Turned Japanese - system tweaks and DIY projects

Anyone have experience with stands that tilt the 690's up a bit vs horizontal ones? Mine are slightly tilted, but the darn things are so heavy and unwieldy that I'm loath to experiment unless I hear that it's worth the hassle.

A friend of mine made some oak stands that allow a staggered tilt, for a little or a lot, just remove a few wood blocks. Ingenious, and did help things (to my ears) whether it was because the sound waves weren't going parallel with the floor and ceiling, or that damn tweeter wasn't frying my ears.

I love the build quality and the clean-ness (a word?) of those 690's, but they're a bit tuff on my tired old ears. I gravitate these days to Epi stuff. Stupendous speakers, tho. Had 2 pair, will always keep the one pair (sold the others).
 
Those stands are sweet, @punprankster . I think stands are going to be the next piece of the puzzle for me. At least they shouldn't be TOO expensive.
Speaking of which, swapped out the VPI Scout for a VPI Classic 1. An audio shop three miles away was selling it for local pick up only. Got the turntable and a Gingko cover for about half the cost of a new Classic. If anyone is interested in a modded up Scout, hit me up.

The shop also had a Clearaudio Performance. Looked pretty sweet. The Classic was my ultimate target for a table - I can't think of any other table out there that I actually lusted after - but the Performance was nice. I asked to listen to it, but the rest of the set up was so unlike what I have set up that I the exercise was useless as a comparison.

So here is where we're at now: Classic into a Denon AU-320 SUT into a Parks Audio Budgie into a Rogue Audio Sphinx into the Blonde Yammies. TT, phono pre and speakers are done. Still toying with the idea of a Decware Super Zen Tori, but not anytime soon....

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Anyone have experience with stands that tilt the 690's up a bit vs horizontal ones? Mine are slightly tilted, but the darn things are so heavy and unwieldy that I'm loath to experiment unless I hear that it's worth the hassle.

How high up do you have your speakers raised?
 
Yeah, shipping is ridiculous from Japan, which turns a stellar deal into an "oh I guess I'll wait for one to turn up locally" situation. You'd think someone would throw a few packages in the shipping containers cars and other things use. China manages to get iPhones out for $5 a pop. I guess fuel or something is expensive over there.

I think you alluded to returning to the US at some point, and that would be an opportunity to bring some tables. Packing is a hassle, especially with fragile dust covers.
Someone told me that shipping charges on goods from China are subsidized from the government.I don't know how true it is but is sounds plausible.
 
How high up do you have your speakers raised?

About 6 inches off the ground and tilted back about 15 degrees (maybe less). They are as close to the bacl wall as I can get... about 10 inches of space between the wall and the top of the speaker.

In the Japanese literature from Yamaha, I see them placed flush against the wall and straight on the floor. I don't know if that's an artistic aesthetic or a hint about placement from the factory.
 
A friend of mine made some oak stands that allow a staggered tilt, for a little or a lot, just remove a few wood blocks. Ingenious, and did help things (to my ears) whether it was because the sound waves weren't going parallel with the floor and ceiling, or that damn tweeter wasn't frying my ears.

I love the build quality and the clean-ness (a word?) of those 690's, but they're a bit tuff on my tired old ears. I gravitate these days to Epi stuff. Stupendous speakers, tho. Had 2 pair, will always keep the one pair (sold the others).

Compared to the DefTechs the sound of the 690 would best be described as "clean" I guess to the DefTech's "fat" or "rich" My guess is the powered subs in the DefTechs have something to do with that.

The speakers that most remind me of the 690ii is the Hornshoppe "The Horn." If you want to hear a guy playing a guitar in your house, hire a guy to play a guitar or listen to a pair of Hornshoppe horns powered by a 2A3 SET flea amp. There's little difference between the two once those speakers are positioned well.

If you want to listen to Motorhead, AC/DC or Gorillaz, the DefTech powered towers are my favorite speaker.
 
Ok, sold the Scout. So turntables are done. For my final adventures in used gear, playing around with amps. I picked up a Decware Mini Torii on eBay.

I've been interested in Decware since the friend who first got me into hi-fi talked about them with a gleam in his eye. I know that the cult around this brand can get a bit Kool-Aidey, but a small-footprint, all-tube amp is something that, like a lot of us, I at least wanted to try. The seller threw in a second set of tubes and aftermarket power cord. I was kind of apprehensive in getting it, since I liked the Rogue Sphinx and had just done some tube rolling with its pair of 12au7s and the 6922s on my Budgie phono pre to get a sound I really liked - clear but muscular. But these don't come up used very often, so I thought I'd roll the dice.

So far the Decware sounds great. The Mini Torii is 5wpc, but the low wattage isn’t a problem at all on the Yamahas. I was listening to a vinyl copy of Funkadelic’s “Uncle Jam Wants You” at a louder volume than normal (hey, the wife’s not home) and the volume knobs are only at the 9 o'clock position. The sound is as muscular as the Sphinx but has quite a bit more air and separation. This album always sounded congested on earlier systems but now sounds nice and properly spaced out, in all the ways that term connotes. The soundstage is great, almost freakishly so. It extracts maybe a little more detail than the Sphinx but not so much more to bowl me over on that account. The bass, if anything, may be a little bit better on the MT - a bit more bounce to it.

There are a few PITAs included. It’s a dual mono set up, meaning every control switch/knob comes in pairs. So it’s fiddly. There are seven separate switches - two for power, two for inputs, two for headphone on/off, one for a tone control kill. Then there's two knobs to change feedback levels, two volume knobs and one tone control knob. Decware offers several knob choices, but the previous owner chose the brass ones that don’t have dots or dashes, meaning that everything has to be tuned by ear (I put tiny dots made of electrical tape on the volume knobs so I could at least make sure both outputs were at equal levels). Meanwhile, none of the switches or knobs are labeled, meaning it’s not exactly user-friendly. I know I’ll have to show my wife a couple of times how to work this when she wants to listen to the radio - which switches turn it on, which change the inputs, and which are the volume controls. And also that she’ll need to flip the switches on BOTH sides.

Also, with 10 tubes total on this thing, it gets warm. And with only two inputs, I either have to make/shell out for a switching box to go between tuner and DAC or change the RCAs manually.

The whole thing has a smaller footprint than the Sphinx but is hefty. Still, I kind of like the Sphinx’s plain ruggedness, at least in a house with two little kids running around. They knew how to turn that amp on (one push button) and how to change volume/ inputs at papa’s command. This one will be a little more of a learning curve. Still a little curious about a Decware Super Zen Triode, which have an even lower wattage but also seem a little more straightfoward in the UX.

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So I’ve decided that the next addition to my system will also be my first DIY project of any stature, a Tavish Design Vintage phono pre. I’ve done a few other very small projects in the past - made my own ICs and a few mono switch boxes (one now on sale on BT!), but nothing of this scale. But amp has gotten great reviews, the design uses a trio of 6SL7 tubes - something that interests me - and the scale of the job may be a little on the ambitious side for someone of my experience but not insurmountable. So out comes the soldering iron.

Received the PCB this week with the JFETs already soldered on. I had briefly toyed with the idea of making this strictly an MM phono stage, but after studying how little difference there in how many parts were needed for the MC stage - the JFETs added $15 to the PCB board, and another maybe $20 in other parts from Mouser and Digikey - I ultimately decided to go for the full package. Buying this new would be $600 with the Sovteks or nearly $700 with Tung-sols. I’m hoping to keep it under $400 with the Sovteks and a better, custom chassis - either an all-aluminum from Landfall or a wooden chassis of my own make with an aluminum top-plate from Landfall.

The schematics, item list and finished parts-placement diagram are well done on the Tavish instruction sheet. I’ve gotten all the electronic bits in Mouser, Digikey and Amazon carts and will ordering in two or three chunks to make sure I don’t misplace parts.
 
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PCB board came in earlier this week - nice and solid, and the silkscreen is very readable. I put in some ceramic tube sockets on one weekday evening, and today installed the resistors I got from Digikey. Will do the rest of the resistors once the first package from Mouser arrives.

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