UncleMeat

The original double LP release

The interesting thing about Hendrix is that he played left handed with a right-handed guitar. The bass strings were at the top of the frets and all of the chords were reversed so he had to learn to play them upside-down! If you watch the video you can see that the guitar is not left-handed.

The SimplySpeakers replacement surrounds were the wrong size for PMAT's speakers; we found that out after removing the foam on all six drivers. The basket size was larger on his woofers, apparently there were two basket sizes during production of the ALS Silvers. Contact Dynavox for replacement foam surrounds. The Simply Speakers foam for the Carver AL-III's is also the wrong size (foam roll too narrow & shallow).

Local Boys from El Cerrito, CA!

Zappa's First Album on Original Vinyl!

Yeah, a couple of hours per day standing in front of a wall of guitar amps, drums and stage monitors will do that. Those guys should be wearing OSHA earmuffs. If the audience is leaving with cottony ears just think what it's like for the band.

Could you tell us more Greg? I'd be very interested in learning why tubes sound so different, I'm sure many reading this thread would like to learn about the inner workings of tube buffers/amps also.

Nice story Greg, I can fully relate. I grew up in the VH era loving their music too (parents hated it also)! My family had a 1967 RCA console stereo with tube amp but it only had a tuner and a record player. My Mother worked for the local RCA distributor, if she hadn't my parents would not have been able to afford it. In 1967 the wholesale price of it was ~$500, it was their TOTL TV/Stereo colsole. In the early 80's, right about the time I was getting interested in music, we got a SS Fisher rack system (low-end) with the tape deck for all of our walkman/car tapes. It sounded OK but the RCA had much richer sound; I didn't know why at the time, and took little notice. A friend's father had an NAD/NHT set with the first CD player I ever heard but it also didn't have the rich sound of the old RCA. Late 80's roll around and I heard a Carver system at a party with Bose 901's and was VERY impressed, it sounded like that RCA console from long ago. I bought my Carver/Magnepan set in the early 90's after listening to other brands because it sounded better, it was more lifelike and warmer. The tubes in the 490t are a joy to listen to. It's taken my CD listening experience above the level of my Vinyl. It's taken me back to the sound of that RCA set, with all the advantages of CD's while the TFM-45 and ALS Hybrids are better suited to deliver the power, range, and detail. To my ears the slight 0.5% harmonic distortion added by the tubes (NOT heavy over-driven guitar distortion) adds wonderful timbre, soundstage and warmth to everything. I've got one pair of Amperex D-Getters that are just mind blowing (to my ears). This is where I'm at in the journey, and I'm happy to be here and only slightly (.5%) distorted! Others may have a different opinion about how distorted I am!

Normal hearing loss with age drops hearing of highs from 20kHz down to around 15kHz; my max is about 18kHz but notes that high are almost painful to hear for any duration. I can understand how it would be annoying to not be able to hear say a triangle or the the top end of chimes or flutes. I'm praying that my tinnitus (if that's what it is) does not become a permanent problem, when starts I can't hear anything but the ringing.

Well that explains a-lot about why recordings from the 50's and 60's sound so sweet. They added distortion back to recordings that were designed to be played primarily on vinyl records, via SS amplifiers. I wonder how deep this rabbit hole goes with an all-tube system. Of course the Carver "t/TFM" mods help get us closer to that than most other SS amps.