So people will pay big money to have this guy make the amplifier or preamplifier the way it should have been doen....The way it should have been done? You mean like the way ARC, CJ, CAT, BAT, etc., all should have done their preamps back in the 80s and 90s .... and yet continue to bring out a new "top-line" model every couple years?
...before the company foldedTerryn, please inform me of another engineer in the audiophile world who had some business misfortunes and yet came back a year or so later to support all of his customers, not only to repair failed products, but to work to improve them far beyond what had been done before.
Never having been able to afford the top-tier Counterpoint SA9/SA11 in their day, today I am fortunate to own their successor and at a much lower price. How many of the top-line preamps from the above companies cost less than their top-line products from a decade ago? Zero.
....and the warranty went kaputTake note of the warranty of many of the companies above and you find that the warranty for your car is much longer.
As for PT-Barnum being right, as Casaross hints here, I suspect that in Barnum's mind, everyone in this hobby would be a candidate for his famous quote.
Casaross: Once you have found the tubes for the phono stage and line stage that work well for you, I would be willing to send you the pairs that work for me in these stages. You could play for a few days to get an idea and then send them back.
I too ran the WV through the burn-in process to achieve 200 hours, but I enjoyed the music each eventing. And after this time, I went through 20+ tubes in the line stage over a 4-5 night process. Many were eliminated quickly due to severe tonal non-linearities or flat presentation. But a handful worked out very well and a couple were extraordinary ..... neither of these latter two were of the 6922 family.
I soon realized that I could also use these top-performing tubes in the APL Denon CD player and it took that player's performance far beyond the ECC99 tube in there. Several concerns I had about this player were gone or significantly reduced by the replacement of that ECC99 tube. I am eager to hear soon from an APL 3.0 owner how this tube works in his player.
Concerning the PS supply tubes, the rectifier tube V5 makes a profound difference but when I changed this it showed up some edginess with the V7 tube. I had a couple different 6JC6A tubes and one of these locked it very well with the changed V5 tube. Going back to the stock pair for V5/V7 brought on a reduction of clarity. I tried a different V8 and could not hear a difference at all. Keep in mind that V8 is actually not a vacuum tube.
Once I get the tubes back from the APL 3.0 owner, I can bring the WV back to its highest performance that I have so far heard it, and then I will try out a few different V6 tubes....and look to seal the WV's cover for a long time to come. Perhaps we can share notes on the PS tubes in the next couple weeks.
John