LATEST ADDITIONS

John Atkinson | Mar 03, 1995 | First Published: Mar 03, 1994

Back in the summer of 1968, I bought a secondhand pre-CBS Fender Precision Bass guitar for the grand sum of £35 (then about $75) (footnote 1). It was so cheap because the previous owner had pretty much scratched the sunburst finish to ribbons. The P-Bass may have looked like roadkill but it played like a dream, so I decided to refinish its body. Paint stripper removed the remains of the original nitrocelloluse lacquer, leaving me with a white wood body—ash, I understand—which I carefully sanded and stained. Contrary to what you might expect, the finish of an electric guitar does have an effect on the sound, so I thought long and hard about how I was going to varnish the body. I ended up applying thinned gloss-finish polyurethane, which I then sanded, repeating this process some five or six times, using finer and finer sandpaper, until the application of a final coat of varnish gave as close to a mirror-smooth finish as I could get...which wasn't anything near as perfect as the piano-lacquer rosewood finish on the samples of the Monitor Audio Studio 6 loudspeaker that Monitor Audio USA sent for review!

Recording of the Month

Recording of February 1995: Two Sides to Every Story

Thomas Conrad | Feb 25, 1995

TIGER OKOSHI: Two Sides to Every Story
Tiger Okoshi, trumpet; Mike Stern, electric guitar; Gil Goldstein, acoustic piano; Dave Holland, acoustic bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums
JVC JVC-2039-2 (CD only). Jim Anderson, eng.; Akira Taguchi, prod. DDD? TT: 65:20

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Spica Angelus loudspeaker

John Atkinson, Various | Feb 25, 1995 | First Published: Feb 25, 1988

I am puzzled. No, really. I know you find it hard to believe that we sacerdotes of the golden-eared persuasion could ever be perplexed, but I have been pondering the imponderables of ports. Ever since the classic work of Richard Small and Neville Thiele in the early '70s showed how the low-frequency response of any box loudspeaker can be modeled as an electrical high-pass filter of some kind, with the relevant equations and data made available to all, there would seem to be very little reason why all loudspeakers with the same extension should not sound alike (or at least very similar) below 100Hz. Yet after reviewing 20 dynamic loudspeakers (and using 24) in the same room over the last seven months, I am led to the conclusion that speakers vary as much in the quality of their mid-to-upper bass as they do in any other region. A few are dry, more are exaggerated in this region; some are detailed and "fast," most are blurred, with the upper bass "slow" (by which I mean that the weight of bass tone seems to lag behind the leading edges of the sound).

As We See It

Bits is Bits, Right?

John Atkinson | Feb 08, 1995

"Never explain, never apologize." But in this month's "As We See It," I intend to do both. First, the apology:

Records To Die For

1995 Records To Die For

Stereophile Staff | Feb 06, 1995

"I've got a great idea, RL," said John Atkinson to me one fine fall morning five years ago, as we relaxed over cappuccino and croissants in the slowly rotating editorial suite of the imposing Stereophile Tower that---surmounted by a heroic statue of J. Gordon Holt, thumb down, lip curled, great bronze cigarette glowing triode-red---rises like a Tube Trap of the Gods to dominate the downtown skyline of our round brown town of La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis. In a paroxysm of the editorial euphoria that comes upon him when he suddenly envisions page after page of Stereophile copy which he himself does not have to write, JA then outlined for me the annual list of the Greatest Performances recorded in the Greatest Stereo Sound that has since become the "Records To Die For" we all love and hate---one of Stereophile's most entertaining, annoying, and downright fun features.

Tonearm Reviews

Airtangent tonearm

Arnis Balgalvis | Feb 04, 1995 | First Published: Feb 04, 1989

Tonearms, like Rodney Dangerfield, never get no respect. When was the last time you heard someone actually argue the merits of a tonearm? Right, not recently. "Hey, I just got that new Gizmo tonearm!" "Oh yeah? What cartridge are you using?" People pick out the cartridge for praise and consideration time after time, while the tonearm gets taken for granted.

Solid State Power Amp Reviews

YBA 2 HC power amplifier

John Atkinson | Jan 30, 1995 | First Published: Jan 30, 1994

"My car is supercharged, not turbocharged, so you see there's no throttle lag," explained Yves-Bernard André as he reversed at what seemed like 80mph up a narrow cobbled Paris street. "D'accord," I mumbled, afraid to loosen the white-knuckled grip I had on the passenger grab handles. Yves-Bernard's car may have been pointing the right way down the one-way street, but it was not actually traveling in that direction. Okay, so it was 2am and the good residents of the Dix-septième Arrondissement were busy stacking Zs (en français, "emplier les ronflements"). But I still didn't think we would've been able to explain the logic of the situation to the gendarmes (les flics, en français).

Stand Loudspeaker Reviews Subwoofer Reviews Budget Component Reviews

NHT SuperZero loudspeaker & SW2 subwoofer

Corey Greenberg | Jan 30, 1995 | First Published: Jan 30, 1994

What makes someone a good hi-fi reviewer? A fine critical sensibility? A good technical background? Ears? Eyes? Nose? Throat? So many different people are reviewing audio gear these days that it's downright impossible to characterize a good reviewer. But I do know that Beavis and Butt-head would make killer hi-fi reviewers!

Tube Power Amp Reviews

Cary Audio Design CAD-805 monoblock power amplifier

Dick Olsher, Various | Jan 29, 1995 | First Published: Jan 29, 1994

Lee de Forest filed for a US patent on his "Audion"—the first triode—on October 25, 1906, but never could explain why it worked (footnote 1). It was up to Armstrong and Langmuir, in their pioneering work, to place the hard-vacuum triode on firm scientific ground. When the US entered World War I in April 1917, the Army had to rely on French tubes. Six months later, Western Electric was mass-producing the VT-1 receiving tube and the VT-2 transmitting tube. However, it was only in the decade following World War I, as designers became conversant with the triode amplifier, that many of the crucial elements of tube amplification were nailed down. Technical issues such as coupling two gain stages and selection of optimal coupling impedance were already resolved by the mid-1920s. The triode ruled supreme until the tetrode came along in 1926, followed in 1929 by the pentode from Philips's research laboratories in Holland.

CD Player/Transport Reviews

Linn Karik/Numerik CD player

Robert Harley | Jan 28, 1995 | First Published: Jan 28, 1992

When the Compact Disc was first introduced nearly ten years ago, many were critical of the sound quality from this medium that promised "Perfect Sound Forever." To many sensitive listeners digital playback was a travesty that paled by comparison to even modestly priced turntable/arm/cartridge combinations. Ironically, those listeners who first praised CD sound have been forced to recant when confronted by the huge improvements in digital to analog conversion (and A/D conversion) seen in the past few years.

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