Mullardman
Moderately extreme...
My contribution to this thread just has to be the LP12 Cirkus I bought as 'Mechanicals only' around 2003, fitted with one of the many s/h Valhallas freed up by the intoduction of the Lingo 1. It certainly looked beautiful, even with an Akito 1. It also sounded pretty good.
I added a s/h Lingo 1 and struggled to hear much, if any significant improvement. Next up, a beautiful s/h Ittok LVIII Mk2, the very last of the Ittoks. An absolute stunner to look at and a dream to set up, but again sonically I struggled to hear much improvement.
Overall, the player never lived up to the hype for me. It wasn't a 'bad' sounding player..it was just never as good as the mythology implied it ought to be. Detail retrieval, 'musicality' (whatever that is..) 'foot tapping', revealing 'the tune'. All so much bull IMHO. It sounded flat and boring, despite 'resets', which were a rip off.
So..after far too long trying to make it sound good to these ears, I flogged it and bought a Gyro SE, which blew it into the weeds. I now have an Orbe, which is better still.
I added a s/h Lingo 1 and struggled to hear much, if any significant improvement. Next up, a beautiful s/h Ittok LVIII Mk2, the very last of the Ittoks. An absolute stunner to look at and a dream to set up, but again sonically I struggled to hear much improvement.
Overall, the player never lived up to the hype for me. It wasn't a 'bad' sounding player..it was just never as good as the mythology implied it ought to be. Detail retrieval, 'musicality' (whatever that is..) 'foot tapping', revealing 'the tune'. All so much bull IMHO. It sounded flat and boring, despite 'resets', which were a rip off.
So..after far too long trying to make it sound good to these ears, I flogged it and bought a Gyro SE, which blew it into the weeds. I now have an Orbe, which is better still.