Chickamauga, Stereos and Boris Godunov

It's been a beautiful summer day here in northwest New Jersey. I've been spending the afternoon reading Steven E. Woodworth's (ed.) The Chickamauga Campaign with Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov blasting in the background.

The book is excellent and highly recommended. I don't pretend to be a Chickamauga expert, but provided one knows the broad brush outlines of the battle the essays are uniformly understandable and of high quality. I hesitate to highlight certain essays for fear of unfairly slighting others, but I particularly enjoyed William G. Robertson's "Bull of the Woods? James Longstreet at Chickamauga" for its detailed and contrarian analysis of Longstreet's actions in connection with his transfer to the western theater and his actions on September 20, 1863. Together with Robert K. Krick's essay "Longstreet Versus McLaws - and Everyone Else - About Knoxville" (which appears in his book of essays entitled The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy: The Death of Stonewall Jackson and Other Chapters on the Army of Northern Virginia), Prof. Robertson's chapter should be required reading for those inclined to worship Lee's Old War Horse.

Editor Woodworth has written before on the Confederate fiasco at McLemore's Cove on September 10 and 11, but I found his chapter on the subject, "'In Their Dreams': Braxton Bragg, Thomas C. Hindman, and the Abortive Attack at McLemore's Cove", particularly lucid in explaining the dispositions and in offering some reasons as to how such a golden opportunity could have been lost despite Braxton Bragg's clear (to me at least) orders - a subject on which Alexander Mendoza also touches in his "The Censure of D.H. Hill: Daniel Harvey Hill and the Chickamauga Campaign". It's hard not to feel sorry for Bragg after reviewing the stupidity and outright insubordination to which he was subjected.

For a beautiful summer day, I broke out the summer stereo for the first time - a 100 Watt solid state AKSA amp, an Assemblage L-1 tube preamp, and an old Sony cd player, all driving a pair of Pi Speakers Two Pi Towers. I've used this combo for a number of years and it remains superb.

On the cd player has been (among other things) an EMI recording of Mussorgsky's unfinished masterpiece originally recorded in 1952 and featuring Boris Christoff in the title role (and two others).

A wonderful day.

How About A Quickie?

It's been a while since I've built an audio kit (other than replacing the output transformer on and generally neatening up the wiring of my Assemblage ST-40), primarily because I've got more amps and preamps than you can shake a stick at. But I ran across one the other week I just couldn't resist: a battery-powered preamp.

I've long wanted to try battery power. Although most of you are probably shaking your heads, battery power has a small but enthusiastic group of advocates. The argument is that, because the equipment is not connected to the "mains" (as the British say), you eliminate the hum, noise and grunge that subsists in power lines and household circuits. In addition, audio equipment operates on direct current. By sourcing your power from batteries (which supply direct current), you eliminate the need for expensive and potentially noisy transformers needed to convert the AC from your walls.

Another consideration that made the kit a no-brainer was the source: Doc Bottlehead. For those of you who don't know him. Doc. B (aka Dan Schmalle) is a Washington State-based tube fanatic who has sold reasonably priced preamp and low-powered tube amp kits (300B and 2A3 based) over the internet for well over ten years. Doc's kits tend to have slightly racy names. His first product, for example, was the S.E.X. (Single Ended eXperimenters Kit).

Another Bottlehead mainstay for years has been the superb Foreplay preamp. I have two, one built from a kit purchased from Bottlehead, the second a Foreplay clone I put together using super duper parts, including stepped attenuators sourced from Welborne Labs.

Feeling the itch, I stopped by the Bottlehead site for the first time in a long while and immediately saw that Doc was now offering a battery-powered preamp kit called the Quickie for all of $99. I ordered one as quickly as I could fill out the form.

Both in my personal experience and according to the fans who flock to the Bottlehead Forum, Doc is extremely reliable, and this time was no exception. My Quickie showed up in a little over a week, and this morning I got to work. So far I've attached the hardware to the top plate. Now to fire up the soldering iron and start the wiring.

Circe! Circe!

In the summer, I use a separate stereo system geared for outdoor use. But when the cold drives me indoors, I turn back to my indoor system. For the past several years, that system has centered on 8 Watt Welborne Labs Laurel amplifiers driving a pair of Pi Speakers 4 Pi Studio loudspeakers.

For this winter, I thought it was time for a change: a little more power would be nice. I decided to hook up my old Parts Connection Assemblage ST-40 amp, the first amplifier I built from a kit, sometime in the late '90s. For those of you who don't know it, the ST-40 is a 40 Watt push-pull design built around EL34s, and it's one beautiful amp (if I do say so myself). I have not used it all that much in recent years, but every time I plug it in I'm amazed at how great it sounds.

Then, as I have documented in earlier posts, last winter the amp started blowing fuses. In a series of emails, Chris Johnson, the President of PartsConnexion (the unofficial successor to the old Parts Connection) diagnosed the problem as a shorted power transformer. I bought a new one, installed it (and cleaned up some sloppy wiring – remember, this amp had been my first effort), and Voila! Good as new!

So, last weekend I decided that my old, neglected but refurbished ST-40 should re-assume its rightful position. Right now it's paired with a Welborne Reveille preamp and drives the Pi Studio 4 speakers. Sources are a crappy CEC CD player (working on that) and a Rega 3 turntable (the latter accompanied by an Audio Electronic Supply phono preamp).

The ST-40 and the Studio 4s are a wonderful match. With 40 “tube Watts”, the ST-40 has plenty of power to begin with. Mated with the sensitive Pi Studio 4s (97 or 98 dB, if I recall correctly), the ST-40 can easily handle orchestral crescendos – or Eminem. After a long layoff, the ST-40 was grainy at first, but after a few hours it settled in and began displaying the clear, smooth lushness that makes it such a wonderful amp.

Firing up the system tonight, the first thing I noticed was that ST-40 is dead quiet. Even with the Reveille volume three-quarters of the way up (stepped attenuators!), when I put my ear to the Pi drivers I heard . . . nothing. Not even a trace of tube hiss. I must be a re-wiring genius!

Then I decided to put the amp to the acid test: Richard Strauss. First up, the second disc of the Rudolf Kempe Ariadne auf Naxos on EMI with Gundula Janowitz and James King. Both the glory and the difficulty of the recording is that it is miked very close. If your stereo is bad, you'll know it; but with a good system, the beauty of the voices makes the hair on the back of your head stand up – as mine is doing now.

Next up, the the third act of mono version of the Karajan Der Rosenkavalier, with Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, Christa Ludwig and Teresa Stich-Randall. You can quibble all you want about whether this is the finest version of the opera as a whole, but there's not a doubt in my mind that the trio is unsurpassed. And on the ST-40 it's spine-tingling. Sounds like its going to be a good winter!

The pictures were taken in low light and without flash to try to capture the tube glow, so forgive the fuzziness.

Outdoor Stereo

How about something different for a Saturday afternoon? Let's talk stereos.

Since it's warming up a bit here in lovely NW NJ, I've taken my summer/oudoors system out of hibernation.

They say there are two kinds of stereo guys: amplifier guys and speaker guys. In my heart, I tend toward the former. The guts of the system are a tube amp and preamp:

My favorite tube is the 300B, but at 8W, the 300B just won't cut it for outdoor use. This amp, an Assemblage ST-40, is a stereo amp that uses EL34 tubes hooked up in pentode and puts out probably 35W. It was the first amp I ever put together, made from a kit sold by a company called The Parts Connection, which was the parts-and-kits arm of the old Sonic Frontiers. Every time I plug this amp in, I'm amazed how good it sounds. I love it.

The preamp is a Foreplay clone, jazzed up with some tweaks and some "designer" parts, such as the caps. I've also added twin stepped attenuators, assembled from Welborne Labs kits. Very pricey, but I just hate potentiometers.

Finally, here are the speakers. They are based on Pi Speakers Tower 2 kits. The boxes are MDF, veneered in ash with cherry borders. Frankly, I'm not wild about the ash look, but it was worth experimenting. Whatever they look like, I know the boxes are well-made. There are two layers of MDF on the front faces, almost 1 1/2 inches worth, and they're well-braced inside. The Tower 2s mate extremely well with tube equipment.

City Stereo

It's been a long time since I've told you that I love low-power tube amps and high-efficiency single-driver speakers, so I'll tell you again: I love low-power tube amps and high-efficiency single-driver speakers.

My setup in my small city apartment is simple: Lynn Karik-Numerik CD/DAC, conrad-johnson tube preamp, Audionote 300B stereo kit amp (8W), and small DIY speakers with Fostex drivers. The picture above was taken years ago, but it will give you the idea. Not ideal for Wagner or Mahler, but then again I'd be tossed out if I really cranked it up anyway.

Playing now is Tom Rapp's (Pearls Before Swine) The Use of Ashes, from the recently-released Jewels Were The Stars collection. I've had Tom Rapp's albums for over thirty-five years (yikes!) and play them at my weekend house, where I have a setup that includes a Rega turntable. It's about friggin' time that these albums have come out on CD.