Highlights of the considerably more expensive Goofus system were some of the hottest and newest products of the day, including a SOTA Star Sapphire turntable with Sumiko Premier MMT tonearm and Talisman Sapphire cartridge, a Spectral DMC-5 preamp, a BEL 1001 power amp, and a pair of Thiel speakers whose model designation I can't recall. Any or all of those might have been great when used with other products—I foolishly assumed that they'd all work well together—but after months of straining to convince myself that the system as a whole was great, I realized that Goofus was a screechy mess: not necessarily a pile of expensive junk, but definitely an expensive junky pile, and one that left me frustrated, unhappy, and uninterested in adding to my record collection.
How did this happen? I was 30, unmarried, living in a cheap apartment—a real hole, in fact, in a building that caught fire while I lived there—and earning a bigger salary than I'd ever earned before. Again, it was too easy for me to spend money foolishly.
Why did this happen? I believed that all of those products had to be better than the ones I already owned. The new ones had all gotten rave reviews. They were more expensive. And they were cool. Other people who owned those things were people whom I admired, so it didn't take me long to convince myself that I wanted to have those things, too. I began seeing myself as a SOTA owner—and a Spectral owner, and a BEL owner, and all down the line. That may sound silly now, but at an unsettled time of life, when my faith in the relationship between material wealth and happiness was innocent and strong, that point of view held sway: Again, I'd forgotten who I was.
Incidentally, while I was living in that bad apartment and listening to that bad system, I grew my first beard, which looked rather dashing. So it's not as if I was a total mess.
You know who I am
I left that apartment and moved in with a good friend. I got rid of everything in that system except the Thiel speakers, and bought a second-hand Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, thinking it might find some of the same magic in my records that I'd heard from my old Rega Planar 3. It did—and then some. I also bought a second-hand Conrad-Johnson preamp, and borrowed what would be my first moving-coil step-up transformer. I rediscovered what I loved about domestic audio, and once again began buying a lot of records. This was the time in my life when I got into Bob Dylan bootlegs, Joni Mitchell, Jonathan Richman, the Replacements, and the dB's. I drank Bass ale, parted my hair on the side, wore white oxford-cloth shirts with thrift-shop suit jackets, and spent a lot of time going to concerts with friends. That was me. By the time my wife-to-be and I moved in together, I had an even better job, so I had to dress a little better. But we still went to lots of concerts, and my system had slowly and logically evolved: a Roksan Xerxes instead of the less expensive LP12, a pair of ProAc Studio One speakers instead of the more expensive Thiels. I wore Brooks Brothers suits, drove a 1988 Saab—the only car I've loved more is the second-hand Audi station wagon I bought last year—and got myself a Black & Decker coffeemaker. And I kept buying records. This was the time in my life when I started listening to Wagner and reconnected with my old Leonard Cohen records. All of that was also me.
As time went on, I persisted in dressing like me, wearing my hair like me, eating and drinking the things I liked, and discovering more good music: PJ Harvey, Mahler, Bruckner, Berg, and Elgar. I discovered new playback devices—low-power tube amplifiers in particular—that maximized the aspects of music that were most important to me: musical momentum and flow, sonic texture, color, and presence. And while I took a couple of wrong turns—horn-loaded Lowther drivers in particular—I did so not out of what Moby describes as being lost in the world, but out of excess and slightly misplaced adventurousness. How can I tell? Because I learned things, because I don't regret it, and because, even now, I can see that I was having fun. (The family members and friends who had to listen alongside me, not so much.)
Today . . . Here's where I am today. I have owned and used a Thorens TD 124 turntable for over 11 years, a Garrard 301 for seven. My Shindo Masseto preamp, which I've decided to trade for Shindo's new Monbrison, has been with me 10 years. I've owned and used my Shindo interconnects and Auditorium 23 speaker cables for a little longer than I've owned the Masseto, and I still own and enjoy the pair of Audio Note interconnects I bought in the 1990s.
I have made course corrections here and there. Years ago I owned Naim amplification, and loved it for its musical drive and momentum, and for not sounding all phasey and airy-fairy, like so many products from The Great High End. But I learned, over time, that I needed more color and tone, so I went with tubed gear from EAR, Lamm, and, ultimately, Shindo. And as much as I still love the pair of original Quad ESL speakers I rebuilt in 2006, I doubt I could ever again depend on them as my daily drive: It turns out that touch and impact are more important to me than I used to know.
I'm not there yet, wherever and whatever there turns out to be. I'm still not convinced I've found the perfect tonearm for my TD 124—to which end I'll be reviewing at least two new arms, beginning in next month's "Listening" with the Swissonor TA10. I want to hear more from EMIA, whose Phono transformer impressed the hell out of me in the August issue, and I'd like to spend some time with Mytek HiFi's Brooklyn DAC, and maybe the next generations of DeVore Fidelity's flagship Orangutan and Harbeth's Model 40 speakers. But at my age, I'm extremely unlikely to do any about-faces, to upset the applecart just to see which way the apples go a-rolling, fun though that would have seemed 20 or even 10 years ago. There's nothing more expensive in domestic audio than a drastic change in course, if only because you never get the money you think you're going to get when you sell your hi-fi gear, especially if it's in any way customized. Nobody wants your customized anything—loudspeaker, automobile, whatever—because it's too you. Another good reason to know yourself before unsheathing your credit card.
One more thing I'll be trying soon: an AC power conditioner: My offer has been accepted on the 1936 house whose listening room I described last issue, and although its electrical system was updated not long ago . . . well, you never know. Maybe I'll bring in a separate line for the hi-fi, or bury a new copper ground rod in my lawn. (As with my coffee beans, I want to know exactly where my electrons are coming from.) I promise to take a lot of pictures and keep in touch.
As ever,
Art Dudley
I left that apartment and moved in with a good friend. I got rid of everything in that system except the Thiel speakers, and bought a second-hand Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, thinking it might find some of the same magic in my records that I'd heard from my old Rega Planar 3. It did—and then some. I also bought a second-hand Conrad-Johnson preamp, and borrowed what would be my first moving-coil step-up transformer. I rediscovered what I loved about domestic audio, and once again began buying a lot of records. This was the time in my life when I got into Bob Dylan bootlegs, Joni Mitchell, Jonathan Richman, the Replacements, and the dB's. I drank Bass ale, parted my hair on the side, wore white oxford-cloth shirts with thrift-shop suit jackets, and spent a lot of time going to concerts with friends. That was me. By the time my wife-to-be and I moved in together, I had an even better job, so I had to dress a little better. But we still went to lots of concerts, and my system had slowly and logically evolved: a Roksan Xerxes instead of the less expensive LP12, a pair of ProAc Studio One speakers instead of the more expensive Thiels. I wore Brooks Brothers suits, drove a 1988 Saab—the only car I've loved more is the second-hand Audi station wagon I bought last year—and got myself a Black & Decker coffeemaker. And I kept buying records. This was the time in my life when I started listening to Wagner and reconnected with my old Leonard Cohen records. All of that was also me.
Today . . . Here's where I am today. I have owned and used a Thorens TD 124 turntable for over 11 years, a Garrard 301 for seven. My Shindo Masseto preamp, which I've decided to trade for Shindo's new Monbrison, has been with me 10 years. I've owned and used my Shindo interconnects and Auditorium 23 speaker cables for a little longer than I've owned the Masseto, and I still own and enjoy the pair of Audio Note interconnects I bought in the 1990s.
I have made course corrections here and there. Years ago I owned Naim amplification, and loved it for its musical drive and momentum, and for not sounding all phasey and airy-fairy, like so many products from The Great High End. But I learned, over time, that I needed more color and tone, so I went with tubed gear from EAR, Lamm, and, ultimately, Shindo. And as much as I still love the pair of original Quad ESL speakers I rebuilt in 2006, I doubt I could ever again depend on them as my daily drive: It turns out that touch and impact are more important to me than I used to know.
I'm not there yet, wherever and whatever there turns out to be. I'm still not convinced I've found the perfect tonearm for my TD 124—to which end I'll be reviewing at least two new arms, beginning in next month's "Listening" with the Swissonor TA10. I want to hear more from EMIA, whose Phono transformer impressed the hell out of me in the August issue, and I'd like to spend some time with Mytek HiFi's Brooklyn DAC, and maybe the next generations of DeVore Fidelity's flagship Orangutan and Harbeth's Model 40 speakers. But at my age, I'm extremely unlikely to do any about-faces, to upset the applecart just to see which way the apples go a-rolling, fun though that would have seemed 20 or even 10 years ago. There's nothing more expensive in domestic audio than a drastic change in course, if only because you never get the money you think you're going to get when you sell your hi-fi gear, especially if it's in any way customized. Nobody wants your customized anything—loudspeaker, automobile, whatever—because it's too you. Another good reason to know yourself before unsheathing your credit card.
One more thing I'll be trying soon: an AC power conditioner: My offer has been accepted on the 1936 house whose listening room I described last issue, and although its electrical system was updated not long ago . . . well, you never know. Maybe I'll bring in a separate line for the hi-fi, or bury a new copper ground rod in my lawn. (As with my coffee beans, I want to know exactly where my electrons are coming from.) I promise to take a lot of pictures and keep in touch.
As ever,Art Dudley
