Has anyone had any experience with the Quicksilver phono stage?
To Fritz, Quicksilver, and all the exceptional makers trying to get the word out
It's been a while since I've posted. When you're in the sandwich generation, life intervenes. I've not had much chance to keep up with the conversations here, but I've managed some changes in my system, including a new set of speakers from a local audio fixer and DIY genius. These new speakers are wide baffle design with JBL woofers (15") and Beyma AMT tweeters. 97db sensitivity. I've put a picture on my system page.
But I've been thinking about Fritz and Quicksilver for an odd reason. There's an interesting guy on YouTube, Andy Edwards. He's a drummer and teacher with interestingly provocative analyses of rock, jazz, and music. Recently in a video entitled "Ten things non-musicians get wrong about music," he was pointing out how the music industry tends to advance very select fractions of talented people. There is a tremendous funneling effect that excludes a huge percentage of talented people. They are better than many of the most popular musicians, but they cannot get a hearing. They have to make a living in other ways -- but they are extraordinarily talented, nonetheless. This tends to skew the public perception of what a good musician is because people hear what they hear and then celebrate it because it's what they know. Subjective bias leads to (false) objective estimations of how good musicians can be. (Take one case in point: Kazuhito Yamashita. Look him up. Staggering genius on the guitar who didn't become a worldwide phenomenon.)
This made me think about two of the pieces in my system -- Fritz speakers and Quicksilver amps. They are complete unknowns to 99% of the buying public, and if you look around on YouTube or other media, it's pretty hard to find much promotion. It's all word of mouth, and even if they did advertise, who would hear them? With Klipsch and Focal and Yamaha et al. taking up most of the available attention economy, how could their message get through?
I am so grateful to the members of this forum for helping guide me to Fritz and Quicksilver. They are the most listenable, comfortable, and high-quality gear I've owned. I've heard amazing things about other brands -- such as Audio Note -- but I'm paying for college, soon for two kids, and that just ain't happening. These are not the best things money can buy, but as value propositions, you really cannot do better, IMHO.
For those whose ears are perking up about Fritz for the first time, I have done two reviews of what I think is his better speaker, the Carbon 7 SE MKII.
Written -- https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/review-fritz-heiler-s-carbon-7-se-mk-2-bookshelf-speakers?
Video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpI6eAvc4_M
I've tried them with everything: they're tube friendly (Quicksilver, 60w); they're class D friendly (DIY Hypex-based amp, 275W); they're class A friendly (Pass XA-25, about 25-80w); they're class AB friendly (Adcom, Akitika, 60w).
I like them because if I focus in on them, they perform but if I just want them on in the background, they're lovely that way, too.
Hope everyone has a good 2025.
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@thecarpathian I have the 12at7 line stage. I have owned the original 12ax7 and the 6dj8 remote. I been using it for 10 years so my impression is high compared to many other preamps that I have owned. The only problem is I find the gain (18db ) is on the high side compared to most line stage preamps. BTW, if you need features like mono, remote and balance the QS does not have those options!! |
Thanks. Great, now I want them both! I agree with you on the beryllium tweeters. I had Fritz's Carrera's and could not take the tweeter no matter what I tried. Mids and lower registers were quite good. also had Ascends Sierra 2's so I have an idea of both house sounds. Question: If you could keep only one pair, between the two which one would you choose? |
@decooney Thanks for the kind words.
The ribbon tweeter and the soft dome tweeter make one difference; the Fritz are softer up top but not blurry-soft. They tame most recordings that are a bit bright (e.g. Fagen’s Nightfly). The Ascends are clear and brighter -- but not as bright as, say, a Beryllium tweeter (which I cannot stand). The RAAL ribbon is quite high quality and it provides a kind of airy transparency to the highs which are almost always not-too-bright. The bass on both are good, with the Fritz being surprisingly good for a bookshelf. It’s not "fudging" the bass -- it really digs low in an honest way. The Ascends are the same. Fritz’s midrange is perhaps the "killer app" of the speaker. They have this way of putting instruments or voices "in the room" but not in that freaky way that some extremely expensive speakers do. There’s just this presence that seems to be happening without a technological interface. The midrange on the Ascend is excellent, too; honest and not too forward. But it’s not "magical." The soundstage on both is very good and detailed, with extra size and articulation going to the Ascends; if I listened to *mostly* symphonic or large and complex music and I had to choose one speaker, it would be the Ascend. For small ensembles, jazz, I’d say Fritz. For a lot of hard-driving rock, it’s a tie based on your ears. The Fritz are like my good leather jacket; comfortable, nice looking but casual. The Ascends are like my nice peacoat -- sharp looking, stylish, classy but also easy. I had the QS linestage (non-remote) and upgraded it. But after a few months of trying it back and forth with a 6sn7-based preamp, I sold it. It’s solidly made, and quiet as hell, but really doesn’t add much character, even with some nice tube changes. If I had to choose btw a good solid state preamp and the QS line stage, I’d just eliminate the tubes from that stage of my system, altogether. |
Another
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I think a lot of new Magnepan owners owners find themselves surprised by that company’s speakers’ need for very high power at low impedances. I bought my first pair of Maggies---the original Tympani T-I---in 1973, and bi-amped it with an Audio Research D-75 and D-51 power amps. The original Maggie was an 8 ohm load, while all future models have been 4 ohm (dropping to 3 ohms at some frequencies). My current Tympani T-IVa’s require massive amounts of power. When I have them set up (not currently possible), I bi-amp them using a PS Audio 200w/ch amp on the two bass panels, and a Music Reference RM-200 MK.2 on the tweeter/mid panels. Roger Modjeski designed the RM-200 to do two things: 1- produce 100 watts from a single pair of KT-88’s. And 2- To perform well into low impedance loudspeakers. The RM-200 (in original and MK.2 iterations) was Michael Fremer’s reference "affordable" tube amp for over a decade. The Magnepan ribbon tweeter, by the way, is a beauty, one of the best available.
In contrast, while the Eminent Technology LFT-8b shares roughly the same sensitivity as the Maggies (83-84dB), it’s 8 ohm impedance is much friendlier to tube amps. And if you bi-amp the LFT-8b (easy to do, as it has dual binding posts, one for the woofer, another for the t/m panel), the t/m panel presents an 11 ohm load, great for tube amps. Use any old amp on the woofer (I still have an Electron Kinetics Eagle 2A, a great low frequency reproducer), and either a Music Reference RM-9 Mk.2 (using 8 EL34 tubes) or RM-200 Mk.2 (4 KT88’s), both producing 125w into 8 ohms, plenty for the LFT-8b m/t panels.
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Excellent thread because of the tenor and tone of the conversation; namely, informative and gracious. As for small batch speaker manufacturers, it wouldn't be a lost effort to include Bache Audio among the talented yet often overlooked speaker designers worth discovering or re-discovering. Designer Geg Belman's Bache Audio 002 Limited full-range speakers, which I own, deserve a listen. |
To @bdp24 the first time I heard Eminent Technology LFT-8s and LFT-16s was at my local dealer using my same Quicksilver Mono 120 amplifiers. I won’t forget the listening experience because it represented its own type of sound compared to all the other AudioNote and SoundLab electrostatic speakers there. Another one of the exceptional makers, getting the word out came as a result of hearing the combination in person. If I resale my upgraded Quicksilver M120s tube amps down the road, I could only hope they would go to an ET speaker owner, either model. To this day I felt it was one of those amazing match-ups and synergies I’ve heard first hand. Makes me want to bring my personal Quicksilver amps over to the dealer to play them on the LFT-8s since I’ve upgraded the coupling caps and power caps to top shelf Mundorf & Nichicons. I bet it would sound even better than last time I heard them play with the standard amps and tubes. |
An excellent post @hilde45!
Most of my favorite artists these days are known only to their small, cult-level audience, whose members tend to be older music lovers. But in exchange for being fewer in number, they are more faithful in their love. Flash-in-the-pans come and go, fading away as quickly as they rose to stardom, but a lot of superior artists soldier on, year after year, making one great album after another. They never make a fortune, one reason they keep working! By the way, Nick Lowe has a new album out. He actually DID make a fortune from one of his songs---"(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, And Understanding." He’s out on the road now, backed by Los Straitjackets.
The hi-fi business has it’s equivalent; small, often 1-man operations, where the designer is often also the one making the product. Roger Modjeski of Music Reference even wound his own transformers. By the way, Mike Sanders of Quicksilver was one amplifier designer/builder whom Roger expressed admiration of. Tim DeParacini of EAR-Yoshino was another.
I have made bringing to the attention of Audiogon members the Eminent Technology LFT loudspeakers---a planar-magnetic loudspeaker sharing some similarities with the far better known Magnepan models---a project of mine. I’ll guess that Magnepan sells at least a thousand pair of Maggies to every pair of LFT-8’s ET sells, in spite of the fact that---imo---the LFT-8b is far superior to the MG1.7i, though the two are almost identical in price. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
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It's a great point, leaving them on in the background, being able to walk around the house listening while doing various things. Just leaving it on and not having to sit in front of a system is desirable too. I miss the old days systems where we just flip it on and leave it on not worrying about over-heated Class A amps or high $ tubes burning down. Its the OCD side or frugal side some of us have, I'll admit it :) I'm revisiting what I refer to as [new value tubes vs NOS] and integrated SS amplifiers too as a result. Some of my older Sansui integrateds were the best. Kinda miss that era. Seemed less complex, so easy, fun listening. The Fritz Carbons are a speaker I've referred to friends based your reviews @hilde45. Finding such a speaker you can just let play and enjoy with different amps is pretty darn cool. Thanks for all of your time and energy on this @hilde45 |
Welcome back, I too tend to take 'vacations' from the forums from time to time.
Coincidentally, I was just thinking about how I've migrated towards boutique brands over the years. I too prefer to support these smaller operations, my hard earned money going directly to engineer/designers vs investor class. Value is an added benefit, profits don't have to be generated to support this surplus group of people. I've owned some of the corporate/big name equipment in the past, not going to say there wasn't good value in some, but others not so much. My estimation of value includes build quality, parts quality, sound quality.
Boutique audio entities also afford me the opportunity to assemble an extremely unique system aligned exactly with my preferences. This even to the point of changing out individual parts within components, capacitors, resistors, inductors, wire, drivers, etc. |
@hilde45 excellent post and Happy New Year! |
@hilde45 Hats off to Fritz and his wonderful speakers. I picked up a used pair of 2017 Rev 5 SE to use as mains in my 2nd Home Theatre System. They exceeded my expectations so when I ungraded my amp in my main system I thought let’s add my outgoing 2017 Raven Blackhawk SE integrated amp to my HT system along with a used Gustard R26 DAC/streamer. Along with a few tweaks this combo delivers the most surprising results that it dumbfounds me. So simple yet there are times I enjoy this set up more than my main system. The Fritz speakers just disappear and fill the 25x18 untreated room with such depth and clarity…. I guess miracles do happen. Cheers to your miracles happening in 2025! . |
Always nice hear about someone system performing well. For many years I’ve been convinced that many of the smaller less known companies produce the best sounding gear. Big conglomerates with CEOs, board of directors, accounting and marketing departments, and shareholders, etc., have to focus on profit, while many of the small businesses were started by hobbyists who care more about sound....they also have to sound better to compete with better known brands. Sure, there’s a downside with resale of lesser known gear, but it sure can be a pleasure to use. I commend those who are willing to take the road less traveled! |
Happy New Year! @hilde45 , Hilde, would you give me your comparative thoughts between your updated Ascend Towers vs. the Fritz Carbons? Thanks!
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for Quicksilver. I’ve been using Quicksilver gear for the past 20 years. Great sound, great build quality and reasonably priced. I’ve tried other gear and the Quicksilver always goes back into my system. BTW, Mike Sanders the owner and designer is one of the best when you have any questions. I recently had to send an amp back for a repair that I caused. He fixed it for only 80 bucks and I had it back within one week!
