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Liquid Blue - Glad the Acmes are doing well for you. I found the fuse holders too tight for them too, and meant to mention that, but sounds like you worked it out.
Hey Paul - I agree with you. Steve’s amp explorations in development are inventive, informative, and exciting for me.... also indicating expertise and advanced creativity. Thinking that through though, how could they continue to be so innovative and expansive, year after year after year, if he already knew all there was to know? Always learning in the quest for beauty.
Also, if we assume it is the case that many of his most practiced customers, with great systems and great listening skills, “find” something they like that Steve may not have investigated as thoroughly as them, does that make their discoveries wrong? I mean to me, in my system, a decent fuse for 20-40 dollars is a good value, and a great fuse, a notable system improvement… but this depends on how responsive the system is to improvements, and what we consider a notable system improvement, so also relative.
Perhaps complicating this, Steve has naturally become an Icon of excellent perception and discernment leading to musical design that enhances the musical experience for many of us over years… and lately lots of new folks since reviewers are fanning the fires we have been keeping. And something about how we are culturally conditioned, it is easy to make Icon’s knowledge somewhat of an end of the story, perhaps (or perhaps not) inhibiting our development for personal learning and needs.
To me, what makes Steve such a great designer is that he is seeking a realistic and life-enhancing musical experience, the tech, a part of it, but not the primary emphasis. And he has an unquenchable thirst for this, for himself as well as all of us, always seeking and finding new ways to give deeper potential for immersion with the beauty of music at home. And this experience, once refined, is well beyond "good sound,” and really complex if viewed from a linear view. Being based on complex body/mind experiences, there is just too much to measure, which points to insight as a guide. And for insights to happen relatively easily, our body/mind perception and discernment needs to be free to discover new things… not based on static assumptions that may have been pretty true at one time, but may not have not have been fully reevaluated as technology and perception/discernment evolve.
My take is that creative process can free up the mind to deeper discovery. The sense that something can be improved in some way(s) seems to be the beginning. And that leads to exploration, trying to find "it." Then explorations lead to discoveries, and the discoveries that work (or not), often come with sideline “gift” discoveries, not anticipated, but welcome… And if we are on a pretty clear and balanced track, however they come, improvements take it all beyond what we started with, ending up with “creations,” something new. Then, real baseline improvements in audio allow hearing more into the music, which can lead to insights for seeking more improvements that might further enhance the musical experience.
I figure this then extends to us to various degrees. Steve and other’s creativity help set a stage for us, and we carry Steve’s art forward in our spaces. Then, depending on how far we want to go personally, often it works pretty nicely just with a simple setup and complimentary gear. But Steve’s work is also so good, it can catalyze a need to follow a progressive path similar to what he is doing in design, pulling the best we can from his work. And Steve's designs leave room for our own creativity to build on the shoulders of his own creativity.... Clearly for many of us, room treatment, cables, vibration mitigation, tubes, fuses, etc become part of an ongoing creative project for many years on end. And ultimately, with super care to quality and compatibility throughout, this led me into modifications, my system finally coming to a place of not very notable weak links. For me, having made things my whole life, where else to go without spending a whole lot on unknowns while chasing the beauty and a more complete musical immersion. So I just fell into it... and though at least a little scared every time, I went inside.
Starting with a few signal path part upgrades, and bypassing the power supplies, once tuned pretty well, these were really exciting (this was before the A-mods)... what Steve had already set up became faster, more complex and complete... I got the bug. And that bug set up a long progression of exploration and discovery, mainly from adjusting with experiments with parts, wires and various bypassing. And nothing stayed that did not make what was there better at what it did… So I have thought about making an amp, and probably could now, but I am not an electronic designer, more an explorer of modification. And I have loved having Steve’s designs as a solid and expandable baseline to learn with and from. Also, at this point, I feel like my stuff has gotten so good it would be hard to beat (within reason), a lot of the electronics based on Steve’s excellent designs. That said, whenever it gets to where it seems it may be about finished, it lets me hear something new to try to refine, and the refinements always happen so far.
Anyway, my comments about "real deal" people, in this case Steve, I agree with you, I think he fits the description. And my interpretation of the possibility of our past views potentially coloring our more recent ones were not meant in disrespect. They were just to point to our potential for fallibility as humans. And if something feels a little off, taking respected authorities opinions as the end truth without further investigation can be self-limiting… Or not. And who knows, we all have our own priorities and pursuits, and may be listening for different things. But finally, in the context of our own creative study and experience, I figure our own exploration is the only way to really find out for ourselves…
My take on it anyway.
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Replacement fuse? (Read 14275 times)
