When Life Gives You Lemons
When Acoustic Signature made their US appearance in 2002 with the Final Tool, I decided to take the plunge after the positive Stereophile review by Mr. Fremer. I planned to make this my last table and it was a financial stretch for me at the time. The warranty for the power supply was for two year years and wouldn’t you know it failed about 20 months in. I sent it back to Germany and used the repaired version for another year when it failed again. Mr. Froenhofer refused to give me further service for his ’lemon’ power supply. He even went so far to say there was something wrong with my electricity?!? On the shelf went this still new table.
Lucky for me, the excellent fellows at Needle Doctor (now sadly defunct), felt my pain and corroborated AS’s lack of concern for their customers. They let me buy any table I wanted virtually at cost. I ended up with a Pro-Ject RPM 10 which has served me in stellar fashion to this day.
During the pandemic I was bringing my system up to endgame status researching everything I did not know about stereo. Along the way, I got the itch to explore PS and /or motor replacement possibilities for the AS $2500 aluminum brick sitting on the shelf for 15+ years. I stumbled across the Origin Live motor replacement kit. I studied their suggestions and determined that I could refabricate the AS motor pod to accommodate the OL motor. Success!
I purchased an Audio Technia mono cartridge, brought out from storage a leather mat and a retired iFi microphono 2 phono stage with an Sbooster PS and BINGO : LEMONADE! I would never have done this without the tragic comedy of errors. I now have a new toy that allows me to enjoy my several hundred mono LPs in stunning sound.
p.s. After having lived with this setup for a couple of months I became used to the sound, and it became apparent that this was underperforming sonically to my other front-ends. I decided to experiment with ICs post phono stage. The Audio Quest King Cobras were too constricting, like Papa Bear. The Anti-Cables were too open and uncontrolled, like Mama Bear. But the Kimber Kable Heroes were just right, like Baby Bear. It was stunning to experience this not predictable end result. Cable deniers : you are probably missing out. All is now well in audio heaven!