This is fantastic news Steve!!   I'll reach out to the next in line to get this back going again.

Palomino, you were the current holder of the machine when it went belly up and I know you never got to give it a proper test drive.  Would you be interested in giving it another shot?  Ill be getting back to a 2 week rotation so if you have time over the next couple weeks to run it again, and post some commentary, then the machine will be back in your hands.  No biggie either way.  If not, I will go ahead and reach out to the next tour member.  

Quote:


I concur.  Tried it both ways and with the tube pre-amp, it was across the board better.  

 Understood!  I'll check to see who's next up.

Just waiting to hear back from Bottlehead if he is ready and willing to take the tape rig at this point in time.  As soon as I confirm who it is that will be receiving the gear, I’ll fire off an email with the shipping details.

To all on the tour. I received player and vhs tapes safely today!
Gonna do some listening after dinner.

bump

Hi Ace,
Thanks for the update and no, the last message I received was when the equipment first landed at your place.  

I will reach out to next in line and see where it goes next.  Once I get confirmation, I will send you over the shipping info.

Thanks!

Tape tour-Pelican case is on it's way to Boxertwin.
Departed Monday! Enjoy!

Jeff,  I look forward to hearing your new speakers, the RtR and the enhanced ZMA2! Let me know your next free day and I will try to make it happen!

I now understand that Father Murphy (of Murphy's Laws) was a dissgruntaled wannabe audiophile who was both intellecually and finically challanged and couldn't afford a tape machine so his scortch-the-earth campaign to make audiophiles miserable just because his stereo sucked and he couldn't admit it...  what an ass.  I'm sure UPS isn't helping matters any but that just suggest he probably worked for UPS after getting fired from a stereo store.

The only thing I can suggest at this point is if you have access to another VHS try it.  Even I can't overcome the super natural while I'm living, but this little ass better have an exit strategy after I die.

Steve

YES!  

I just had a vision!  Keep in mind I have dressed as a service man and went to the UPS hub to watch and see for myself what happens to packages.  Most of it is employee abuse.  Kicking packages into the back of trucks.  The rule at UPS or any shipper is a package can be trown as far as you can throw it or dropped as high as you can drop it and if it breaks it's our fault.

Anyway back to the vision, it's the handle.  The case is too small and the damn thing has a handle.  They are taking it by the handle and trowing it 5 times farther than is possible with any box that has no handle.  Picture winding up and whipping it as hard as you can into the wall of the truck at every stop and you begin to see why it is breaking.  They are cracking the circuit board.  Another reason why I hate circuit big circuit boards.

Cut the damn handle off the case and it will go back to just being kicked and thrown, which it can handle.  I appologise for not seeing it sooner.

Steve

The new VHS machine was on my doorstep when I got home this evening. It was loosely packed in a single cardboard box, partially taped shut. It was packed with a little crumpled paper around it. How it survived shipping I don't know but it plays beautifully.
I didn't have too much time but I played parts of Dick's Hat Band and a fair amount of Palamino's tape and I was blown away by the quality of sound. My room is not the best and it is usually hard to discern much difference in hardware. Also my ears are not nearly as good as many of yours. I mean, there is probably no way I could detect differences in power cords or speaker cables. But the difference in sound quality was amazing. I did a little A/B ing between Tidal and the tape and there is a huge difference. I was listening to the VHS with a CSP2+ and a Torii Mk 4.  The speakers were MG 944's and I listened a bit through my DNA's. I will elaborate more after some more listening.
Randy

Yes, I dressed like an outside service man because I had my blue uniforms and tool belts from the days when I did refrigeration and food equipment repair. One of the things I didn't expect to see was a giant conveyor belt on the second floor, some 20 feet above the concrete loading docks. It was the length of the building and at least 6 feet wide or more. At the end was an opening where the packages fall into a black abyss. Brillently the designers of this opening made it narrower than the belt. When I first got out there it was just in time to see a package jam at the end of the line where the packages wouldn't go through the opening. All of the packages on the belt at the end and about 8 feet back were being slowly smashed as the belt continued to go and the weight of 1800 packages continue to come. Suddendly one package couldn't stand the force and shot out of the pileup like a water melon seed and careened through the air, over the hand rail and down to the concrete some 20 feet below.

We stopped having shipping damage after that day because I changed how we pack things.  

Very much looking forward to your story!

Steve

Your posts are timely. I am literally listening to the first of three tapes I purchased from Ed of the recordings of the entire Narek concert that I was present at.  I was sitting 15 feet from Narek and Pianist Benjamin Smith and I am literally stunned right now. I am so giddy and excited inside I am not even sure how to gather my thoughts.  I am going to share with you this entire experience from my visit with Ed Pong at his place the Friday before the concert, the concert itself, and my impressions of these three tapes of the concert I just received yesterday.  Holy bejesus!  I don’t think I was quite prepared for this evening’s listening of my first set of UltraAnalogue tapes.   More to follow.....

Earth to Jeff... come in Jeff...