[countingbackwards]

Having just recently auditioned Shindo gear alongside a few other options, I can confirm that to my ears, there is nothing at all about the Shindo sound that says "old fashioned". Sure the looks and construction methods appear to be old-fashioned, but the sound is a different matter altogether.

I think of "old fashioned" sound as a sort of romanticized mid-range with rolled off frequency extremes, a sound that feels like a nice warm blanket has been thrown over the music. That couldn't be further from what I characterize as the "Shindo" sound following various auditions.

Describing actual sonic attributes can be hard, but I'll try. To me, in the few systems I've heard Shindo preamps (Giscours and Aurieges), they have a tremendous clarity & sparkle, with an uncanny ability to allow you to focus on any part of the music you're listening to, whether it be the emotion of a voice, the detail in a plucked bass string, the sizzle of cymbals, or the dynamics of percussion. It's the exact opposite of "lush", in that it doesn't cover up details by temporally blurring any part of the frequency spectrum. The extremely high level of detail retrieval that Shindo preamps display, is the polar opposite of "old fashioned" IMHO.

And...their virtues are not limited to "old fashioned" music either. IMHO, a good component is a good component is a good component. There's no such thing as "good for classical" or "good for rock" or "good for jazz". When I read those descriptors, I presume that there's some sort of coloration in the gear that makes it less good for other genres of music than the one that people say it's "good" for. So while the average Shindo customer might be listening to jazz or chamber music, I am not. I have selected a Shindo preamp, based on the fact that it sounds excellent the music that I like...which is mainly indie rock. There's also the fact that its phono stage alone is good enough to be worth the cost of the whole unit.