Last night I finished re-wiring my Dad's old 60's Heathkit AA-111 EL-84 stereo amp and popped it into the system, displacing the Bottlehead Paramours. Everything worked fine though the sound was at first a bit thin and dry and not much depth to the soundstage. After one CD's play the sound opened up a lot and sweetened and dynamics improved considerably. I left the player on replay and watched the required West Wing with my wife, did the required Quality Time conversation prior to my wife's heading off to bed and then returned to the audio system for one last check on the sound before retiring myself. Well, boy oh boy! Heath must have used some pretty darn good iron in these baby's. the 3 hours of warming up really brought the amps up to truly great sound. The new Solen tin foil coupling caps sounded very good to my ears and I'll have to try them in other circuits. The Theater 4's really liked the extra power with startling dynamics and the RCA EL-84's have a distinct sweetness of tone which is appealing (though not the veracity of the 2A3's). So, I think I'll keep the Heath in the system for a while, build a new "Soul Sister" preamp, put together some cabinets so that Dave Cope can finally get to hear what all his mega $$ drivers really sound like and squeeze in a little bit of Christmas sometime in the next 3 or so weeks!Garland
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