires, etc. until after 2 years I finally figured out what it was. While perched next to the speaker for 10 minutes just waiting for it to click again, I heard the click, but it was coming into my wrong ear, from the wrong direction. With the speaker to my right and the corner to my left I finally realized it was not coming from my system at all. I felt silly, but it was funny. Now that I know what it is, and there's nothing I can do about it, I hardly even notice it. But when I thought it was a flaw in my expensive audio gear I heard every click and they drove me crazy!