Downsizing? Am I crazy??

[caesar]

AMP, not sure if your thinking has changed, but from a psychological perspective, if you do decide to get rid of the system, get rid of the whole thing at once rather stretching it out by slowly selling individual components. This will just increase the pain. However, if you are upgrading, go slowly to increase your pleasure. Just the way we are wired.

Good Luck with your decision

 

[AMP]

Ahhhh, the saga continues....


Drove up to Phoenix early Saturday morning to fetch a pair of amplifiers. Several options available but after balancing price and what I know my likes and dislikes to be I went with the MB-450s again. Of course getting them to the car resulted in a seriously upset lower back which wasn't helped by the 2 hour long drive home. Took a break and some ibuprofen in preparation for unloading. I think I need a hobby that doesn't require such heavy lifting. Perhaps stamp collecting?

Got everything hooked up and at that point I was so exhausted that all I really wanted to do was take a nap. Fired everything up and popped in a CD just to make sure that it all worked.... emerged 2 hours later. It would have been longer, but my back was screaming at me to get up and move around a bit. Although I was happy to have the system up and running I have to say that it didn't blow me away as expected.

Sunday I swapped out the EH 6550 tubes that were installed in this pair for the set of SED 6550c that I have on hand (my preferred tube in this application). Big difference, but something still wasn't right. I started paying attention to the tube rush from the right channel which I had been ignoring up to this point. Tapped the preamp a couple of times and got a nice zing out of the speakers. Good thing I have a lot of spare tubes! After a new set of 12AU7s in the 7.5 all was right with the system.

Of course this exercise isn't to evaluate a new component or the over state of the system; rather, I'm trying to determine whether I'll use it enough (or miss it enough if it's gone). The difficulty here is trying to make an observation when I know full well that I have the ability to predetermine the outcome. I didn't spend the entire weekend listening as I had a long list of things to accomplish, but I did get some good one-on-one time with the system and my music collection. The real test will be to see what happens over the course of the coming week as I typically have little more than 1 hour of free time in the evenings.

I will say that my mood over the past couple of mornings has been far better than it has been at similar times over the past few months.

 

[KeithR]

Every time I upgrade significantly, I listen to music less- for me that amounts to around 50k of gear. This has happened twice now.

A great integrated (and there really are exceptional top end units now) and a pair of value speakers costs <50% of that, gets 90% of the sound, and I listen much more. Go figure. I don't miss monoblocks and the myriad of cables and cords lying around either.

My key to the situation was to choose a high efficiency speaker where I have a multitude of amplification options as well. No more 4ohm with dips to 2ohm speakers are allowed.

 

[jazdoc]

Keith brings up a great point -- every upgrade should make you want to listen to more music...if it doesn't then by definition it's not an upgrade!

 

[AMP]

Indeed a good point. I've been fortunate in that most major expenditures have enhanced my enjoyment of my system. I had a couple of phono cartridges that didn't really do anything for me, but that's par for the course given the general inability to try before buying.

At this point I'm looking at the sale of my amps as an opportunity to change things up a bit, but I'm being very cautious as I don't want to take a step backwards in the enjoyment department.

 

[JackD201]

Personally I think you're just going through a guilt thing because you haven't been making time to listen as much. It happens to all of us. You did say you've been very busy. That can change any time though.

 

[AMP]

Time to bring this one to a close.

4 weeks ago I was convinced that I should sell the system and move on. Sold the MB-450s and had a what in the h*ll am I doing moment.

In the end this was probably for the best as I came to realize that selling the system wasn't the answer, but selling the amps was a great start to a solution. Evaluated the Levinson 53s over the weekend and am now fully back on the merry go round.

Haven't had this much fun in quite a while. Thank you all for your words of encouragement and support.