Final (?) review

The last thing I learned with this amp is to have patience. The first thing I learned was that it accurately recreates what ever you feed it. It's not colored, it's not artificial. It is a Monitor Class amp, and is called that for a reason. After reading what Graham puts into his designs, that is not a surprise. From what I gather he strives for neutrality, and he has met that goal.

  From last Saturday or so, it;s now the following Sunday 5 am cst, until 14 hours ago or so, I couldn't listen to it. Part of that was my pc's fault. I had some issues that until about 3pm Sat I figured it out. Since then, my headphones have only been off to go.... take care of business and otehr things. Even as late as 4 nours or so ago, I thought the gain was to high. That has even come around. Thats why I said have patience. I figured once 500 hours passed what is is what is. Mine took over 530 hours or so.

 This little beast completely represents the whole spectrum with out any flaws.,meaning no flaws from the little beast. Some stuff you just have to deal with the flaws from the master tapes. After all, this is history that will never be repeated again.  Earlier I listened to some Grateful Dead, 5-12-81 where Jerry dedicates " He's Gone " to Bob Marley, that smoked, then it led into Drums and I have never heard such sonics in a recording before. I kid you not, I could hear the difference of which drum skin was hit and the reverberations of each drum head, and the sticks hitting the rims, and the cymbals and the gongs all blasting at the same time and it was perfectly clear. Each and every hit,strike,smash,bang was crystal clear. That's two drummers mind you each with massive amounts of  percussive instruments they are hammering on. I'm still grinning thinking about it.


 

WE will never see the likes of waht came out of the late '60's into real early '70's. Before commercialization, or rather, being forced to succumb to commercieralisation . Total free form where a group a musicians get together and flat out jam. Damn I was born about 10 years to late

 Edit to change early to late in last sentence. Gotta be the SOlo's fault trying to hard to hear the music.


Edited by Charley Phogg - 24 Feb 2008 at 6:02pm

Listening to some ELP right now. Having seen them a few times I can honestly say that this amp has to be as accurate as it gets, IMHO. I even sat close enough to Kieth Emerson to reach out and hand him a beer at a local pub one time. When it was him and Carl Palmer and I can't recall the other guy off hand, but they went by the name of 3.

 Hearing Greg Lake do C'est La Vie. Still, You Turn Me On and  Lucky Man is amazing. It's like he's standing smackdab in the middle of your head and that amazing voice of his carries so far beyond my head it seems as if it's filling up the entire room I'm in. The imaging is so perfect it is as if you were there. But yet you hear things that you could never possibly hear unless you were on stage with them.


 Edited again for clearity


Edited by Charley Phogg - 27 Feb 2008 at 9:12pm

Thank you tg.

 

The Solo really does go through a series of changes during the run in period, Grahams prototype discrete headphone amp I built the other day is currently going through this burning in process, the Solo was exactly the same and also needed time to mature.
Things I've noticed during the burn in  is that the sound can alter over just a few days, its a known fact that components like new electrolytic capacitors go through a forming process
 So I tend to give any new unit a  couple of weeks until things have bedded in before any serious listening

Once you understand how electronic components work you'll know that the capacitor forming is not placebo

Please do post your findings though Dave once your Solo arrives, I'm sure you will be surprised