Wednesday, February 8, 2012

July 2009 meet

We held our meeting at Frank's place in lower Pennsylvania near Route 83. There were two listening areas, the first in Frank's recording studio and the other in a lounge area. The acoustics were quite different with the recording studio being dry as you would expect. There were about 10 of us there.
 
One of Frank's friends builds speaker cabinets (as well as drums) and you can see some of his work here. We mere mortals can only gaze in rapped admiration.
 
 
Here is a front panel.
 
 
Two chip amps with acrylic tops
 
 
John working on his Foremost with a Foreplay 3. It looked there was a problem with the high voltage taps on the transformer. There is such a difference between these latest Bottlehead products and the Foreplay 1 that got me started.
 
 
Frank's soldering station area. It's fascinating to see the conditions where other's do their work. This looks like it would be a good area to work in because of all the natural light and of course it is well organized.
 
 
The Accutron speakers and the Jordans on the floor. I only heard the Accutrons briefly and they seemed to have calmed down from the meet earlier in the year. Unfortunately I didn't hear the Jordans this time, I was in the other room.
 
 
These are transmission lines with Alpair 3 inch speakers that Steve got for $20 each. The bass was impressive for such a small speaker but it looked like they had to work hard to produce decent volume. It would be interesting to hear them in an array.
 
 
A Lightspeed chip amp in some old Sun computer boxes.
 
 
A Mesa Baron amp with 6 5881's per side. It could be configured as triode or pentode and with different levels of feedback. The amp sounded quite different in each configuration which could help with some music or hinder.
 
 
One of the best parts of the day was driving too and from the meet across northern Harford County in Maryland and lower Pensylvania. The county roads were relatively empty and the countryside was in the full lush green of summer with fields and fields of corn. Absolutely beautiful.
 
Along the way home I came across this building which turned out to be a church. Yes, it's a crappy photo with too much road.
 
 
 

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