New Gallo 3.5's

I hear you, and the first time I saw them I figured I had to paint 'em black post haste (as soon as I decided the keep them). Strange, though, the more I look at them the more I'm getting used to the appearance. And the more I listen to the speakers, the more I figure I can live with anything that sounds this good. But YMMV, for sure :-)

I'm the friend who brought his stock Gallo Ref 3 speaker over to Dave Pogue's to compare its sound to one of his mounted on the Mapleshade stand. Dave is not exaggerating about the amount of improvement the bases make. It's huge. Mine are on order. Bob

I was talking about the Gallo 3.5s with a person at Mapleshade and he said that the Chinese manufacturing facility that produces the Gallo 3.1s insisted on a large price increase. So part of the big price jump with the 3.5s is a function of improvements, but most of it is the cost increase from the manufacturer. Those of us lucky enough to get the 3.0s and 3.1s got a level of value for our money that may never come again.

Very interesting and thanks for that Bolson. I wonder if the audiophile press will now take the speaker more seriously that it has now passed out of reach of most people. What about the alternative wood stands from someone else - can't recall the name. Anyone had any experience with the Gallo subamp in terms of whether line level inputs or speaker inputs work better?

thanks, Doug

Doug, as noted above I'm using the line level inputs with mine, if only because my SET amps complain mightily if I try to use the speaker inputs. I ran some frequency response tests yesterday with the sub amp both on and off and really don't believe the results but for what it's worth the Gallos on the Mapleshade stands were remarkably flat down to 20 Hz (with sub amp) and 31.5 Hz (without sub amp). This was with the Rives/Mapleshade CD test disc available from Rives Audio, in conjunction with the Radio Shack Sound Level Meter. Test signals on the Rives disc are supposedly adjusted for the inaccuracies of the Rat Shack meter. But as I said, I really question the low-end results. Not even Gallo claims this kind of response.

As to the question of other dedicated stands, Bright Star sold some for a while and Stein Audio still does (I think), but in Bob's and my comparison, the Stein stands didn't do much better than the stock setup. Dave