Forums https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl AUDIO FORUMS >> General Discussion and Support >> Favorite equipment https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1317042924 Message started by 4krow on 09/26/11 at 14:15:24

Title: Favorite equipment Post by 4krow on 09/26/11 at 14:15:24 I always wonder what equipment that I might have missed out there that other people have owned. But, I will always have my favorites. On the top of the list in amps would be the Decware SV83S signature select monos. I think I got that right....Anyway, there was never anything so well built and beautiful. The sound is one I have never heard again. I have owned Levinson,Threshold,and Bryston to name a few, but this one is on top.  What about you?

Title: Re: Favorite equipment Post by Randy in Caintuck on 09/27/11 at 19:02:39 My favorite amp(s) from the Decware stable (and one of the very best amplifiers I have ever heard, period) was a pair of SV83M monoblocks that I owned for a short period of time. I stupidly returned them and bought a Zen Select ..... which is also a killer amplifier.  The reason I decided not to keep the SV83Ms was out of the fear that I would not be able to find a supply of good matched SV83 / EL84 power tubes (six needed), 6DJ8 driver tubes (two needed) and 5U4 rectifiers (two needed). As it turns out, there are now some very good current production tubes of those types that would have worked just fine ..... and the rectifier tubes last forever ..... To this day, I have only heard one other amplifier (at $30,000.00) that would light up a pair of the Hornshoppe Horns the way those Decware monoblocks would.  The speakers simply evaporated and the entire end of the listening room was a three dimensional sound stage. I have kicked myself often for what turned out to be a very large mistake in not keeping those amplifiers ..... And they were knock dead gorgeous, to boot ..... I accidentally kept the "drool towel" that shipped with the amps and I occasionally use it for a crying towel when I think of how good those amps sounded ..... Randy

Title: Re: Favorite equipment Post by Pale Rider on 09/27/11 at 21:49:33 Interesting, because in the info on the website, the current SE84ZSM is pitched as an improved successor, while in the design notes on the SV83M, it is described as a cost-no-object statement amp. That SV83M sure looks beautiful. And everything I have read about it sounds "drool-towel-worthy." I have owned a lot of equipment. Some of the things I remember most fondly were my Infinity Black Widow tone arm, my Jack Caldwell-designed ribbon towers, my original Sennheiser HD414 headphones  [first real hi-fi], Advent loudspeakers, some AVA-rebuilt Dyna and Hafler pieces, etc. It's the much older stuff I remember fondly, and a lot of it I built myself. But now, I would be hard-pressed to say I have ever owned anything like the Tori Mk III.

Title: Re: Favorite equipment Post by Lon on 09/27/11 at 21:58:02 I certainly have never owned anything like the Torii Mk III. I'd say my current equipment is my favorite: the front end is the best I've heard, the amp and speakers are just like family members. I do remember fondly the stereo of my Dad's that I grew up with, a Dynaco tuner, preamp, and power amp all modified by a friend of his who was an engineer for GE, plus an AR turntable and full range EV speakers mounted in a well built stereo console that housed the Dynaco and AR gear. That system had a great sound and I grew up with it in my ears. Which meant I didn't swallow the way that audio went in the seventies and eighties and ended up. . . here. My dad still has the speakers (re-coned) in the cabinet and runs it with a Denon receiver. It sounds good, those speakers are magic, but not like when driven by the Dynaco components.

Title: Re: Favorite equipment Post by 4krow on 09/27/11 at 21:58:26 You tweeked a memory there. In High school, I built a pair of Speakerlab K horns in woodshop. NOBODY knew what the   'F'   I was doing! My shop teacher gave me an A minus. Then a few years later, I sold them for $1,000. People in Wyoming had never heard talk like that before.  They were not my favorite speakers except for the OMG bass. Never heard anything like it since.

Title: Re: Favorite equipment Post by Damien on 09/29/11 at 01:31:14 Well I have owned a lot of mid to high range off the shelf solid state which I thought was decent at the time.  I thought wrong. The best gear I have ever had is my DecGear.  I run AIFF and Apple lossless feeding into a CSP2+ then into a Taboo. Speakers are currently DFR6.5's but I have a pair of ZOB's built and just waiting on the DFR8's to get here.

Title: Re: Favorite equipment Post by Pale Rider on 09/29/11 at 01:38:57 Wow, I had forgotten about the SpeakerLabs. I also once built from scratch a set of electrostats based on an article in The Speaker Builder. In reality, they were probably not that good, but what sound I did get had a tremendous speed and sweetness in the mid-to-upper, especially on percussion and vocals. It was a very gratifying, messy experiment. And while in law school, I built a tonearm out of balsa wood using a cantilever design and an open dampening oil well, with stacked aluminum washer counterweights; wiring was a nightmare. It sounded pretty darn good, but if you looked at it cockeyed, it miscued.

Title: Re: Favorite equipment Post by 4krow on 09/29/11 at 14:36:16 I saw a turntable that a friend of mine built. Functionally, it was impressive. But looking at it was painful. There has to be a balance of these things. I get in too much of a rush sometimes and then spend extra timing fixing it.

Title: Re: Favorite equipment Post by Donnie on 09/29/11 at 23:21:32 My favorite piece of equipment ever was a Panasonic  portable 8 track player that I had circa '73 - '79. I'm positive that it sounded just awful, but with that magic box I was able to grow up into the person that I am today. I still remember the first 8 track I bought. "Around the World with 3 Dog Night". Man we listened to all kinds of crappy music on that thing, Kiss, Peter Frampton and some better stuff like Thin Lizzy and the Tubes. I guess that for me the music and the memorys are more important than equipment. My friends from then are still my friends now, but I don't think that music is as important to them as it is to me. They think that I am crazy for spending as much money on equipment as I do, but music is kind of what has defined my life.

Title: Re: Favorite equipment Post by 4krow on 09/30/11 at 00:12:20 Man, when I think waaay back to those days, there was no good equipment, but really good times. Ok, a FEW other people had good equipment but not me. My friends dad had some awsome JBLs and Fisher stuff. But I only sported an old mono Magnavox 'all in one' piece. KOMA was my lifeline to something other than country western, and still I was glued to that contraption....

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