VSAC 2008 Vancouver WA / Portland Meet

[dBel84]

2 words "Tube Heaven"

I thought I would get things rolling with a few comments and images.
Firstly a BIG thankyou to Ironbut for organizing a HeadFi presence, not to mention bringing his tape rig and Zana Duex.

My highlights
ironut's tape player
Craig's workmanship - the Eddie Current HD2 and Zana Duex
Hearing the RS-1's on my stacker

excluding the rest of the gear at VSAC

enough said, a few pictures





ironbut getting into the swing of things





my gear



and JP getting to know Stacker







a few random shots from the show











well, that's all for know..dB

nearly forgot, great to meet you all

ps David - I did get your picture

[ironbut]

Thanks dB for the great pictures, all your help and your kind words. You were a very welcome member of the Headfi team here. I just got back from having drinks with some of the guys and a Scottish fellow says that being called a tube isn't a good thing. He was a few drinks ahead of me so I thought I'd check to see if that's true?
I'm pretty beat and I have to get up and do it again Sunday. I'm so glad that I got a chance to hear your amps. I wasn't the only one that thought they were excellent.

[mikeymad]

Nice to see the R2R and EC's make it up there, and that JP# got a ride... I know that I am really going to miss this one. I will just have to sit with my fixed Cary 300SEI and be happy for now....

More pics and words please...

Enjoy Sunday Guys.

Cheers,

[dBel84]

hmmm "tube" as a derogatory ?? never heard of it as Scottish slang. But then the Scots have a hard time enunciating and perhaps he meant tubby . I will enquire from my BIL to clarify , but then some Scots might argue that Glaswegian is another dialect altogether.

aaaaah - a bit like calling someone a D*** , a prat or as the Irish so eloquently put it, an eedjit

Back to the show......

Exemplar audio stole the show (IMO) when it came to sound reproduction, most all the systems sounded fantastic, but their rig was just incredible. The room was dark all the time (to show off the 300B glow I assume ) so here is an image from the web.



Doc Bottlehead - at the show the Tape Project R2R was the source and it sounded pretty spectacular


but my favourite bottlehead was the cold war - I only discovered the 3rd floor 10 min before I was packing up to leave and thus only got to hear it while chatting to the folk from Front Panel Express. BTW FPE has newer software out (probably nothing new to some folk) but their chassis building options are pretty incredible for making one offs - just have to look into exactly what such luxury costs .


Now imagine those tubes driving balanced HD650's and you will begin to realize why JP has that smug expression etched for eternity.

This show has once again made me realize that the appreciation of many headphones really depends on the components driving them, I had forgotten to mention them previously but the AT AD2000's are an incredible piece of equipment. I had heard them previously and thought they were shrill , lacked any dimension and definately no bass reproduction - think again, they are probably the most neutral HP I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Their tonal representation across the audio band is perfect and they are so very comfortable. And it wasn't only because they were being held up by the Eddie Current - R2R setup, they sounded just as good from my CD-rom and Stacker.

As much as I love the sound of open cans, I generally listen to music late in the day, before the lights go out and to keep all aprties happy, I use closed headphones. So thankyou David for bringing along the Denons and Ed9's. I know from the reputation of the Ed9's that they require 500 + hours of burn in so I will not comment on them, that said, they still sounded like a good said of HP's. I liked the Denons very much, and I proved to myself that DT770's have an unfounded reputation of having recessed mids and bass crazy. I have always liked them but when sooo many people say the same thing, one begins to question...

So many other great things - hearing good source material, jopigo's Benchmark DAC and SACD player, obviously the R2R brings a new dimension to the music.

Overall the show was a lot of fun, I was a little disappointed in the craftsman room - very few people exhibiting their work on Saturday, perhaps this has to do with airline travel.

This intrigued me and I need to look into how this can be done

solid-hollow state



..dB

[tyrion]

I'm looking forward to seeing what new tube gear Jp is going to be looking for after he returns. Will he return to some exotic high efficiency speaker and flea watt tube amp or will he move to some higher power tube amp for his Alon speakers. Only time will tell.

[Jon L]

FYI, here's an internal pic of Cold War amp from Bottlehead forum. Liberal use of Magnequest iron and huge Russian oil caps..



"This beast sports one 6C33 per channel driven by two 6S2S's. The power supply is solid state for the 6C33's, and the driver supply is tube rectified with a 6C5S, then a Bottlehead hybrid shunt regulator using the 6N8S provides separate regulated B+ for each channel. To top it off, the negative bias supply for the 6C33 is also shunt regulated with an SG3S gas tube. All these tube names sound a little funky, as I stuck with the Russian names for these tubes. Output iron is the venerable MQ EXO-800 fed by those MASSIVE BAPC plate chokes. Coupling caps are KBG/MGBO Russian PIO, sockets are NOS Russian military, etc. etc. Now for a listen...
-Paul "

[mikeymad]

I love the huge tower of amps. looks like a PSU and amp for each driver. Nice.

Looking forwad to more.

Cheers,

[jopagi]

Thanks db for putting up the pictures! It was great to hear all these rigs and feel the excitement. You've got some great amps there.

My favorite sound of the show was Jeff Jackson's Goto setup... simply mindblowing with big orchestral pieces.

Many thanks to ironbut for providing the Eddie Currents, tape player, multiple headphones, and for organizing and manning the headfi room...

[ironbut]

Hey Mikeymad, actually, that's 18 (count um,.. 9 -300b amps per channel and two crossovers ) that my pal Doc Bottlehead built (along with the speakers) in the last 3 weeks! By Sunday ( I just left that room after a little "after hours" party till 1 am with Jacqui Naylor and husband/piano/guitar/arranger Art Klu, Doc and the bottlehead family who very graciously let me join them) the speakers and amps had begun to burn in and just sounded fantastic.
And before anyone gets all huffy about not being there, we will all be helping to tear down and pack that system up for it's trip home.

[jp11801]

simply amazing show the knowledge there was intense. Quick thoughts were

Don' new DIY stacker amp that he built (the orange case in pics above) was stunning and when the boards are finalized look out! The amp had great headstage both side to side and front to back. Tones were reproduced well with plenty of detail but never sounded bright like many amps that claim detailed presentation. This build was a Proto using basic or some scrounged parts and sounded killer with upgraded parts it should sound even better.
I'll have a bunch of pics and thoughts on the speaker rigs and talks I attended later on. When they hold another one of these if you can attend you should. This show was a great value even for the three day pass at $165. There were two full days of talks, multiple live acts, (Jacqui Naylor ROCKS) plus room after room of mad scientist tube gear.
Yes Mike the checkbook came out but more to come on that later.