Art Dudley Listening

But note also, irrespective of the loudspeaker in use: In every listening session I've enjoyed so far, the Cortese has taken at least an hour to warm up—and even then its sound continues to improve over at least another hour. I don't recall another Shindo that has taken as long to perform at its best, and that leads me to guess that this sample still has a while to go before it is fully broken in. Which is kind of fun, really.

And note that other Shindo setup tricks to which I've alluded in the past hold true here. In particular, also like all Shindo amps of my acquaintance, it seems that the enclosure for this one was "tuned" during its design, presumably in order to resonate just a bit throughout a wide range of frequencies rather than resonate sharply within one or more small ranges of frequencies (or to be so massive that it doesn't resonate in real time but rather stores energy). But over time, especially during shipping, materials contract and expand, and by the time it reaches you some of the casework's mechanical joints may be too tight. I find that systematically loosening each screw on the top panel and, especially, on the Plexiglas decorative front plate, and then turning them in so they're just barely snug and no more pays sonic dividends.

On a related note, as virtually every Shindo owner comes to know, their amps all sound better—bigger, more open, and more vivid, with sound images that are more palpable and present—with their tube cages removed. Theories abound as to the reason(s) why, but with the new Cortese at hand I think I have some idea: This amp too sounded slightly better without its cage in place, but only slightly; it sounded very, very good with its cage in place, which is a first in my experience. Wondering why, I had a close look at the means of holding in place the Cortese's cage and I saw that Takashi Shindo has added two very small brackets, not to the steel casework but to the comparatively spare aluminum plate above the tube sockets. Contrast that with the company's previous amps, in which the steel tube cage bolts directly to tapped holes drilled into the steel casework—and thus damps that casework, at least a little. That's just a guess—but whatever the reason, people with small children or inquisitive, heat-loving pets can run this amp with its very attractive cage in place, confident that they're hearing at least 90% of what this Cortese can do at its best.

And what this amp can do at its best is remarkable.

Artisanal, or Art is anal
First of all, the Cortese did precisely what I expect a good single-ended amplifier to do: It put recorded instruments and voices in front of me with a near-psychedelic level of presence. Nowhere was that more audible than while listening to Haydn's String Trio in G, Op.53, performed by the Grumiaux Trio (LP, Philips 802 905 LY—an astonishingly good-sounding early-'70s record that isn't at all difficult to find). And the Shindo offered an appropriately large sense of scale on this slightly close-miked recording. I've been fortunate to attend two annual gala events put on by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, one of which featured a performance, perhaps 20' from my table, of the Schubert Quintet in C, with the great David Finckel as one of the two cellists; listening through the Cortese to recordings of small string ensembles was as close as I've come to enjoying at home the same sense of scale and overall feel.

But the Cortese did even more with that Haydn LP: It gave me more of the bounce of bow on string—even more than the Shindo Haut-Brion, which is tonally richer but not quite as limber—and it captured those nuances of note-attack timing that reminded me I was listening to music made by humans and not computers. Given the assumption that every good recording ever made contains at least 0.1% of pure animal chaos—more for the Replacements, less for any recording produced by Peter Asher—the Cortese was the rare amp that didn't filter it out or gloss over it.

Sonically, as noted above, the latest Cortese sounded less timbrally rich and maybe a hair less textured than the Shindo Haut-Brion, a 20Wpc amp that uses two 6L6 pentode tubes per side. But once fully warmed up, the Cortese was capable of making music that sounded physically larger than its push-pull stablemate. The Cortese was also slightly more extended in both its trebles and its bass range, the latter notable in Neil Young's "Albuquerque," from Roxy: Tonight's the Night Live (LP, Reprise 566051-1), where it found more power than I've heard before in Billy Talbot's electric bass lines. The same could be said of Bob Cranshaw's enormous-sounding double bass on "Yesterdays," from Sonny Rollins and Coleman Hawkins's Sonny Meets Hawk! (LP, RCA/Classic Records LSP-2712). And the two isolated bass drum strikes fairly early in the first movement of Berg's Violin Concerto ("Dem Andenken eines Engels"), by Itzhak Perlman and Seiji Ozawa with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (LP, Deutsche Grammophon 2531 110), sent shivers down my spine.

More important, the Cortese was almost uniquely successful at allowing Berg's odd melodies their full emotional weight. An example: 57 seconds into the piece, a sustained E-flat on the violin resolves into E natural, just a heartbeat before the orchestral backing settles into a very staid-sounding G minor chord. I have no explanation for why that brief passage is so moving—but with the Cortese in my system, it melted my heart as never before.

The latest Cortese was also crazy detailed—but musically detailed. Yes, you'll hear audience sounds, air-conditioning systems kicking in, dropped bows, and traffic noises from the street outside the hall, all of which have their place: If they're on the record, you might as well be able to hear them. But far more important, if you want to hear what the trombones are really up to in the Berg concerto, then this is your amp.

Is the new Cortese better than any or all of the older Corteses? Does the owner of an older F2a—one with a single 6AW8A per channel and all-solid-state rectification—need to consider trading it in for the new one? With most other brands of my acquaintance, it might be easier for me to find an answer, be it yes or no. Some companies seem content to leave well enough alone—nothing wrong with that!—while others strive to make things genuinely better, and still others play to our cynicism and make new versions of their products just so they can keep getting new versions of our money. But if I had to guess, I'd say that Shindo keeps revising their earliest amp designs for the same reason that Miles Davis stopped putting "My Funny Valentine" on his set lists. It's not a criticism of either that song or those amps, but rather the simple fact that some people just have to keep moving, and have to keep finding different truths in the fields of endeavor that are most important to them. So on the one hand, yes: I'm tempted to say that this is my favorite Cortese so far—and on the other, I can't forget that listening to a Jimi Hendrix album through a 2007 Cortese driving a pair of Shindo-rebuilt Altec 604E speakers was one of the five most hypnotic hi-fi experiences I've ever had.

In either case, I don't doubt that all of Shindo's artisanal, vintage-inspired amplifiers just get better with use; I intend to keep this one for myself, so I guess I'm on the road to finding out.

We screwed up
In our December 2019 issue, in my Recording of the Month piece on Apple/Universal's new 3-LP Anniversary Edition of the Beatles' Abbey Road (p.139), my ratings were garbled during their trip from my computer to the printed page: I had awarded the set our highest rating for sonics—five stars, or, for the non-verbal, *****—and yet what arrived in my mailbox was a copy of Stereophile in which I awarded the record only three stars. What bullshit! I would suggest that heads will roll, but because it might have been my own fault, I'll keep piously quiet.

In any event, my apologies to our readers and to the very nice people at Apple and Universal Music, not to mention Ringo and Paul.