Each year I'd like to think the Tasting, as we now fondly refer to it, improves a bit. People come from further away, arrive earlier and stay longer. Although the actual event is officially a full Saturday, people started arriving on Thursday and the Mill was not back to normal until the Monday after. My significant other, Cynthia (a professional photographer who shot last year's website) fled the Mill this year screaming "no more, please, no more" so we had to rely on photos contributed by our guests. I'm just glad she decided to come back after everyone went home.

Till next year,

Jonathan Weiss

SO WHO SHOWED UP THIS YEAR?

As one might imagine, a lot of culprits from our previous year's Tasting decided to make the trek to New Tripoli, Pennsyltucky one more time. Steve Schell, A.J. May, Chris Dietze and Rick Henthorn brought themselves. Steve wrote a most anticipated essay on the RCA MI1428B Field Coil compression driver people who have heard this driver usually consider it the finest sounding midrange compression driver ever made. Herbert Jeschke, AKA Mr. Voight Pipe and my partner in throwing the whole bash, arrived with a small truckload of, guess what, Voight Pipes. He proceeded to commandeer one of the Mill's bedrooms, transforming it into SingleDriverLand. Besides the Ur Pipe, his Radio Shack Voight that had Steve Schell shaking his head in disbelief last year ("how can something that cheap sound THAT good?"), there was a truly bizarre, cool version with 4 800ohms Philips oval fullrangers, connected in series, driven by the OTL output of Herbert's 300B fixed bias SET parafeed amp. Along with these were a pair of Western Electric 728B drivers in sealed enclosures. Competing with Herbert for just how much stuff can we bring, Paul Scearce and wife (!) brought an entire system, consisting ofKarlson enclosures with 12" Rola field coil drivers, 5" Galaxy audio fullrangers on radial horns, powered by a bi amp setup-6336A SET HF amp and a 6BQ5 PP Bass amp. I forgot what turntable they brought, but it went into Paul's 6Gh8A pentode/triode phonostage. Next year they threatened to bring their living room couch, too, claiming they need the extra "damping."

Bill Woods almost always wins the biggest, heaviest thing brought the longest distance award, and this year was no different. Bill is one of the finest horn and speaker designers in the world, currently working for Yorkville Sound in Canada. In the past, he built a number of bass horns inspired by RCA's Twin Power speaker, which was created for the 1939 NY World's Fair. This reentrant horn was cast in multiple fiberglass sections and mounted in a plywood enclosure. Bill brought one of the last known examples, which we somehow managed to haul up to the Mill's 3rd floor (this is a VERY heavy speaker.) Using a single Altec 416 15" driver, it became the basis of a fantastic 3 way mono setup, with a JBL potato masher horn and JBL D 175 compression driver on the high end, and Bill's new cast aluminum conical horn with a RCA 1428B for the all important midrange. Crossover points were at 700hz and around 7000hz. The conical horn was a prototype of a unit Bill hopes to go into production with soon, and I certainly hope he does, because it sounds GREAT. Driven by the RCA field coil 1428B, this horn had everyone amazed by its total lack of coloration and distortion. The horn just disappeared. Far superior, in my opinion, to the various horns I have heard, be they exponential or Tractrix. The conical flare is clearly the overlooked shape in horn design, even though people like A.J. May were building conical horn prototypes at RCA in the 1950's. But back to Bill's horn, not only did it sound great, it looks awesome as well, evoking the industrial design of 1940's Westrex and JBL horns, and, being cast with 20lbs of aluminum per horn- no resonance in this design. In the upper midrange, the conical horn clearly revealed the limitations of the Mill's large RCA multicells, much as I love their sound (and appearance.) The 2004 Mill system may very well incorporate a pair of these. Bill also brought a computer with horn modeling software and gave a great talk on horns.

Most guests are amp jockeys, however, and they come to plug their kit into the Mill's big RCA horns. With just about everyone using the same speakers, the Tasting affords a fairly accurate comparison of gear. The day started off phono related- Larry Welsh was on hand to help tweak the tables, which included the Mill's Technics SP10 tt and EPA arm (in the original Obsidian Base) and Shure SE1 tube phonostage, and Randy Carter's Empire 208 with modified Rega arm and a Bottlehead Seduction Beta phonostage. The Empire both looked and sounded excellent and proved a popular source throughout the day. Jeremy Epstein's 6C45 phonostage was widely regarded as definitive, and I would have to agree. Visit Jeremy's WebPages to learn more. Jeremy also brought his dog and a 2A3 push pull with "iron concertina" phase splitter. I believe the dog was single ended, though.

To be fair, we usually try to begin with the lowest powered amps and work our way to the monsters, and lowest powered amp prize usually goes to Nathan Lewis, who prefers to listen on less than a watt, but this year I believe he brought a battery powered, zero oversampling DAC (TDA1543) passive supply, tvc out. Next in line, and winning the nonexistent award for most vintage piece of gear, was Tom Ruppert, of VintageAudio.Net fame. Tom is one of the top Western Electric guys in the US, but he brought RCA stuff this year, knowing that the home team is an RCA team. Along with an RCA OP-3 broadcast amp from 1928 was a 1926 SET power amp using a 210 tube, a 30 DHT and interstage. Next year he is promising/threatening to bring a classic WE amp and speaker combination to try to challenge RCA supremacy. Good Luck Tom!

Moving up powerwise was Doug Eisemann, AKA Mr. Klangfilm, with a pair of 1960 vintage Telefunken Maihak V73 4 watt EL42 PP monoblocs (originally used as German Broadcasting monitor amps.) Besides being gorgeously built and designed, these little pentode pp amps sounded wonderful, and had the triode SET purist/snobs sputtering. Doug is promising to bring his ultra rare Klangfilm F2A11 pp amps for the 2004 tasting, which should be most interesting, as they are considered perhaps the best sounding of all the legendary Klangilm gear.

Every year the 300B is well represented and this year we had Joe Perucki's 300B SET (6SL7-6BL7) circuit by Jack Elliano with Jack's Electraprint OPT's and Sophia Electric meshplate 300B's, along with Herbert Jeschke's dual purpose 300B SET, which he can switch between OTL use for high impedance full range drivers and conventional transformer output.

Infamous chile maven and amp hot rodder Scott Scholl brought a pair of modified Eico HP20S monoblocs with 6B46 and 6H30's in SRPP and a pair of modified Heathkit AA151 monoblocs with 6H30's, all poly caps. Moving up in power was newcomer Douglas Piccard, AKA Sector 7G, with some real He Man monoblocs. Doug's amps were so big and heavy he welded steel cages for them- nice bit of work. They were- PP KT90 monoblocs, full differential amps with a center tap in the OPT for local negative feedback. Also, a 12SN7 shunt regulated B+ linestage, cascode mosfet CCS throughout.

The Dixie Bottleheads were missing their Meister Builder Jim Dowdy this year, but Jack Welsh brought a new big triode entry, his latest GM70 SET amplifier, 6DN7/6BL7, etc., low voltage, high current. Hope Jim can make it for the 2004 Tasting- its always fun to watch the Bottleheads struggling to get a 600lb amp on multiple chassis up to the third floor listening room.

And that led the way to the biggest, meanest and definitely scariest amps ever to play the Mill- the 1937 RCA 845 PP booster amps, built as an additional output stage for theaters that needed more power than the usual 20 watts. These were the amplifiers used for the famous Fantasia road show. After years of scrounging around, I finally made a pair, and we drove them using Herbert's 300B amp in OTL mode, into the input trannies of the RCA amps. The amps use a pair of 845 triodes and a pair of 866 mercury rectifiers in each monobloc. These rack mount monsters way over 100lbs each, and had pressure switches on the front to kill power if the rack cage was removed. Of course we ran these with the cage off so we could see the big tubes light up, but with voltages in excess of 1000VDC everyone was mighty careful while they were on. Their rated power of 60W belies the fact that they will produce nearly 200W before going into audible distortion, according to Hans Dietze, who used them as reference amps in the RCA Camden laboratories back in the day. So, how did they sound? Even with super efficient horn loaded speakers, there is nothing like sheer excess of great power (especially with a 2000 square foot listening room). These amps had that kind of power. Next year we will have a specially built driver amp dedicated to the sole task of driving the RCA 845 monoblocs, plus a few others to hear just how transparent this output stage is. But it was clear that the 845 tube in a simple push pull circuit can be a stunning