swt61
Dr. Wood
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2005
- Posts
- 5,308
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They arrived this morning, and I wasted no time setting them up and listening to them! This will not be an impressions thread however, as I need much more listening time before I go into any detailed analasys. I will say that they are sounding very, very good though. These amps are making serious power, and there's no perceivable distortion at any volume. The gains from the new bridged and balanced amps, and the gains from balancing the headphone cables have me in hog heaven. I've had my K340's modded by Larry, and been through 4 other amps since joining Head-Fi 2 years ago, and they were all noticable upgrades. But this is a major leap forward in terms of sound quality.
Now I'd like to say a little something about the Head-Fier that performed the mods on my Darkvoice 336i's. Fitz is an incredible talent! I can't believe he's just 22 years old. He must have started his electronics training at age 3. His attention to detail is amazing. He put in new LED's for me that wouldn't perform Lasik surgery on my eyes everytime I powered up the amps. He asked if I'd like some amber ones to match the tube glow, and I said I thought that would look great. I assumed he'd order a set of amber LED's and that would be that. Well he had other ideas, he ordered 7 various amber and orange pairs of LED's, then made a template to mount them in, set them next to the warmed up amps, powered up all the LED's and picked the pair that most closely matched the tube glow of my amps. Is that service or what? And they are a perfect match. The new XLR connectors are flawlessly mountend into the front and back of the amps. The new volume knobs are beautiful. And the new Alps volume pots are so much nicer than the stock units. I hadn't realized how crappy the stock volume pot was until now. And he performed his incredible "tube hum be gone mod". There's no tube hum at all. Fitz also made me several new cables, and reterminated, braided and resleeved my existing Headphile cable on my K340. I love the braids on his cables! I also mentioned that I'd like to recable my new Orthodynamic Yamaha HP-1 headphones so that I could use them with my new amps. This was after inquiring about getting Fitz to recable them. He is backed up on orders due to the scale of this project, and the possitive attention his his cables are now getting. I really wanted them recabled yesterday. Well in the box with everything else was all the wire I'll need to do the job, a length of it already braided with Fitz' cool braid, nylon sleeving, heatshrink, and even some desoldering braid. How cool is that!
I've also been compairing the new balanced IC's Fitz sent me to my BMC Pinnacle Gold IC's that I love. I needed longer length cables for my new stand that I'll be building soon, and that's why I had Fitz make me a pair. Well I've got a new favorite cable! Although they're very close to the BMC's they have a very slight edge in the upper frequencies, and are just a tad warmer (my preference). Not to mention they have 8' of that gorgeous Fitz braid to look at. I will most certainly be buying more cables from Fitz as the need arises! The asymmetrical Y cables he made me are too cool. He kept me posted every step of the way, and has been an absolute joy to work with! He will definitely be the man to upgrade the faceplates and add a single stepper to these amps in the future.
As you can see these mods warranted a new stand and matching trim for the K340's. Now I've got to go and listen to more music!
