For various reasons, my actual stand-out system listening experience from the 70s was in around 1976. We had a customer who wanted to compare the best we could offer with what a friend in the business was trying to sell him. We took a Dual 701 with Shure V15 IV, a Yamaha CR1000 receiver and a pair of Gales. The opposition was Linn LP12/Grace G707/Supex SD900 into Naim NAC12 (I think) / NAP250 and a pair of Dahlquist DQ10s. The music was Christina Ortiz playing Shostakovich 2nd Piano Concerto (EMI ASD3081. A brilliant recording), and the annihilation of our system was total, as was our conversion. A lot has since been written about Linn/Naim hype and all the bullshit that went with it, but my God, that system did things that I'd never heard before, and 40 years later it's still my clearest hifi memory from that era.

I'd love to find an old pair of DQ10s and put them with a good valve system. For those to whom they are not familiar, these are not Quads!



This is what's inside: