so i got the wiring sorted out and it's nice.very nice. very old school. I have Bill's comments about simplicity in mind as i think about it all. what i mean is that the sound is very old school, fish eye lens on the midrange. Sade's voice is very real and you can imagine putting your arms around her waist, that's what I'm talking about.
The top end or the whole range does seem as 'extended' rather theose sounds are now placed in a spacial field. Meaning that a sliding hand on guitar is not in your face but closer to the back wall, where i suppose it really was. and that is my point about simplicity ... is this closer to whatever? i don't know, just musing.
Deep bass does just do the pipe organ rollout. The bass impact is more lush and, well, impactful, rather that )tight( as latex. Much more character, nuance, texture, to the ever loving bass. you get that nice pebbly thing on electronic bass and tons of radiance from acoustic bass.
one thing is that you are much more captured by the sound. more narcotic. i used the solid steel core looking for old school sound and i know that this core has more distortion than the hi nickel ... so i am getting what i asked for, supposedly. and i vote 'yes' on it.
the mistake i made in wiring was to reverse the wires and to plug in incorrectly with interconnects. whenever my wife gets back from New Hampshire with the camera is when i can show a shot of the breadboard.
man, i like this. i wonder how the tube buffer will compare.
cost? ~50 shipped from CineMag.
Another small thing is that at first the sound seemed faster and slower at the same time. there is a serious reorder of the PRaT thing. very colorful. i guess you can tell that i am digging this. is it the bee knees, Don? could be.
EDIT: i moved the transformers between my phono preamp and the line preamp and there really doesn't seem to any shrinking of extension top or bottom and it delivered a similar increase in the midrange impact. what the hell!