The Grand Wazoo's Garden of Earthly Delights

[The Grand Wazoo]

Reposting my system piccies post-hacking incident.

In the blue corner...............
....we have sources & pre-amp plus some stuff from the past and some just passing through............



On the left on an HNE Beech & Granite rack is my Gyrodec with Zeta & Koetsu Black.



The Zeta is a rare gold armed tube one. As such it was one of the first 20 made. It's been rewired & spiffed up a little by the designer, who, apparently was amazed to see one of his original babies coming back to him.
The Koetsu is my 3rd Black - I still have a van den Hulled one as a spare.



Below the TT is my Accuphase DP67 CD player a thing of beauty and fantastic sound quality.

On the bottom shelf is the Michell QC PSU (Alecto style - you know the ones, they look a bit like a 'stealth toilet seat'). The PSU sits on an Isol-8 mains filter thingy.

On the right hand side is a Sound Organisation rack (my other HNE one is waiting for me to get my arse in gear & turn some new legs on my lathe, which is buried under mountains of crap in the garage). On top is a Marantz 1515L receiver, just being stored at the moment, having been replaced by a big ol' Yamaha CR1020 in the satellite system at the place I kip in when I'm working away from home. The Marantz looking for a new home to go to.



Below the Marantz is what's been the heart of my system for about 17 years an Audio Research SP8. Stuffed full of NOS valves & still sounding as good as ever.



Tucked away behind the SP8 are a pair of Bent Audio Mu step-up transformers. Massive and black, infinitely adjustable for loading resistance in a couple of seconds while playing, and in my view the absolute dingo's doughnuts of the MC transformer world.



..................by the way, that's non-resonant audiophile dust you can see there. Did I mention they were massive?





Next up is the tuner - an Accuphase T101. A marvel of 70's gizmology, built like a brick cludger.



Below that is an old Troughline MkII, unused at the moment, having been thoroughly trounced by the T101 in all respects (except perhaps looks).

The other stuff you see below the Accuphase in the first photo comprises a HiFi News Headcase headphone amp for my Grado SR325's and an LFD MC1, which I used to use into a line input of the SP8. (I hung onto it with half an idea of getting a 2nd TT). Tucked under the rack is a ratty old Technics tuner (don't know the model no. & I can't be arsed to look to find out).

..........and in the red corner.............

..........we have power amps & speakers.

Mark Levinson ML9 juicing up the woofers and Mark Levinson ML11 tittivatin' the tweeters and mid range drivers. Forget about the newer Mark Lev stuff - the old ones were the best!




..........and finally, a pair of Mirage M3Si speakers. Big at just under 5' tall. Heavy at 63kgs. Drivers aplenty - 3 in the front, 2 in the back. 10" woofer. Fantastic soundstage. Trouser flappin, bass. Can't show you the drivers, cos the grills don't come off



That's yer lot..................

..............except for the stuff in other places like the Radford STA15, the Cyrus 2, the SD OBS speakers, the Sansui, Pioneer & Yamaha receivers, the Tannoy Mercurys, the Thorens TD160.................................well you know how it is, don't you!!

[Spectral Morn]

Hi Grand Wazoo


Nice to see these pictures once more....thanks for taking the time to post them again.



Regards D S D L-----Neil

[Beechwoods]

Ditto, Chris! Is there any chance that you harvest and make some of your spare audiophile dust available to other members of the forum? It looks like you have some impressively hefty kit there. I can see why it might be a bit dusty. Once you've got some of those beasts in place you aren't going to move them again in a hurry. Not without a hernia at any rate

[The Grand Wazoo]

I can't spare any of the audiophile dust - what on earth do you think I would do if I didn't have that magical stuff to isolate my cables from the untoward influence of the wall?

Actually dust is the biggest source of woe in my life at the moment. The house is a 250 yr old stone cottage. What was supposed to be a 1 yr. project turned into 5 yrs.......... & counting. Some walls are falling (or being knocked) down, some are going up. There's plaster & sawdust everywhere all the time. You try & keep it out of the one important room in the house, but no matter what you do it finds it's way in there!

What makes it worse is that the pre & sources are in what was a fireplace, so headroom is extremely limited when it comes to getting round the back with the old dust abatement equipment.

[The Grand Wazoo]

..........By the way, regarding the Marantz. SOLD

[The Grand Wazoo]

As I said in the first post:

Below the TT is my Accuphase DP67 CD player a thing of beauty and fantastic sound quality.

This replaced a Naim CDI. Yes, that's right a Naim CDI through a valve pre-amp and Levinson power amps!

I listened to all sorts of different players including the Levinson & Audio Research ones. I'd never heard anything by Accuphase & I first heard the DP55, which I thought was great. But this thing is something else again. People talk about the build quality of Esoteric CD players, but I think Accuphase gear is just as good - it fills you with confidence to see the effort they put into their gear.

I managed to get this 2nd hand - it was just barely used, but in perfect condition, only a couple of months old, and at an absolute knock down price. I would've had to think very hard about paying full retail price for it.

[Spectral Morn]

Yes...kit like Accuphase reminds me of the early days of cd when all the Jap companies had gear like this with that type of build. All that missing is wood end checks.

Dust is an issue for me too....having a real coal fire is nice, but very messy.


Regards D S D L---Neil

[The Grand Wazoo]

Yeah, except that the extra width would make it even bigger!!

One thing I like about this player is that it's got some extra inputs & a volume control, so it can be used as a digital preamp if you wish & squirt it straight into a power amp.

I don't do that, but it could be a possibility in the future. At the moment I route it through the SP8 & use the extra digital inputs for our DVD player & Freeview box.

[Marco]

Nice stuff, Chris. I dig all your gear, as it's 'proper', if you know what I mean: no pee-soaked weenie-boy WAF pleasing shit

And, hey, dust gives character! Old houses and real coal/log fires rule!



Marco.

[The Grand Wazoo]

I was looking through some old photos today and found some piccies of a couple of the older incarnations of my system.

(I was actually searching for a photo of a desert roadsign to Tonapah for Beechy - see Zappalogue thread). Of course, it was on a backroad, so I didn't get weighed

First up - Gyro/Zeta/Koetsu/Naim CDI/ARC SP8/Art Audio Tempo mono's



-You can tell by the size/quality of the TV where my priorities lay at that time!!

Next up...............

I got a stealth toilet seat for the gyro (on top of the CDI). Out went the Tempos: in came the Radford STA15. The little in-line box you can see in the interconnect going to the Radford is a 20dB pad, cos the output of the SP8 was huge. I also put some better support under those shelves to stop them sagging from all the vinyl/CD's!!




......same telly though!!

All of the above squirting into a pair of SD Acoustics OBS's, later SD1's - cranked down with threaded bar going into the spike inserts, through the floorboards & tightened up from underneath with some nuts & massive repair washers.