I’ve had both an exhilarating and exasperating experience so far with a pair of ‘63 1578s from Paladin79, and if I read bcowen’s post correctly, the latter experience has been along the same lines as his. But my pair only have about 180 hours on them, which is not nearly enough to make any final evaluations or decisions. Rather, in the spirit of the request for Thanksgiving stories, I want to mention a cable, and I hope Palladin79 won’t object to my telling it.
While privately discussing the Melz, I asked Tom if he ever made umbilical cords. I have a Supratek preamp with a separate PSU, with an umbilical cable tying it to the main unit, which uses 6SN7s (part of a living room stereo speaker system). He hadn’t, but generously offered to make one for me with the same silver-plated copper wire that goes into his headphone amps. Now, the funny thing about this offer was that he doesn’t believe that such a power cord can make a difference in sound quality. Nor, in fact, does the preamp’s developer, to the degree that he threatened to cancel the lifetime warranty if I used another than his (he eventually backed off and offered to “profusely apologize” if it makes a significant improvement). My experience had told me a different story, so we proceeded.
From the moment I first plugged it in, it was like I had upgraded the preamp to the model costing $1K more. Playing Agnes Obel’s Katie Cruel, from what had been a large soundstage blob, the music now just snapped into focus, with voice and electronics well placed and coherent. The only catch at that moment was the music was what I call pitch elevated, as if a piano standardly tuned at A above middle C had been tuned at the C above that. I guess that’s what is meant by bright. Based on other experiences, worry set in: would this right itself, when it hadn’t with other gear? Was the silver screwing things up? Well, 50 hours in the bass righted itself. All of a sudden, singer Andy Bey’s low notes went really low and became gravelly, until he ran out of breath. After that, the only thing left, other than the patience of a few hundred hours of the ups and downs of burn in, was to make sure the mids and uppers settled as well, that the tonality and a bit of warmth I like would be there. Now, a bit over 500 hours in, I can say everything seems in order. 6SN7 tubes like 1943 Ken-Rad’s sound dry and cool and voices not quite human, while a 1945 RCA pair sound as warm and (overly) euphonic, as advertised.
So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’m very grateful for having stumbled across this thread, the good advice and tales others contribute, and most of all for Palladin79’s presence here.
