VSAC 2001
Pictured from Left to Right, DeVon Pierson, Steve Deckert, Bob Zigler.
|
WHAT IS IT The Valve State Amplification Conference is a show originated and hosted by Doc Bottlehead of Bottelhead.com that features ONLY tube electronics and related speakers designed for the serious audiophile. Most of the exhibitors are smaller specialized manufactures that sell factory direct and or cater to the D.I.Y. market with either amplifier or speaker kits (or both). Put another way, the show is a representation of the best values and highest fidelity found in tube electronics today. Set in a casual atmosphere in beautiful Silverdale Washington it is a rare opportunity to hear all the wonderful gear you always read about on the Internet. COMMENTS We were very pleased to be invited to exhibit at this years show. This was our first time attending this show now in its 3rd year. A mere 2300 miles (actually more) away I couldn't even promise Doc we would be able to attend when he originally called. It only took a few days to figure out a way - I haven't had a vacation since we went online with decware.com in 1996 and this was a perfect opportunity to take a couple weeks off. I've been restoring my 1972 Monte and had just dropped a new custom built engine into the car so I thought it would be fun to drive. We took around 5 days to get there. Staying off the freeway as much as possible and driving through the mountains was very nice. We took some pictures along the way. Having attended many CES shows over the years I am well aware of the room acoustic probabilities of most hotel rooms and the handicaps they impose on exhibitors. Because of this admittedly I had some anxiety about driving 4600 miles just to have everything sound like crap - so along the way I measured the acoustics of each hotel room we stayed in just to get mentally prepared for the big unknown that awaited us. Three of five rooms along the way were actually halfway decent sounding, two were what I would consider barely permissible. Nevertheless all were better than I expected so I was encouraged. We arrived at the Silverdale Hotel sometime in the afternoon on Thursday (the night before our reservation) and got a room. Of course the very first thing I did was a sharp hand clap to get a sense of the room's characteristics. DeVon will happily tell you the look of horror on my face that followed was memorable. It was on an order of magnitude the worse room I've ever heard. The room was not completely square and had a steep inside corner that was not unlike looking into the mouth of a large horn flare. The ringing in the room made regular speech unintelligible. I was in a state of shock. Even though this was not the actual exhibit room that our gear would show in, I wondered how much better or worse it could be? I decided to find Doc Bottlehead and kick his ass and then a few seconds passed and I realized jumping to conclusions was silly so I went to the front desk and got the key for the exhibit room to see what in fact I would be up against. (Actually I never thought about kicking Doc's ass but I reads well! ) I was somewhat relieved when I went to check out the exhibit room - the walls were square. In fairness that was about the only thing it had going for it though. The following afternoon (Friday) I locked myself in the exhibit room for a few hours and worked on the rooms acoustics. Having made some very measurable progress, based on the cumulative decay plots I took of the room, I felt pretty good. I set up the rest of the gear and popped the top on my favorite beer and proceeded to break the cantilever off my m.c. phono cartridge. The show opened to the public on Saturday and Sunday so Friday night we got to roam around and meet the other exhibitors. I finally got to meet Doc Bottlehead in person as well as his lovely wife and I have to say that I really have a lot of respect for these two. One look into Doc's eyes and it was obvious to me that we were from the same planet. Regrettably I didn't get the opportunity to chill with him like I had hoped but he had a lot on his plate and I didn't want to add to it - the show was indeed that busy. All of the rooms were busy with activity, I personally enjoyed seeing the many products and meeting the designer's first hand as I'm sure everyone did. It was a very positive experience for everyone and despite the room acoustics it wasn't too hard to detect the good sound of tubes. The diversity was wonderful, and the opportunity to zero in on what approach suits your ears best - was priceless. I was very pleased to see several members from our forums at the show and would like to thank them for their incredible support. DeVon and I were overwhelmed with the sincerity of everyone who showed up and we made several new friends as well. We demonstrated most of our Zen Triodes (I found another cartridge for the turntable at a local high end shop) and our new Radial Loudspeakers (URL-1) as well as our SKY LAN amplifier and equipment stands. For our digital source we used a Dan Wright modified Perpetual Technologies D AC and modified pioneer DAVID as a transport to demonstrate that there IS cost effective ways to get there from here. The new Zen Integrated and Phono Stage were also presented and we even got to play the original SE84C several times with positive results.
-Steve Deckert
PICTURES
LINKS TO GEAR SHOWED
OTHER LINKS
|
Copyright © 2001 by Steve Deckert
