Thiel Owners

JA - Things got complicated. I now have 2 matching amps coming this Thursday. I plan to send one to Jim Williams and keep the other for comparison when JW’s comes back. Both can be compared to the GFAII which I have in my stable.

JW’s approach is to identify weak links in fundamentally great designs and upgrade those weaknesses to new strengths. The upgraded GFA555s will have bandwith of 1Hz to 300kHz with decidedly lower noise and faster slew rate. Jim works in the pro world and doesn’t use ’audiophile’ parts, but rather best-of-form ’normal’, high-performance parts to achieve his results at minimal cost. His GFA555 upgrade costs $225 plus freight.

May I take a little side-trip here? I met Jim when I got two mic preamps from Tom Jung, founder of DMP. Tom used CS5s as his mastering reference speakers in his ground-breaking early digital label, and passed his STs along to me for my recording work. The Studio Technologies Mic-PreEminence was 1980s state of the art, but were a little noisy and had become less than best-of-form in some areas. Tom told me about Jim, who re-worked one of my STs with stellar results. I sold the other ST to a fellow audiophile recordist who had it upgraded. Subsequent upgrades included a reel-to-reel and recently the CS3.5 EQ. Jim doesn’t normally ’do’ power amps, but he uses GFA555 as his own amps, and has tweaked them to their best performance. I’m looking forward to his work on mine!

tomthiel

Wonderful! Take all of the side-trip(s) you want. I am a big fan of the DMP label.

Excellent recordings there. Good to read that the Amp(s) arrived and 1 is headed to JW for upgrade. Exciting times indeed. Our hobby can benefit from all of the "modders" possible. Especially, CD and SACD players.

I hope that you are well this August evening. Summer starts to wind down now.

Happy Listening!

JA -

Here in New Hampshire we have different seasons than the USA. Winter starts in earnest in late December and through January and February we can get 10' of snow (12' in 2015.) Winter transitions to 'sap season' in late February / early March as the Maple sap runs and the sugar shacks boil it down to syrup. Temperatures can still be below zero at night. As daytime temps rise, we enter 'mud season' where a car can be mired to the axles on our gravel town roads, and roads are closed to vehicles over 6K#. Then comes 'black fly season' - biting insects that didn't exist in Kentucky > merging into 'mosquito season' in May. We say that spring weather keeps the riffraff at bay.

Then comes 4th of July when it turns to heaven and the 'summer people' come to fill their camps and lakes and villages. Varieties of glorious weather without appreciable insects continue into Autumn, sometimes 'till Thanksgiving. Even in the heat of August, night-time temperatures often drop into the 50s, and regularly the 60s, making the heat of the day more of a joy than a burden. September / October provide a glorious Autumn with forest canopy colors to rival anywhere and the arrival of the 'leaf peepers' bringing appreciation and tourism. Around Halloween to Thanksgiving, things turn rough and 'the bottom of November' can be quite deep. Christmas is more often fairy-book than not, and many older folks head south when snow starts piling up in earnest in January. Summer cars are stored and locals (year-rounders) hunker down for the very short days and long nights of winter.

For us, August is high summer, all month long. It shifts hard when school starts and families migrate to that reality. I came here in 1996, related to work, and feel fortunate to have found this village in this region. Northern New England seems more like England than the USA in its traditions and frame of mind.

tomthiel

Thank You for the 4 seasons run-down there in New England. Do you know if Rob has been affected by the flood in Kentucky?

Happy Listening!

Rob should be OK. He's in Lexington which is 100 miles west of the trouble, and on a high limestone dome - good surface drainage and underground caves. Plus my daughter in Lexington would tell me if they had problems.