Sepas
 

SEPAS = Southeast PA Audio Society.
15 of us gathered at Mark's house in Lincoln University, PA the Sunday afternoon before Super Bowl weekend. Everyone brings a bit of food & drink & music and any gear they may feel like dragging along. We generally gather 3-6 times per annum with no particular schedule. But, the mood has struck again, and we are gathering at Keith's in West Chester, PA this next Sunday, the 17th. We are generally an LP & tube & vintage crowd, but have been alerted that this next gathering will be mostly digital for some strange reason. The following are a few pic's of our latest soiree. In the 2nd pic I'm the one with arms folding standing behind the lamp shade & Jim (ehoove on AAf) is standing nearest to me with arms folded. Dave (Mikado 463) is seated behind the crock-pot in pic #3 and Mark, our host, is standing to the left. Forgotten what the vintage tube amp is, but the other is a SE MOSFET amp built by Mike, a professor from Bucknell (seated facing the camera in pic #2). Uses a pair of microwave oven power supplies to run everything and sounds great (with the right speakers).

All are welcome to join in the fun. If interested, PM me for the address of Sunday's meet.

https://www.audioaficionado.org/atta...1&d=1549931814
https://www.audioaficionado.org/atta...1&d=1549931860
https://www.audioaficionado.org/atta...1&d=1549931860
https://www.audioaficionado.org/atta...1&d=1549931860

Good stuff, enjoy!

I already let Keith know depending on what time I get done shooting clays I plan on attending, hope to see you there Glenn......

Dropping the wife for lunch with her GFs so my time will be somewhat limited. Good luck on the course.

“You hit the ball, you find your ball, go home you’re a winner”

George Carlin :)

Indeed.............. sporting clays is often described as 'golf with a shotgun'. :thumbsup:

OK............. nine of us gathered at Keith's place yesterday and not a picture was taken, which is too bad. Keith probably has 50+ pieces of vintage gear (3 RtR - Crown & a pair of Tandbergs), many Luxman, Hafler, etc. We listened primarily to a pair of Luxman MB-3045 tube monoblocks driving one of his renovated pairs of Dahlquist DQ-10. Source was a Thorens TD-125 with ZYX LOMC thru either his Crown preamp or my Ray Samuels F-117 phono preamp into Keith's ARC SP9 preamp to the MB-3045s. Also compared a Schiit Modi from laptop FLAC files to a CDP (think it was a Rega) to a Shanling M3s. To my ears, the FLAC files on the Shanling M3s provided the best sound, but we did not vote. We ended the day listening to Thain's partially restored Pilot EL34 amp driving the DQ-10. Great mid-range & bass from a 50yr+ old amp.

Attendees were Dave (Mikado463), Steve (musiqlover), Dan (DVass13) from AAf and Thain, Mark, Terry, Mike, myself and one more who escapes me without a pic to jog my memory. Good group and was nice to discover that the lead singer from the Go-Go's is actually a good musician on her own. Check out some of her non-GoGo work. Steve thinks he may be able to host us next go-round. If so, I'll post here when details are finalized.

Agreed Glenn, an 'eclectic good time' ! Keith's DQ-10's were a walk down memory lane for me. But listening to the genius of Ahmad Jamal's 'Heat Wave' that Mark brought over was the icing on the cake for me !

Thank you to all at yesterday's meet who welcomed me and chatted throughout the afternoon. This was a much better way to spend my day than sitting around a hotel answering work emails. Being both the newcomer and the 'young guy' I think I was more interested in listening to stories than music. I guess maybe the fact that my musical tastes seemed a bit different than the group's may have also played a part. Either way, it was nice meeting new faces and learning some of their backgrounds. I found this group was much more down to earth than some others I have met. There was much more focus on fixing and enjoying equipment already owned than on getting the newest/next best thing - which is a nice contrast to some of the threads seen on many of the forums.

It was a pleasure meeting you as well Dan !

Let's go back to the first post. The Bucknell prof is Eric. No problem missing names.
Thain in the tie-dyed shirt in third pic was our youngest member of SEPAAC and uses the oldest gear. He knows tubes. Glad to have him as a resource.

I've had the Lux tube amps since about 1983 and once I wore out the 8045G power tubes I parked them in their boxes waiting to convert them to KT88/6550 use. This took a number of years and the internet. With the web, an AAsylum member sent me a copy of the Luxman conversion document and I made the parts swaps but no joy. Balance and bias didn't work.

Talked to Thain about it and when he was over we looked at them, upside down, open and ON. 500V and he says do you have a jumper? I handed him the jumper, stepped way back and he proceeded to connect two spots in the amp. Voilà, they were up and running on some old tubes. Installed a wire and a new set of 6550s and I have something with these, Thanks Thain. And he did it just by looking. The conversion manual needed one more step added to the procedure. They are great amplifiers.

Thain has brought over refreshed tube gear to most of the events and he just wants to see how they sound on some of the other systems and of course show us how good the old gear really is once redone.

This gig was gonna be digital because Mark wanted to hear his new DAC, the Modi vs. an old CDP, a Rega as Glenn said, the Planet. Then Mark's laptop ran out of power and he didn't bring the power supply it was a short comparison.

I don't know why but folks bring over jazz records to these events. I enoyed the sound of my system so much yesterday, after everyone left I put on music for another 5 hours. But then I had changed a lot of things around in recent months, actually starting in about September, thinking summer, it's hot, let's put the tube amps away, but then realized it was nearly tube amp season so I started swapping the preamp and getting other parts right. Along with this was new stands for the DQ-10s and some more shelves. The room as Glenn said is full of gear.

The day before I had to repair a DQ-10 which lost low end making me think amp, just having put the Luxmans back in the system again from a month ago. So I looked at the amp then tried another DQ-10 on a different amp and it was the speaker. Got that fixed; a crimp connection in the crossover was intermittent, soldered a bridge in there, not going to happen again. Put the Luxman back together, moved gear around so Mark had a place to set up is laptop/DAC and was ready.

Someone says why don't you just get one system and be happy with it as he was questioning why we usually try different gear at our gigs. It is because we want to hear more than just a stack of one brand. There is lots of good/great audio gear and in the last few years we have listened to phono pres, cartridges, speakers, amps, preamps and such. It is just good to have a wider knowledgebase than that one stack of gear. I would hate to have just one stack and then 10 years later find out how much I was missing with some other item I could have tried. We all listen to different gear at the store, why not in the home setting with more listeners and some good discussion?

Anyway it was a good time had by all with some new faces added to the group to keep the group alive. We have had a few members move away and Seattle and China aren't Sunday afternoon driving distance. Looking forward to the next ones.

Just ask for something different. As I said, they bring over jazz, usually well recorded. I've got other music.

But it was nice to meet you and interesting how much you do to listen to different gear in your travels. Folks say listen to as much as possible to find what you like and I don't know very many that have done that as much as you say you have. Seems to validate our odd swap-in-different-gear behavior at these gigs.

Dan - it was a pleasure to meet you and talk headphone gear. Especially enjoyed learning about the technology you work with. Hope you can make it up to another audio bash at some point. Good luck getting those Wilson Sabrina.

Different gear to try at the next event.

Four (4) of got together for a 'road-trip' to Allentown to visit the best record store in the area (we got away with several albums - too bad 3rd Street Jazz in Philadelphia was unable to weather the digital debacle - it was the very best), Double Decker, and the adjacent BEK Hifi. Not only did we do well finding LPs, BEK kindly played a few of them thru a very Brinkman DD TT/TA with a Kiseki Purple Heart cartridge, Luxman preamp & tube power amp and a pair of Devore 0/93 and then Harbeth HL-5 speakers, all put together with Analysis Plus cables. All was good except the 'bad' (truly ) cheese-steaks we had for lunch. Am down to either a pair of Devore 0/96 or Klipsch Heritage speakers for this next year.

Our next SEPAS gathering is the weekend before the Superbowl. Always a good gathering with plenty of gear & music to hear/discuss.