Let's See What Makes Your Vinyl Spin!

So far so good. It replaced an Aric Audio tube preamp, which was awesome, but it didn't have a remote.

Aric's stuff is all point to point wired and tube rectified, so that preamp brought more tubey space depth and some euphonics to the mix than the Freya does.

The Freya brings me a remote, but also WAY more soundstage width than I've ever had down here. Been streaming Nicholas Jaar's Space Is Only Noise album @Mather brought up in the Definitive Pressings thread, and the uncanny valley realness of it's production has me a little jumpy, tbh.

Now that you have me analyzing it, I'm noticing it also more specifically places instruments in the soundstage. With the Aric, the tom drum would be off to the left or whatever. With the Freya its 3 feet left of center, 5 feet off the ground, occupying a 1 foot circle of space.

So yeah, it's pretty great!
Dude. The 45 pressing of Space is Only Noise is even better. I will put that record up against anything I own. The amount of times I said out loud "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME" while listening to it were innumerable. My dog thought something was seriously wrong and kept coming over and trying to get me to go to bed for my own good.
 
LRS's, and I actually almost bought the new LRS+ a few months back, and Magnapan just ended up pissing me off so I didn't go through with it. Long story short, the LRSs needed to be purchased from one of their local vendors in my area, which was fine, but it wasn't a store, it was just an email they gave me to contact them. So I did, didn't hear back for like 10 days so I reached back out to Magnapan and told them that I wasn't hearing back from anyone. They told me to try again, "They're very good at getting back to customers"..........ok, so I tried again, once again a week and half went by with nothing, so I sent a response to my email asking "Any update on this request", to this day, no response.

So as much as I really liked the Maggies and was actually considering going up the ladder at one point, fuck em.
This sounds like a situation where the dealer is likely only looking to take on new clients that are looking at $XXX baseline spending. It's an unfortunate way of doing business, but is fairly common in hifi unfortunately. Especially when the manufacturing is actually honoring dealer agreements and not working around them.

I hope you shared the outcome with Magnapan. Just let them know it's unfortunate that this dealer is costing them customers.
 
That looks very smart. Upgradeable decks are a blessing and a curse to be honest. Vertere got in touch asking if I wanted to 'try' the Imperium PSU with MG-1 (it's designed for the bigger decks but works on mine too). I declined because I'll only do something stupid 🥴.

What a knob though...
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Hello all, long time no see. Anyway...

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So yeah... an Imperium Motor Drive. It was sent 'to see how I get on with it' which is as cruel and unusual punishment as I think has ever been devised. It turned up with an IsoShelf and three Isolator feet too because why not 💀. Neither were they done there;

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On Tuesday, I popped along to the factory where two new carts were announced. As Vertere clearly has plans to own my first born, they sent me home with an XtraX cart which I fitted earlier (and yes, I finally unclenched about 20 minutes ago).

The whole thing now has an all up MSRP that is so far beyond logical reasoning that I've stopped thinking about it because doing so makes my teeth itch. My plan when they ask for the extra bits back (because I sure as shit cannot buy them) is to return it to 'normal' spec... and not listen to it for a month and use the Gyro. Hopefully after that I'll readjust.
 
New bit arrived!

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Plan is to mount this in a couple of months in place of the Hana.

I considered getting the Quintet Black S repaired but decided this was the best use of my money right now. Got a screamer of a deal at thakker (€445 for a €599 RRP) and I wanted to try this one before I got the Hana even.

Plan is this time next year when funds are hopefully more abundant to retip the Opus3 and Hana SL and to have the Quintet Black S repaired all in one go!
 
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New cart day. Finally picked up the Hana ML on "sale". Initial setup last night and played a couple of records. Initial impression was it had a nice fast attack and get why these have been so popular. Looking forward to getting it broken in.

I am curious for those who own, what did you find best for loading? I set to 100Ω and it seem pretty good. I'll probably play around and see what sounds best to my ears.

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New cart day. Finally picked up the Hana ML on "sale". Initial setup last night and played a couple of records. Initial impression was it had a nice fast attack and get why these have been so popular. Looking forward to getting it broken in.

I am curious for those who own, what did you find best for loading? I set to 100Ω and it seem pretty good. I'll probably play around and see what sounds best to my ears.

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The Hanas are such pretty carts!
 
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