Post by Kamran on 11/15/23 at 04:47:39
The Day She Arrived
Sarah was loaded on to the delivery truck around 9:14 am last Wednesday and it arrived at my place at 2:07 pm.
Even though I wasn’t wearing my Apple Watch, I can guarantee you that I had completed 10,000 steps walking back and forth to my street view window during those five hours.
I came out the door to greet her (in an alternate universe, I’d have hung a sign saying “Welcome Home Sarah” from the front door) and started making a video of the UPS dude bringing the boxes over, hoping he wouldn’t get mad that I was filming him. He was actually relieved to see me. Here’s how the conversation went down:
UPS: So glad you’re home, since once of these needs a signature!
Me: I know. I’ve been waiting for this delivery for two years.
UPS: Two years? UPS guy is now rocking back on his heels, which is not necessarily a good thing with him carrying Sarah and my stock tube set.
Me: Yes—two years, so this is a historic moment (my voice almost breaking now—so overcome with emotion).
Somehow, I kept it together and didn’t start bawling in front of the UPS guy.
UPS: Was it backordered?
Me: Yeah, it was. No sense in trying to burden him the intricacies of the Decware build list and production cycle.
UPS: You could have asked for a speedier delivery today—I could have come to your house sooner!
Now he tells me (I thought) and noted it for future reference.
I thanked him and brought the box inside and asked my son to make a video while I opened the box. It took me longer than expected. It was double boxed with thick bubble wrap and brown packing paper inside both layers of boxes. I got to my prized bubble wrapped bundle of joy and picked it up to carry downstairs to my basement rig.
Damn, she was heavier than I expected!
Ok, that was quite the workout! Once in the basement, I carefully peeled off the bubble wrap (which also took me longer than expected), but then she was out in all her glory. I took in her view from all angles and just gaped!
My God—She was immaculate! The African Paduk base, the steel chassis with high quality tube sockets, those sexy as hell binding posts, and the artsy black chicken head volume knobs (kudos to Sarah for recommending that as I was initially thinking of the gold knob to match my ZR2) and the (Holy Shit, how friggin amazing this looks compared to plain black) gorgeous copper transformer.
Perfection.
So now I lifted it again (damn, did I mention it was heavy?) and set it on top of my center channel and start opening up the tube boxes to start the adorning process. First the 300bs (btw, what Chinese brand is this—anyone recall?), then the pair of Russian 6H6N drivers, then the Decware branded 5U4G rectifier by Linlai, and then the NOS Sylvania 12AU7 preamp tube. Absolutely no issues inserting these tubes.
Pro Tip: Be gentle when inserting the Decware rectifier, because it went in like butter. You don’t need the typical amount of force to secure it in its respective socket.
Wait, there are still 3 more tiny boxes? Did Steve send some extra? I looked back at the chassis and then it hit me—the voltage regulator tubes silly! These were marked 75C1 and some quick research indicated that these were identical to OC2’s. These VR tubes were comparatively harder to slot in to their sockets for two reasons:
1. The preamp tube and rectifier tube make for a very tight space for the middle rectifier tube, so I had to take out the input tube to have more space to insert the middle VR tube. So the pro-tip here is to hold off on inserting the input tube until all three VR tubes are situated.
2. The connection of the OC2 tubes to their respective sockets seemed (for lack of a better descriptor) loosy goosy to me compared to the rock solid connections of all other tubes. They just felt loose for some reason.
I swapped in the right and middle OC2’s and even getting them out of their sockets was tricky, and ultimately, the connection wasn’t much better. However, I didn’t want to force the issue too much because the pins seemed fragile. They seemed good enough for now, so I let it go and chalked it up to not having enough experience with VR tubes and if they didn’t light up, I would know that I had screwed up.
So all the tubes are in, the speakers cables are in, the single-ended inputs from the autoformer are in, and the PC is in. The moment of truth. I press power to on.
Sidebar: The location of the power switch is slightly inconvenient and a bit of hand gymnastics is required to go over and behind the copper transformer and in-between the power cord and SE input cord to find the nook where the power button can be pressed. I only mention this because I was used to the power switch on the front of the Had amp. That said, this nitpick is minor in the grand scheme of things. I guess folks that are used to Decware amps won’t find this navigation to on/off problematic, but I wanted to be transparent about my observations.
So where were we? Oh yes, power is on. Let’s fire up the streamer app and turn on the radio.
No music….
What the hell?
A minute after perusing the manual, I flip the single ended RCA’s to the alternative jacks and voila! Important lesson learned about switching jacks and or flipping the toggle switch for the jacks.
Now that we have music flowing, it’s time to play the first track that I had chosen months ago.
Hopeless romantic much?
Guilty as charged. But really, can there be anything more poetic than to grace the virgin track to Sara singing through Sarah?
Ok, break-in time for a few hours, before coming back to listen proper…
.
