DSC00391 by danox574, on Flickr
Thanks to Bottlehead, I've now completed the system I visualized a few months ago.
Cosmetically, the bases are stained and then clear coated. The transformer tops have been painted black. The Stereomour has a 4th set of RCA jacks as an output running to the Crack, so i can select Crack inputs even when the Stereomour is turned off. Paul Joppa was nice enough to explain that bringing the resistance at the inputs of the crack and Stereomour down to 50KOhm instead of 100KOhm since they were in parallel would not affect the Seduction. I do have the Speedball in the Crack and C4S upgrades in the Seduction.
My inputs are a Oppo DV-980H that I use for CD/SACD/DVD-A, the turntable is a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon with an Ortofon 2M Red cartridge, and a Denon DNP-720AE network streamer. The Denon is used occasionally for Internet radio content but mostly is used to read a network connected FLAC library of my CDs sitting on a disk outside the room. I can't recommend this enough - the space savings is enormous.
The speakers are home built 8" single drivers from Audio Nirvana along with cabinet plans made available for them. I have never owned a single driver speaker before, so I wanted to enter cautiously into this, and decided to minimize cost by doing the build work myself. The headphones are Sennheiser HD650s. Interconnects are old Audioquest RCA Pairs I've had for probably 15 years, back when they were named after gemstones. There is a Panamax power station there with two isolated banks and a couple lights shining down on the bottlehead components so I can reach in and use them in the dark.
The 2M Red is a 5.5mV cartridge, which is pretty hot, and I thought would be a good match for the seduction, and it certainly seems to be. Originally I set it up without the C4S upgrade, and I found it to be a little on the quiet side. I thought 36dB would be plenty with that hot cartridge, but with lower volume records I was finding myself around 2pm on the dial for casual listening and with the volume at maximum for when I was sitting down specifically to listen. The C4S upgrade fixed that, I won't need the full volume position again on the Stereomour. The CD player and streamer are sufficiently hot on output that it certainly isn't an issue.
The CD player was originally supposed to be under the headphone amp and phono preamp, but the phono amp picked up a lot of noise from it being nearby, so I relocated the CD player to the left and have eliminated just about any hum of significance. Now, it's more of a 'presence' than a hum or a hiss - you can tell it's on when the volume is up but it's well below any noise level I could care about.
I couldn't be happier. The value of these components from Bottlehead are EXCEPTIONAL. I couldn't have built such a remarkable sounding system on a budget without these guys. Thanks Bottlehead!
