Session at Montesquieu Manor

[MartinT]

Four of us descended on Tom's place last Sunday for a wonderful afternoon's session of listening to classical music on his system. Jerry from AoS was there, as well as three Wammers Phil, James & James!

Tom's system is based on 15" Tannoy Golds in bespoke and rather good looking cabinets, driven by a Puresound integrated valve amp, Thorens TD124 turntable with Jelco 750D arm, a Nick Lurcher built valve phono stage, Audio Note CD transport and DAC.

Some interesting cartridges were available for trial including a wonderful Audio Note Io and a pair of unusual mono and stereo Miyajimas. I brought my Choir Audio (Hashimoto HM-7) SUT along at Tom's request, to compare with his Audio Note AN-S6 SUT.

Tom's classical collection is wide and deep, putting mine to shame, while Jerry appeared to have brought along a goodly truck load himself. I spent a lot of time loving the experience of hearing new recordings. Tom's system throws a large soundstage and sounds big and effortless. We had a good time swapping cartridges and SUTs in an attempt to help Tom with his perfect coupling quandary. I'll leave him to describe his feelings as we learned quite a lot from swapping and changing cartridge loads.

Thank you for your hospitality, Tom, not to mention your excellent barbecued chicken!