Burn-in Hell, but light is in sight at the end of a VERY long tunnel

Jarek, well I’m turning the corner big time
Looking at getting from current 30 hrs burn in on new psus supplying motor and Straingauge, to 75, and at that point I’ll make the verdict if I’m indeed happy.
Based on an lp yesterday that really demonstrated energy and verve, I’m more and more confident
Good luck to you

Yes, that light at the end of the tunnel (music at the end of the wind tunnel?) is getting a whole lot brighter.
If my theory is right, having completed 40 hrs burn in of psus and Straingauge energiser, with big transformers, chokes and caps, and endless lengths of wire/windings, including powering down each day to “leaven” those caps, I’m getting a really welcome opening up in the top end.
Again I tried my tt back on my original rack, but no performance gained, only losses, so I remain convinced the Stacore is nothing but positive under my tt.
The top end is still sweeter and more rounded than I remember things in my old room. But this in no way is a negative. Indeed this reminds me strongly of the time in 2005 I ran a Lyra Parnassus. The sweet lyricism of the upper mids and treble are very similar btwn the two, but the Straingauge runs away with it in terms of bass extension and tightness and mids clarity.
I really do believe I’m getting a near perfect hybrid of fantastic warmth and musicality, and natural detail retrieval and expansive imaging and depth.
And from such a poor start.

That’s fascinating Mani, Vic used to run a Decca London Ref on his Terminator. For me I found the sound too strident and too direct. These were the days of his Bastanis OB spkrs, and it was all a bit leading edge/over energetic for my tastes.
I think the Straingauge is a good match for the Terminator. Since the lp sits on cones and is not secured down, I’m going to invest in the VinylFlat to sort my most dished lps. But as is, 95% of my vinyl works just fine w my tt/arm/cart.
And this treble bottleneck is finally clearing.
Yes, let’s sort a visit, thanks.

Just a quick update for the hardy souls who’ve stuck by me on my thread.
My ugly duckling sound on Day One of my marathon analog reinstall experience back in mid-Dec, has done a complete 180 and become the proverbial beautiful swan.
The sound was flat and univiting back then, and my GF Ra will tell you I was not a good person to be around .
My thoughts were, twenty years of upgrading to the sum of a small fortune, a big effort piled into creating the audio room, CDs sounding great but my beloved 2000-strong lp collection sounding worse than my El Cheapo cassette player from the 70s.
WTF is going on?!
So I sweat the small stuff logically.
My cds sound great here, and my analog DID sound great back in my old place, and despite major mods, the core components are the same. So I must be able to make it all work.
I go back to basics, correctly setting speed, vtf, and vta for each album.
Now from a standing start, I’m 10-15% there, a chunk of light at the end of this long long tunnel.
Then the designer of my bespoke psus tells me it took him 60hrs burn in to get a decent sound (and he went thru 3 prototypes!), and my Straingauge stylus/energiser are also new out of the box.
So I go on to playing album after album (not listening, on mute while I read) to get this burn in somewhere near 60hrs, all the while the mechanical changes (arm mount, unipivot points, motor pad, RCA plugs on tonearm wire, preamp tubes, Symposium Rollerblocks on Stacore under balanced transformer) all bedding in too.
60hrs up, and I tentatively start listening, and it’s immediately apparent I’m winning the battle, that light is bigger and brighter.
80hrs in, yes, I’m really getting there.
100hrs and my anxieties are almost completely banished (Ra lets me back in the house as I learn to chill out again).
—
That wasn’t quite the end of it, because a little nagging negative remained, the sound remaining a little cloudy and opaque thru lower mids compared to my digital.
And thoughts ran thru my head that maybe I’d hit the glass ceiling for performance from the Zus.
However last week Ra is out for the day, I raise the rafters, this lack of transparency thru the mids v pertinent at volume, and I start to muck about w the Zus subs crossover settings.
For the first time in a long while, I drop the setting from 40Hz to 30Hz, the level from 5/10 to 4/10, Absolute Phase from 180 degrees to 0, and PEQ Frequency and Gain to max, and switch on grounding the preamp.
The result is the single biggest step fwd to correct subs bass performance, at least in this room (these settings never worked in London).
At a stroke, mid bass smear and opaqueness banished, bass tauter, highs open and sparkling, and air/imaging off the scale.
It’s only taken me a decade to finally get the Zus to breathe, integrate, and disappear.
And so, nearly 3 months on from an almost stillborn tt reinstall, I’m rifling thru my lp collection, getting results I couldn’t have dreamed of, stellar today on Kate Bush, Bach organ, Bartok cello, Black Sabbath, Tomita Planets Suite.
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Without doubt, my biggest downer in this hobby has done a total 180 into the greatest result, on a par w finding how great the new room turned out on inaugural switch on a year ago.
To say I’m beyond happy is a gross understatement.