East Coast Meets West Coast
On April 10/2017 WBF will be 7 years old. When the forum was established and all invited members joined on that day they were bestowed with the title of Founding Member. Most of the Founding Members I knew as they were friends or acquaintances. Several members however that I didn't know, I also asked to join because I felt they were knowledgeable audiophiles and would have a lot to offer members at WBF.
One member in particular was asked by me to join and become a founding member. Over the past (almost) 7 years "ack" has been not only a regular contributor to WBF but has also helped to establish what many of us call the "Boston connection" by bringing to WBF other Bostonians (mad floyd, Al M. and PeterA) who have also become regular contributors. Ack has impressed many of us (myself included) with his abilities to mod many of his components with positive results.
Over these past 7 years I have corresponded countless times with ack (Tasos) as well as talking to him on the phone. However , we had never met.
Several weeks ago Tasos reached out to me and told me that he and his wife and son were spending a week in Los Angeles on spring break and Tasos wanted to take an afternoon from his vacation and travel south to Orange County to my home so we could meet as well as listen to music on my system.
Tasos arrived yesterday afternoon with his wonderful wife and son. It was wonderful to chat over appetizers and get to know one another. I must admit that I had some degree of trepidation with that listening session as I was now playing with a complete loom of Master Built Ultra cables. In fact 5 days earlier Leif had brought over what I considered the missing piece of my cable puzzle.....a 9 meter pair of Ultra interconnects to run from my pre amp to my amp. Over the past few weeks there had been a lot of discussion here on my system blog about MB cables and some of the short comings that members were voicing due to some marketing concerns by the MB engineers. I was concerned that Tasos would not like the system or the cables but it mattered not to me in the long run as I was excited to meet him and his family
I have said so many times here that for me over all the years I have been in this hobby that the most gratifying experience was meeting new friends.
Yesterday was no exception as we spent the afternoon listening mostly to tape and vinyl and very little digital. It was a terrific afternoon.
Tasos seemed to be dialed into my ZYX Premium cartridge which was used for all but a few minutes when he asked me to a/b the ZYX Premium on the SME 3012R arm vs the Ortofon Anna on my Graham Phantom Elite 10.5" arm.
It was a very simple and quick to switch from one to the other. First off I know it wasn't a fair comparison as we were comparing the cartridges on different arms as well as different length arms. I love the Anna but in a head to head there is just IMHO no comparison as the Anna sounded very nice but very polite when compared to the ZYX Premium. In fact after about 30 seconds Tasos turned to me and said "it takes no time to figure out the difference. Can we go back to the ZYX Premium for the rest of the afternoon?"
Interestingly 2 days earlier Mike Lavigne also visited as he was near by in Del Mar. The same little test was done for Mike and he too wanted to go back to the ZYX.
We finished by listening to some digital but as both Mike and Tasos pointed out, there was no comparison as there was so much more detail when vinyl was played. We didn't get a chance to play any digital hires files from my library due to time constraints as time was now a factor and we were all going for dinner together.
All in all a wonderful afternoon. Tasos and I had some terrific conversations and I think when all was said and done Tasos liked what he heard and merely stated that he has no idea what effect the MB cables had in my system. It was all good.
It was great to finally have met Tasos as well as his lovely wife and son. This is what makes this hobby so much fun for me as the friends I have made over the years are such wonderful people.
The comparison with the Anna was simply no contest, we spent less than 30 seconds with it. Your A95 ought to also be better than the Anna.
