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Location: Surrey
Posts: 135
I'm jp.
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Oh yes - the Puresound is magnificent.
Very open and transparent, it majors on clarity and in-room presence.
Transients have a startle factor 'spang' to them.
Probably the most dynamic pre I have heard. A very big, room filling sound.
Bass is deep and powerful, not quite as taut as the best I have heard but by no means flabby and it's very entertaining. Some wadding in the rear ports of the MBLs is needed to keep the bass within bounds in my room.
The overall imaging is different to what I have had before - a bit of speaker repositioning is in progress to get the best out of it.
The remote volume control comes in for a lot of stick on the forums as being essentially unusable, but I find it just fine. The guy I bought it from says he bought the pre new only 9 months ago, so maybe that issue was sorted in more recent production.
Yup, enjoying it very much so far.
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Location: Surrey
Posts: 135
I'm jp.
All good cheers Justin. Apogees have been boxed up for a few years due to children but getting my kicks with some NS1000M and REL subs which are one of the few "box speakers" that I can't hear honk :-) I may consider selling the Apogees but only when I can accomodate/source a bigger pair.
Main system at present is Ortofon MC5000, Hashimoto HM-3 SUT, Art Audio Vinyl 1, Garrard 401/Audionote Silver arm in DIY plinth, SJS Arcadia Model 1 (but only really the PSU and rough circuit is retained as all components swapped) into either my rebuilt Krell KSA50 or the Apart Champ amp. Digital is still a vintage Sony CDP555-ESD into a Kinshaw perception DAC. The office/study system gets more use TBH but is PC/Asus Xonar Essence STX direct into Denon POA-2400 into ProAc Response 2.5 clones with some Hovland caps in it. Probably not that much different to before!
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JP, so you are more appreciative of the talents of the Apart Champ amp now than when you first got it?
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Location: gone
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Location: Surrey
Posts: 135
I'm jp.
It's better than when first plugged in by a long shot, that is mainly as I went through and tweaked the sub freq/level and level controls on the Yamahas. Every amp swap seems to require a week or so of fine tuning to get an evenly balanced sound and the yamahas can sound a little shrill if fed directly from the vintage Sony (as I was doing initially) rather than the Kinshaw DAC.
It was a massive shock going from a highly modded Leak Stereo 20 though! Certainly injected a fair bit more pace and control which has shifted my listening choices for a few months.
I'd say more but I'm on holiday and drinking Scotch and honey, so it would probably be bollocks anyway...
I like it on the Mark & Daniels as it runs cool, doesn't consume lots of power when left on all day, doesn't get hot, drives them well and never sounds shrill or indeed bad. All brilliant for £200.
You could e-mail Jon about the Calipers he might be interested. I've only ever heard two pairs, one not good, and the other pair surprisingly good but recently restored to an average spec. It was up against some Usher Dancer BE in a tiny room and not well placed, but I'd rank them about equal with maybe the Ushers having a slight lead in the high treble. But even the small Caliper bass panel was knocking out some great bass with some really snappy mid range. They did sound quite different and I like Ushers but after hearing the first pair which really were not good I was surprised.
I reckon if you tricked the Calipers out with new braced frames, high quality external x-overs, new thicker covers, new ribbons etc etc you'd have a shock. That is an arse, though, but someone might like to trick them out if you pass them on.
It also requires balls and a lot of faith. Not many have it