Thread: Chops' Current System Pics ....

Awesome Charles... the system looks great!

Thanks Randy!

I wish you could hear it, and hear the difference between the newer gear and the updated/modified Carver gear. Like I said, it's quite shocking at how much better the Carver gear really sounds, especially concerning the two different preamps. It's substantial to say the least. This old vintage Carver stuff is really making these ML's sing.

The updates and modifications really bring this gear up to speed with current gear, and definitely moves them up to true "audiophile" status. I've never heard these big ML's sound this good. So much refinement, extension at both extremes, finesse, accuracy, detail, body and warmth. A wider and deeper sound stage, and yes, all WITHOUT the Sonic Holography engaged.

And I just realized something... With the exception of the TT, Oppo, APC and cable box, the rest of the system is all vintage, with the ML's being the newest. And those date back to '97. That short list is going to get even shorter because I'm going to be selling the TT and going back with my old trusty Technics SL-1700 Mk2. It just sounds better than the Pro-Ject. Not that the Pro-Ject is bad at all. It just can't compete with the big old Technics.

Originally Posted by Randy Myers

Awesome Charles... the system looks great!

Charles,

Really well done. I'd love to hear it too. Looks great.

Very Nice Charles! Some times th vintage gear is pretty darn good. The 15 year old Audio Research amp is a good example.

Carver was always good equipment and it sounds like the upgrades that you is on your pieces make it even better!

I am thinking that I might eventually sell the Son Of Ampzilla II and save up for a new Audio Research amp.

Come on down, Joe!

Originally Posted by joeinid

Charles,

Really well done. I'd love to hear it too. Looks great.

Randy, I think that if this Carver gear originally came out from the factory with these mods in them, they would have been an even bigger hit than they already were, and wouldn't have been considered more of an audiophile brand.

Seriously, there's guys on the forum that have sold their Conrad Johnson, McIntosh, Audio Research preamps in favor of a modded BillD C-1 preamp because the improvements are that good. And most of those were new, current model preamps!

So you know how it is to sometimes go with older gear as well, although just about all of my Carver gear is double the age of your AR amp. However, now, the Carver gear tests and measures better than when new!

Originally Posted by Randy Myers

Very Nice Charles! Some times the vintage gear is pretty darn good. The 15 year old Audio Research amp is a good example.

Carver was always good equipment and it sounds like the upgrades that you is on your pieces make it even better!

I am thinking that I might eventually sell the Son Of Ampzilla II and save up for a new Audio Research amp.

Nice.... the Audio Research was just factory refurbished and re-tubed! As a learning experiment, to teach myself how to do it, I just checked and adjusted the output tube bias on the amplifier. Whenever I am in the mood to listen to rock or funk, or to listen to FM or background, or at high volume, I switch the wires over to the Ampzilla. However for serious listening, Jazz, Folk, Classical, New Age, Jazz Vocals, Easy Listening, etc., I kick it over to the ARC. It is just a sweet sounding classic little amp!

Just got the Carver BillD C-1 preamp back from getting a few more tweaks, one of which I just performed on the dining room table a couple hours ago. I swapped out the black rack handles for the proper anthracite ones that belong on it. A couple of other upgrades include going back to the original red LED instead of that doggone super bright blue laser beam that was installed in there, and a couple more upgraded opamps, one in the line stage, the other in the phono section.

Also reinstated the trusty old Technics SL-1700 MK2. I still need to mount the Ortofon 2M Bronze as it has my brother's 2M Blue on it right now. And lastly, I'm using my original Mr Speakers "Mad Dog" planar headphones again.

Nice... looking great Charles!!!

Originally Posted by chops

Just got the Carver BillD C-1 preamp back from getting a few more tweaks, one of which I just performed on the dining room table a couple hours ago. I swapped out the black rack handles for the proper anthracite ones that belong on it. A couple of other upgrades include going back to the original red LED instead of that doggone super bright blue laser beam that was installed in there, and a couple more upgraded opamps, one in the line stage, the other in the phono section.

Also reinstated the trusty old Technics SL-1700 MK2. I still need to mount the Ortofon 2M Bronze as it has my brother's 2M Blue on it right now. And lastly, I'm using my original Mr Speakers "Mad Dog" planar headphones again.

Great to see the Carver gear again. Brings back fond memories. They were BEASTS back in their day. Fond memories of driving some B&W 801F's with them.

Thanks Mike!

If you thought they were beasts back in the day, you should hear them now with updated, modern capacitors, resistors, diodes and opamps in them, not to mention factory mandated fixes, revised circuits, modified circuits and added daughterboards. This gear is now performing to the standards that Bob Carver wanted but couldn't achieve within budget.

This C-1 preamp already outperformed my Parasound Halo P5 which is a major achievement alone. Now with these two new opamps added, it's even better! This preamp only has about 20 hours on it, and about 7 hours on these new opamps. Give it about 300 hours and things should be really good!

Originally Posted by Mike

Great to see the Carver gear again. Brings back fond memories. They were BEASTS back in their day. Fond memories of driving some B&W 801F's with them.

And a nice, soothing evening shot...

Very Nice!

What's the cool Bass in the corner?

Just an old Ibanez SDGR 305DX with Thomastik PowerBass EB345 round wound strings.

Very nice shot indeed!

So, now were not talking about listening to music, but making music...



Noize-making in my case.

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No... Not really.

Originally Posted by Kuoppis

So, now were not talking about listening to music, but making music...



Noize-making in my case.

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Nice EVH 5150 guitar and Mesa Boogie amp

Curious which head and cab combo you have?

Thx

Originally Posted by Kuoppis

So, now were not talking about listening to music, but making music...



Noize-making in my case.

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Eddie Van Halen !!!


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Please take this to another thread. Not in my thread. Thanks...

Originally Posted by cmalak

Nice EVH 5150 guitar and Mesa Boogie amp

Curious which head and cab combo you have?

Thx

Originally Posted by chops

And a nice, soothing evening shot...

Wow. Sweet setup there


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Originally Posted by chops

Please take this to another thread. Not in my thread. Thanks...

I think you might have misunderstood...I was asking which Mesa Boogie Head Amplifier and Speaker Cabinet you have on the picture next to your EVH guitar.

Originally Posted by cmalak

Curious which head and cab combo you have?

It's a 5:25 tube head with a 2 x 20" cabinet (model number escapes me). Can do loud.


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Originally Posted by Kuoppis

It's a 5:25 tube head with a 2 x 20" cabinet (model number escapes me). Can do loud.


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Very cool...enjoy

And so this happened today... Sorry for the "sub" - par picture quality. Been a long day and I was in a hurry.

AWESOME.. sub

Thank you!

So far, it sounds really good with a couple of quick and dirty tweaks here and there on the crossover point (40 Hz) and gain (right in the middle). It's nearly unnoticeable already with the ML's playing fullrange, which is how I'm going to keep them. The e110 sounds excellent with music from what I've listened to so far. And we just watched the new release of Doctor Strange on "Demand". It sounded really good, though the trailer for it sounded even better. The actual movie lacked some low end bass. After the movie was over, we watched the trailer again, and all of that LOW bass was there in spades.

I have yet to play around with location and unfortunately, I have no dedicated sub EQ to run it through. I believe Velodyne used to offer one, but I no longer see it on their site.

Originally Posted by Melbguy1

Nice work Charles. I like the JL Audio subs which offer great high end value. Have you had a chance to start dialing in the location & EQ settings? Looking forward to your 1st impressions of the sound .

Got another addition to the system today... Another modified Carver M-500t MkII! I love it, and it looks great sitting along side it's twin!

First off, my lil' helper for the evening...





Up and running! Vertically bi-amped, and will eventually get an active crossover with DSP, which in turn I will be physically bypassing the internal passive crossover networks in the Martin Logan SL3's.

Well it seems that this system has lost interest with the crowd here. Probably because people think I've "downgraded" to Carver equipment. Oh well. Their loss.

On a side note, I have a dbx Driverack Venu360 and matching calibration mic coming next week. With this I'll be able to bypass the passive crossovers in the SL3's finally, add notch filters and EQ for the ESL panel, use sharp 48 dB crossover points, do room correction on them as well as run the JL sub through it and do room correction on it.

looks great ....must admit I would be wetting myself with your little cat there !!! all those cables to play with !

Looking good Charles, but where is the sub in the new photos... not seeing it ... The Carver stuff is excellent, certainly not a downgrade ...

Originally Posted by hifinutt

looks great ....must admit I would be wetting myself with your little cat there !!! all those cables to play with !

The cat's don't mess with any of it. They're well behaved.

Originally Posted by Randy Myers

Looking good Charles, but where is the sub in the new photos... not seeing it ... The Carver stuff is excellent, certainly not a downgrade ...

The sub is still here. I just had it moved out of the way so I could work on the system a little better.

Okay, so some exciting times tonight.


I installed the Venu360, ran the cabling to the amps, adjusted the x-over, turned the amps on, slowly turned up the preamp's volume, and sound emitted from the SL3's!


I set the crossover points to 250 Hz, LR 4th order for the woofers and panels (defaults were a combination of BW 2nd order and LR 4th order). The SL3's sound better all set to LR 4th order. I have the high-pass of the woofers set to 16 Hz. If I run them flat out, they end up cancelling out with the sub, requiring them to be inverted, in which case makes the bass a bit too bloated.


I have the JL sub set to 45 Hz LR 2nd order.


Of course, these are just quick preliminary settings. I won't get truly serious with it until I open up the SL3's and bypass the passive networks. Until then (probably till this weekend), these settings will do.


On a side note, my inner youth has been getting the best of me, listening to albums like "The Cure: Mixed Up" and "Depeche Mode: Violator" and turning on the Subharmonic Synth. Takes me back to my car audio days and using the Audio Control Epicenter! :rocker:


Anyway, a few pics...

Very nice Charles!

Here's a couple pics of the guts of my SL3's. Well, one of them anyway. I was going to bypass the woofer crossover network, but just not feeling up to it today, so no motivation to do anything. I wasn't feeling too good yesterday either... Plus I need to get some supplies before I can do any work on them.















And just for fun from last night...

Okay, I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet. Instead of only bypassing the woofer crossover, I went for the gold and bypassed both crossovers. I'm currently using crimp-on butt connectors as a temporary thing, just for proof of concept so to speak. I didn't want to take the time of soldering and such in case something didn't work out right. Plus the fact that my current soldering iron is kaput anyway. I'm going to do some shopping around and buy a nice Weller soldering station soon.


I've only done the left channel so far so I can compare to the stock right channel. I'm using a Diana Krall album that I'm extremely familiar with as the reference. I can definitely tell there's going to be some needed tweaking done, especially on the ESL itself, but nothing too drastic. The biggest difference is that the entire left channel is probably a solid 3 dB louder, which goes without saying, mainly in the panel section. And maybe this is due to the extra loudness, but the left channel seems to be a bit more lively and snappy, or in other words, more dynamic.


I guess it's now time to power down the right amp and pull that SL3 apart. In the meantime, here's some pics of the process. It was a LOT easier than I had originally thought!

And the second SL3 is done. The first one took me nearly 45 minutes to get through and do. This one... 10 minutes. LOL

Amazing how much easier things are the second time ... sounds like you are having fun Charles....

My Martin Logan SL3's have dynamics! Something they never had before! In fact, that was the only thing I didn't like about them, was the lack of dynamics.

So far, the dbx is just running crossover duty only. The panels are crossed over at 250 Hz with a Linkwitz 48 dB slope, the woofers are also at 250 Hz, but with a Linkwitz 12 dB slope and 16 Hz on the bottom end with a Linkwitz 48 dB slope. The sub is set to 46 Hz with a Linkwitz 24 dB slope.

I'm not quite sure why, but when I initially had the SL3 woofers crossed over at 48 dB @ 250 Hz, there was a big hump in the mid-bass, making everything rather bloated and chesty sounding. Knocking it down to a 12 dB slope eliminated that hump and made everything sound natural. There's more body to vocals like there should be (which is something the SL3's are known to lack a little of).

Bass content now has snap and texture. Vocals, both male and female sound amazingly real and lifelike. They have life and warmth to them. Treble is smooth and detailed. With no EQ of any kind, they sound like they're being powered by a good tube amp without being rolled off.

The JL sub has completely vanished into thin air. It has become a natural extension of the SL3's. With your eyes closed, you just assume all of the bass you're hearing is coming from the SL3's and nothing more. Then again, with your eyes closed, you really can't tell that any of the sound is coming from the speakers. It's just there in the room with you and that really low bass just shows up when needed.

Listening to Louis Hayes' Serenade for Horace right now, and it's oh so good sounding!

Amazing work Charles. I would not even have a clue where to start or what to do. Thank you so much for sharing. The photos are superb and the work impeccable. I really appreciate it.

I feel like such a dummy with members like you here. Well done!

Originally Posted by joeinid

Amazing work Charles. I would not even have a clue where to start or what to do. Thank you so much for sharing. The photos are superb and the work impeccable. I really appreciate it.

I feel like such a dummy with members like you here. Well done!

Thanks Joe.

Up until a couple months ago, I didn't know how to go about modding these ML's. I just did some research and asked some questions. After opening them for the first time and seeing which version of the circuit I had in mine, it all kind of made sense at that point. Just follow the schematics and go from there. As far as operating the dbx and other gear, that's simple as pie. That sort of stuff just comes naturally to me. Pretty much every owners manuals I have with my equipment is unopened, still sealed up in their zip-lock baggies. LOL

Today I decided to play around with the dbx RTA mic and the AutoEQ "Wizard" on the Venu360. Boy am I glad I did!

Here's the end results right from the RTA mic, via the iPad and the Venu's display. You can't get much better than that. Darn near ruler flat across the board. Of course, I made a few tweaks of my own to get it there, which I'll mention below...








I chose a flat curve and this is what the Venu360 came up with after taking three measurements across all three seating positions on the couch.





The settings the Venu360 made are really good, though it took out a bit too much low end for my liking as well as a little too much upper midrange (#1 and #2).

#1 was pulled down by -7.8 dB... I bumped it up to -2.7 dB.

#2 was pulled down by -4.7 dB, and I bumped it up to -2.6 dB.


Again, these two little tweaks above is what got me to a near perfectly flat room response shown in the RTA.

Lat night I was listening for a short bit through my headphones from the Carver C-1 which is obviously before the dbx. Then when I went back to listening to the speakers, I could quickly tell something was definitely off somewhere with the overall sound. Well I can safely say, it isn't now!

Listening to this right now and man does it sound good!

Just a slight update. I just received a couple of freshly powder coated lids for my M-500t MkII amps. On top of them being freshly powder coated, they've also been freshly signed by the man himself, Bob Carver! We had planned for over 8 months to go to Carver Fest 2017 up in NC, but since Hurricane Irma decided to come our way, we decided to cancel and stay here at home. We couldn't leave the kids here by themselves during a storm like that, and I couldn't leave the store short handed.

So the Carver Site member that I purchased both amps, preamp and sub from was going to CF2017 and offered to take these lids with him and get them signed for me. He told Bob about my oldest brother and I and how I came to love Carver equipment thanks to my brother. I just wish we were able to go. Oh well, there's always next year.

Anyway, I rearranged the system a little as this time around, I refuse to place anything on top of these amps.




























Unfortunately, the writing isn't very noticeable in the rack with that shiny finish.

Awesome Charles. They look great!

Originally Posted by Spock

Well, i´m discovering these fantastic systems around here, and this one and the work behind it, deserve a "bump" and my congratulations.


I realized that, at beginning, you had the Sonus Faber. I also had SF before Usher Audio and still love SF, or, to be true, some SF models. A few days ago i heard a SF Venere 2.5 with Devialet and i blew away. Awesome! And no need for subs, that´s for sure.


Thanks for sharing!

Yes it does.....great system! I also love the signed components from Bob Carver and what he wrote!

Originally Posted by Spock

Well, i´m discovering these fantastic systems around here, and this one and the work behind it, deserve a "bump" and my congratulations.


I realized that, at beginning, you had the Sonus Faber. I also had SF before Usher Audio and still love SF, or, to be true, some SF models. A few days ago i heard a SF Venere 2.5 with Devialet and i blew away. Awesome! And no need for subs, that´s for sure.


Thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by SCAudiophile

Yes it does.....great system! I also love the signed components from Bob Carver and what he wrote!

Thank you both for the very kind words and compliments! Yes, the system has come a long way and is always changing.

Here's the latest, fully hot-rodded Carver 4000t preamp (been lusting after this unit since I was a kid), and finally found one in mint shape and someone who was willing and able to upgrade and modify it. Then I reinstated my trusty old Genesis Physics II's, which I had already upgraded the crossovers once, but a couple months ago decided to upgrade them again with even better components!

This current system outperforms all previous versions, including those with the modded and bi-amped Martin Logan's, the all original NHT 2.9's, the GR-Research X-Statik's with fully upgraded crossovers per Danny Richie, as well as the little mighty Sonus Faber Venere 1.5's!

This is like a little bit of heaven!

Looking good Charles!

Thank you Randy.

Teresa has been doing a lot of "crafty" things lately and the things she has made, she has placed around the system. I like it. Makes it a bit more warm and cozy. I bought her that big Buddha on the left a few weeks back. Of course, she loves it!

Also running some "new to me" Audioquest CV8 speaker cables with 72 volt Turbo DBS packs, as well as a pair of Jaguar IC's with 36 volt DBS packs. I was quite amazed at how these cables improved the overall sound. More "snap" on the bottom end, a more natural, connected midrange, clearer top end, and more noticeable, a wider and deeper sound stage. And I got them both (from different sellers) for a steal! Especially the speaker cables. They are only a few months old and I got them for less than a quarter of the price.

I definitely need to get more of the Jaguar IC's and replace the rest of the Wireworld IC's with them. The AQ cables are a huge upgrade!