Sean, at a certain point I could no longer endure certain capacitors or chips or transformers which seemed to clog a singer's lungs or take the flesh off of the world's best orchestras in my system. It was with the hope of vanquishing these petrifications that I started to imitate the solitude of a monk trying to integrate an old forgotten tube procured from the city where I currently live (Siemens F2a) into an amp circuit of original design (a failed project, BTW: Shindo does it better than I ever could) or build a Thel nuclear power generator for my system (an insane DIY project stemming from my dissatisfaction with the AC from the public electric works--I told my wife to actually shoot me if I ever got this kit, and I got it anyhow). Doing this I suddenly felt further distant from the well-lit and slick high-end showrooms than if they were on an undiscovered planet (advantage no. 1: DIY de-fetishizes the high-end commodity spectacle), and my eyes, turned now towards the DIY publications, started to envy the dynamism of autonomy and independence from the sometimes sick and self-defeating high-end audio market.
I have known many passionate, intelligent audiophiles that would not even open up a component in order to stare at a particular aspect of it that is infuriating (an undersized transformer, an embarrasingly cheap cap, etc.). They would consider it an absurd effort! Their nerves, warded off by the "Do not open! Danger of elecric shock! No user-serviceable parts inside!" labels (with or without skull and cross-bones depending on the voltage of your output tubes) has suspended their curiosity (not to mention audio magazines that do not publish photos of the circuit boards of components--mostly an American phenomenon). Nothing will waken in them the need to improve things, extinguished by warnings and warranty conditions, forever frightened off by those prohibitions or by the perceived loss of that prestige (and re-sale value) that many of them desire above all else. Proud owners of analytic, high-powered, dry and un-musical sytems, forever beyond the sounds of sizzling solder, beyond the world of DIY.
The true GREATNESS of DIYers (and, I would even include those with unknown components without prestige or hideously ugly components) consists in that incomparable power of defeating the fear of ridicule. I know some high-end snobs (that is exactly what they are) who cannot put a DIY cabe in their system without shame; DIYers invoke the "gift of DIY." An absolute preoccupation with elite brand-name manufacturers immobilizes those proud owners into becoming spectators of their own repressed freedom to manufacture their own systems, their imagination does not flow in the direction of this or that modification or adjustment. Yet THE AUDIOPHILE'S RATIONAL FUNCTION IS NOT TO LISTEN BUT TO BUILD; and REALLY TO LISTEN WE MUST PARTIALLY DEAFEN OURSELVES (to hum, to hiss, or other technical imperfections): that is the condition of ecstasy, of the one revealing audition, whereas DIY perception is exhausted in the horror of the "already heard," of an irreperable recognition scene which occurred at the beginning..
For the audiophile who has foreseen the futile exploits of the big-manufacturer audio world, and to whom this knowledge has afforded only the confirmation of an innate disenchantment, the scruples which keep him from picking up a soldering iron and a circuit schematic (and attending night courses in electrical engineering if needed, and accessing the DIY pages on the internet) accentuates his predestination to melancholy. And if he actually envies the DIYers exploits, it is not so much for their disgust with components as they are or their transcendent appetites (a saint lurks in the will of some famous DIYers, Risch among them), but rather for their victory over that fear of ridicule I mentioned before, which he cannot avoid and which keeps him on this side of the indecorum and sometimes downright ugliness of DIY components.
I know that was long, sorry, and I did not go into detail on my DIY projects (another time). DIYers easily forget about ridicule.
