About a month ago, I told Stuart McKillop that I was going to find a better sounding set of tubes for my Hendy Amps Michelangelo. His answer was "proaudiotubes@aol.com." What?
Now, first, it's important for me to say that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the MA. It's always sounded amazing. Like, really amazing. You should buy one. But, after spending some time with Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, I've been feeling inspired to keep modifying, and tweaking, and searching for ways to improve our transfer path.
I'll be the first to admit, I don't know a lot about electronics. I wish I did. I'm trying. I wasn't sure that deviating from the stock JJ's in the MA was a worthwhile pursuit. Chris Henderson is a brilliant designer, and obviously, he chose those tubes for a reason.
Whatever, I'll email the aol guy.
I sent him a note, he asked me a couple of questions, and then he wrote me a novella about tubes, which included 7 options that he thought would be good choices. We narrowed it down to two, and I picked one, and will try the others in a few months when I feel like splurging.
I won't go further in to the details of the transaction, but I will say that everything about it was fantastic. However awesome your current tube supplier is, I'll bet you Christian is better.
He doesn't have a website. Or social media. He doesn't really exist anywhere on the internet, except for in forum threads dedicated to singing his praise.
How do the new tubes sound? EXACTLY how he said they would.
What tubes are they? Well, that's for me to know. Unless of course you can figure it out from the picture below. Which if you know anything about tubes, you probably can. But you should email him, and tell him what you have, and explain how you wish it could sound, and I guarantee he'll make it happen.
That's all for now. Next up, a mod for the Bryston.
Happy mastering from Vancouver, BC, Canada.