A Letter from a Hi-Fi Customer in Italy
Dear EveAnna,
The day before yesterday I drove out in the very early morning, and headed towards Rome. I stopped in Manciano, picked up the Reference 350s and drove back, completing about 700 miles round-trip.
While I was heading south, a DHL courier was doing his job in the Netherlands, picking up an extra surprise, something I felt I deserved: a Manley Steelhead RC from 2017.
That night I put the monoblocks in place. One day later, the Steelhead was delivered to my door. Today, I took a half day off and I'm listening to the most awesome, lifelike and profound performance that my Acapella High Violons ever expressed.
The power amps need retubing, and I have my fellow tubes-pusher at work ordering some TungSol 6550, plus a couple NOS input and driver tubes for the sake of it.
Aside from the clearly non-original binding posts and input RCA, I took a look under the hood and saw where a couple biasing resistors were replaced; the seller had altrady told me of this surcharge in the power line that blew up some stuff years ago. The trannies and all other parts look authentic though (the power tranny shows a nice handmade "Emilia" signature on both amps), the PCBs are clean and the components in the two amps look the same, in comparison these amps are more pristine than the 240/100s I had in the past.
The Steelhead is just perfect, also cosmetically, one hundred percent like new.
It's one of the most clever and sophisticated, yet immediate to use, preamps that I owned, and the absolute best sounding one. I am truly shocked by such an achievement, from any angle I look at it.
This setup brings me back to my early years, when I lusted for Manley gear and dreamed about a full system. This is not my first Manley now, but it's the first time that I bring a cartridge signal to the speakers by means of a complete Manley rig.
And it is, like I dreamed fifteen years ago, absolutely magic, totally involving, immensely capable.
As you see, I still like to share my old-fashioned enthusiasm with you.
Thumbs up for you EveAnna, and a strong hug from locked-down northern Italy.
Take care,
Giacomo