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Hi Guy,

guy sergeant wrote:

My experience with the 834p stemmed from having one at home for about a year soon after it was launched. I did try different types of ECC83 in it which did change it's balance slightly but not enough to make me like it. My main problem with it was that it lacked clarity. Everything sounded smeared and hazy. It was overly euphonic (tubey) and fundamentally altered the timbre of instruments it set out to reproduce rendering all with the same signature of even order distortion. It also sounded slow and to my ears undynamic.

Hmm, I'm allways being equally abused by one side for my audio absolutism (those are those who fail to read what I write well enough and presume anything I write is an absolute pronouncement and then find statements that appear to be contradicting each other) while the absolutists (among whom I am counting Romy I'm afraid) revile my Audio Relativism which allows that there is actually merit in items that are not too suited to their personal absolutes.

The EAR834P is such a case. I cannot quite relate either the enthusiam of Romy for the original and my mods, neither can I relate too well to your comments. I think it has merit and is a surprisingly effective piece of equipment, if you make sure to buy the cheapest version.

It is IMHO non too difficult to make a better phono stage, but in commercial terms, for the same money, with the kind of margins EAR USED TO give to dealers it would be a hard job.

In some ways the EAR 834P is the DENON DL103 of the Phonostages, to me, not the last word but used correctly it gets enough right that to spend more you need to get something of extremely higher performance, which tends to be not often available.

guy sergeant wrote:

I would like to try to build a equaliser using the Tango EQ600P LCR modules or the S&B equivalent. I heard one once and it did sound very promising.

S&B now has a 10K version of the same, I'm still waiting for my own, but using a 10K T-Network will make the overall design rather simpler that the 600R Impedance one. From those that have gone out and where phonostages have been build the general effect sonically seems identical to the 600R version.

Ciao T

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