My "last day" with the Montille - and keeping my options open

[Alberto]

Today, I pick up my new Shindo Cortese from Pitch Perfect Audio in San Francisco.

Last night, I gave the Shindo Montille a good "last listen" before replacing it.



The Montille sounded so great - so perfect in so many ways - that I thought to myself "Why do I even want something else?"

The short answer is that I am a big fan of the SET sound and the opportunity to have a 10+10W set (as opposed to the single-digit SET watts I experienced in the past) was too good to pass up.

I expect that the Cortese will shine where most SETs shine, in that magic and liquid midrange. By all reports, the Cortese should also do great things to the bass. But I will be very surprised if it will match the Montille on some instruments like the piano. There are some things that push-pull amps do very well and piano is one of them IMO.

Fortunately, I decided not to trade in the Montille (hence the quotes around the "last day") - and I've set up my rack so that I can have both amps handy and can change from one to the other in less than a minute.

My expectation is that - after the initial honeymoon with the new Cortese - I will be selecting amps based on listening material for that session.

With my new set-up I now have 4 different possible configurations:

1. source -> Shindo Auriges -> Shindo Montille
2. source -> Shindo Auriges -> Shindo Cortese
3. source -> McIntosh C34V -> Shindo Auriges -> Shindo Montille
4. source -> McIntosh C34V -> Shindo Auriges -> Shindo Cortese

This gives me a lot of flexibility and opportunity to match the equipment to the recording (and my listening mood: soft, loud, smooth, dynamics, etc.)

At some point, I might add back a high-powered solid state amp for when I really need a lot of power and dynamics (e.g. Mahler)

I love having options!

I'll let you guys know how the Cortese sounds sometime tomorrow. I am super-excited - and glad that I can afford to not make an either/or decision between amps.

Alberto