My comments from Fridays 'bake off'.....

...Messers Pete (Zanash) and Sibson (no further intro required) made it round to my place for a touch of tweaking (Pete was only in the door 2 mitutes before he had my top off to tweak me capacitors...... )

The idea was to have a bit of a mess with cables etc and listen to a few tunes.

i have kind of forgotten some of the cronology but heres what i recall and my impressions of it all. Isaac and Pete please feel free to add / amend as necessary!

First up Pete sat down and had a listen before asking where i felt the issues lay with my system (PDS904 CDP - Shek MK1 NOS - Primare A20 MK2 to Quad 12L). i had to say it felt veiled - to me everything was 'there' but sounded muted, and life was not exactly an exercise in foot tapping..

So, we swappped out my CDP for Pete's ageing Denon, the one thats had more work done than Pete Burns , used as a transport, feeding the NOS. Straight off the foot was tapping, there was more bass and things were generally more dynamic and certainly not veiled...

Next up, Petes Denon still in place he replaced the I/C from CDP to NOS (Profigold) with one of his home-made 4N silver ones (twisted 2 core).

Now, having seen previous theads about silver, and indeed Petes cables i cant say i was not expecting a difference but Wow! - an amazing difference - everything was there as above but more of it, better detail, more bass etc etc. An order was placed........

Next into the loop were silver i/c's from NOS to AMP (replacing my PBJ)- again his twisted 2 wire design, and again an
amazing difference - forget the track but the opening to one of the tracks on Paul Simons Graceland features a brief guitar 'solo' or so i thought - when the silver went it it becomes apparent that theres 2 guitars.. double bass was nice + clear - i'd not suffered 'one note bass' but this was just getting clearer all the time - more defined..separation between vocals and BV's was much improved - overall a top result as far as i was concerned..... another order was placed..........

Then we hooked out his CDP and dropped mine back in - it was clear the silver cables made a great difference but, compared to the Denon the Pioneer still sounded 'soft' so surgery on the pioneer was discussed ..........

Moving on, Pete hooked up his valve Power Amp and his Pre. all silver i/c's and Silver speaker cable, still using the Denon.

As you'd expect a different presentation to the Primare but a great sound, especially when you consider that, by Petes own admission - his amps cost next to nowt!

We also put the Primare into the system, with the silver cables and i believe the silver speaker cable offered up a further improvemetn in sound when compared to the QED SA thats in there at the moment, the silver cables certainly sounded louder at any given volume level than the QED...

We also put Petes MF X-DAC (again much twaeked) into the system, compared to the NOS it sounded slowww.....i'm thinkin Pete may have the lid off it as we speak....

Petes next trick - i'd noted some of his CDs have the green edges, each to their own thought i, didn't realise he had a duplicate disk - one treated, one not......
Lordy - this is one tweak i've been cynical off - yep put the pen round the disk and look no defraction of light at the edges but, yeah, so what, hows that gonna change things??
have to say i just finished eating my hat......
Dunno how this tweak will sound on all disks but the treated disk sounded so much more natural - i had not realised pete was about to do a comaprisson but know that, on listening to the first (treated) disk a harmonica sounded wonderfully natural, change out for the untreated disk and it sounded flat and hard edged - as Isaac put it i guess that (hard edge) is one of the qualities that Vinyl lovers hate so much in CDP replay....
So, off to the green pen shop for me.........

And finally - Pete swapped the powercord from my Yello to his hydra - thought there was a difference but by this time my head was spinning with all the other stuff so we let tunes play whilst we took the lid off the NOS and my CDp so Isaac and Pate could give me a dummies guide as to what things are / what they do, tweaking options were discussed....i agreed Pete would leave me his Denon and take the 904 to have a closer look / recomend changes.

I thought that was it until i got up the morning after to find Pete in the middle of prepping assorted options that could be added to the NOS - who was i to stop him so, out came the wires and black gates (ouput section) in went silver wire and new caps (sorry pete - the note you left me i current mis-filed so please put up the details!) and it has made a remarakable differnce - the NOS is now 'faster' and more defined, more natural........

So, overall i'm currently one happy chappy - the system is running as we speak and i'm leaving it on repeat for the next few days just in case those NOS tweaks will improve with age. Looking forward to seeing how the pioneer reacts to tweaking .........and then it may even get clocked.


So, sincere thanks to Pete and Isaac for their company and booze, special thanks to Pete for travelling all the way up from Notts and all the work he's done - cant wait to hear the Pioneer!

And finally - sorry this aint the most in depth review, i'm not the worlds greatest wordsmith. Suffices to say i feel great changes, (aka improvements) have been / will be made to my system for what can only be described as modest outlay -

You may think some of this is in my mind - thats fine,afterall its just that - my system, my mind....but i heartily recomend you give Petes cables a go......and consider tweaks before you lay out on your next 'new box' upgrade

The final 'and finally' - if Mr Sibson tries to assert that i was singing (?) along to Alison Krauss - such that he said he'd volunteer me for the next pop idol - ignore him its simply not true............

Regards

Chris

 

:bs:

 

That is one pretty accurate synopsis..............

I can find nothing to disagree with, though you didn't mention the nachos or other nibbles provided , very welcome.

I thought the quads sounded very good both with the primare and the valve amp. The pre was huming a bit and needs further work. so that was disappointing, but the relay stepped attenuator option sounded good but perhaps a little soft.

I've come back to a heap of problems ...one of my speakers has decided to die, so spent all day testing varrious things to find the fault rather than having a look inside the 906.

Thanks for the kind words about the cables. I have to say that was one of the bigest differences I've heard when swapping digital ic's ! though I was expecting the difference the others made, and agree with your thoughts as to there effect.

thanks again for the hospitality !

 

my comment or my singing????????????????

 

Pete - hope you've sorted your speaker out by now..
Thanks for the kind words and thanks again for working a bit of magic on my selection of boxes..

 

Found out it was a cable so panic over !!

 

Couldn't have been, they make no difference.

 

No one chaps, great write up.
Think that we should give Pete star of the month rating for that one.

 

certainly they do - especially when not connected at both ends..........

Pete - glad to hear you found the problem!

 

Its all part and parcel of prototype cables.....they can be fragile and in this case they had a small break in the treble side. So no signal was seen at the cross over and so they didn't switch on.