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The Vinyl Anachronist: The Rising Sun

By Marc Phillips

October 2006

Yamamoto A-08S amplifier (click for larger image)

Yamamoto CA-03L (click for larger image)

Koetsu Rosewood

You’d be surprised how many people thought I was serious about turning my back on analog production after I wrote A Level Playing Field. I tried to make it obvious that it was all tongue-in-cheek, that while the Naim CDX2 CD player is truly something special, it would never, ever replace my Michell/SME/Koetsu rig. Nevertheless, I still received my share of bewildered e-mails from the analog troops.

Truthfully, that column did reflect on some issues I’ve been dealing with in terms of analog production. Since trading in my mostly Naim-based amplification on some exotic Japanese SET gear, my status as a seasoned audiophile, one who basically knows what he is talking about, has been severely tested. For the first time in my life I was dealing with equipment that didn’t necessarily sound great right out of the box, equipment that needed to be coerced into approaching its potential. It was, needless to say, a somewhat humbling experience.

I blame the British hi-fi industry. For years, they’ve been spoiling me with equipment designed to be trouble-free, easy to use, and designed to work well with a variety of listening environments. For years I’ve been listening to the woes of fellow audiophiles, listening to stories of countless hours of burning in components, of toying with speaker placement, and of constantly adding a myriad of utterly unattractive room treatment products. I pretended to empathize with them. But for the most part, I didn’t quite understand why they had to make things so difficult.

An ugly secret

Years ago, I asked a friend of mine, an audio dealer in the Chicago area, why so many audiophiles had trouble with properly setting up an audio system. “Because you’re used to equipment like Naim and Rega and Spendor, stuff that was designed to sound good no matter where you place it,” he told me. And that made perfect sense. That was always one of the reasons why I spent my formative years as an audiophile using British hi-fi – I’d always lived in small apartments, and I needed equipment that sounded great in small rooms without alienating the neighbors. And, as it was once explained to me, the houses in England are smaller, which means smaller rooms, and that’s why gear from the UK sounds so intrinsically different from its American counterparts.

I got older, however, and my income grew, which meant that I eventually bought a house. What I didn’t count on was that my tastes in audio would change along with the move. Small British mini-monitors and polite, modestly-powered British integrated amplifiers didn’t seem to work as well in their new digs. Much of this was ameliorated by the purchase of my Spendor SP100s, speakers which needed a large room to really open up, and for a while I was satisfied. But as the years passed, I found myself less and less enamored with the refined yet polite sonic signature of most British gear.

Turning Japanese

My first step in redefining my taste in audio involved the purchase of my first Koetsu. Yes, I know how snobbish that sounds. I remember being at an audio show a few years ago, and being utterly disgusted with one audio reviewer telling a prominent audio manufacturer that “there’s nothing like your first Ferrari.” I wanted to smack both of them over the head with one of the many Argent Room Lenses positioned in the room, and load their bodies into the back of my old Nissan pick-up truck for a trip out to the woods. But it’s true. I have owned two Koetsus, the Black and the Rosewood Standard. And I may upgrade to an Urushi in the near future. But that has more to do with Koetsu’s generous trade-in policy than with my own financial situation.

The Koetsus, however, added something special to my all-UK system. Everyone talks about the lushness and romanticism of the Koetsus, but what I found was that the Black opened up the sound of my system, making everything sound more relaxed and expansive. I still had that famous PRaT of a Naim-based system, but suddenly I had world-class imaging and soundstaging as well. So when I realized that I was not being fulfilled by the ever-changing amplification line-up in my listening room, the vintage Scott 299B, the Naim NAIT 5i, the Quad Classic II monoblocks, I instantly thought, hey, a two watt-per-channel handmade Japanese SET is exactly what I need!

You belong in a Zu

Actually, it was much more complicated than that. To understand how my troubles started, we have to go back to the Zu Cable Druids mk. IVs I reviewed a few months ago. As I said, it was a bit of a challenge to get the Druids to sound their best in my system. For the first time in my audiophile life, I had to work and agonize over speaker placement, not to mention that fact that it was a chore just to get those slim floorstanders, with their thick spikes, to couple to the carpet. My Spendors, with their dedicated Sound Anchor stands filled with sand, weighed well over 150 pounds per side, so I never had any problem getting those to stick to the floor. But the Zus wobbled, and the bass suffered.

I finally was able to get everything to settle down. I came to the conclusion, however, that the Druids were not a perfect match with my Quad IIs. It seemed almost as if the Classic’s 15 watts per channel was too much for the 101 dB sensitive Druids, because the sound I was getting was a tad too relentless and aggressive (sort of like a pair of Wilson Watt Puppies!). Then Zu Cable’s Sean Casey told me that he had heard through the grapevine that the Yamamoto Sound Craft amps were supposed to be the most satisfying match with the Druids. I had heard about the Yamamotos, and I had seen the pictures of these gorgeous amps. I’d been curious about SETs for a while. I called Brian Bowdle of Venus Hi-Fi, the sole US dealer and distributor of Yamamoto Sound Craft.

Before you know it, I had bought the A-08S (US $2695), the aforementioned two watt-per-channel beauty, which used 45 output tubes. And, suddenly needing a preamp for the first time in years, I said sure, hook me up with the matching CA-03L with phono stage (US $4150). And of course hook me up with an extra set of 45s from Emission Labs (US $399 per pair), which give the A-08S a little bit of extra oomph, making it sound like it has oh, 2.5 watts per channel instead of just two.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I immediately knew that I had sailed into uncharted waters. First of all, I imagined Brian sitting in a warehouse, surrounded by cartons of Yamamoto gear, ready to ship. But no, I was going to have to wait for a while to get my amps, because Shigeti Yamamoto makes these amps one at a time to order. I was actually excited by this, knowing that they were being made for me specifically. I don’t know, there’s just something romantic about that.

What I didn’t know, however, was that like the Druids, the Yamamoto gear was going to take some skill on my part to work correctly in my system. And while the A-08S always looked and sounded spectacular, I was troubled by some bothersome behavior on the part of the CA-03L. It was quite noisy out of the box. I was told to let them break in, and the noise would go away. Fifty hours passed, then one hundred, then two. They settled down marginally, but I could still hear tube rush clearly from the next room. I knew this wasn’t right.

Yamamoto-san immediately sent out a new set of Telefunken 6AK5W tubes for the preamp. There was no change in the sound. It was frustrating, because underneath the noise, I could hear how splendid the Yamamoto gear sounded. Finally, I noticed while replacing the Telefunkens that one of the capacitors was loose. I thought of breaking out my trusty soldering iron and fixing it myself, but I noticed the incredible craftsmanship inside the preamp and didn’t want to mar that with my own amateurish skills. I sent the preamp to Japan. Amazingly, it was back at my house in a week! Yamamoto-san was serious about making me happy.

This time, however, the phono stage was still noisy. The line stage, however, was extraordinary. That Naim CDX2 arrived around that time, and that’s when I wrote A Level Playing Field. I was genuinely hearing the best sound from CDs I’d ever heard, and I knew that the Yamamotos had as much to do with it as that exquisite Naim player. But that phono stage…

Domo Arigato, Yamamoto-san!

Brain Bowdle, Yamamoto-san, and I put our heads together to solve the phono stage problem. I am the Vinyl Anachronist, I bellowed mightily, and I need a superior phono stage! Yamamoto-san asked for the specs on my Koetsu Rosewood, and he saw the problem immediately. While the CA-03L’s phono stage could definitely handle the Rosewood’s 0.6 mV output, there was a bit of a mismatch with the Koetsu’s output impedance of 5 ohms. Yamamoto-san sent me his brand-new SUT-03 step-up transformer, which would definitely fix the problem. The SUT-03 was so new, in fact, that I was getting one of the very first production models. A two-chassis, stereo version of his venerable SUT-02 transformer, these small yet heavy aluminum cubes even came with their own Yamamoto interconnects. And like the other Yamamoto gear, these modest little guys were beautiful to look at.

When I plugged them in, I knew we’d finally gotten it right. My low-powered SET set-up had power, authority, and control. The noise level was almost non-existent. I was deliriously happy. I haven’t listened to the CDX2 in weeks.

Now I think of the incredible marriage of my British source components and my Japanese amplification. I think it’s a perfect match. And I’ve been paying more attention to the other high-end Japanese brands, listening to them whenever I can. The Japanese have been making incredible cartridges for years… the Scan-Tech sourced pickups from Lyra and Transfiguration, the classics from Supex and Kiseki and of course Koetsu, and even some of the new upstarts like Shelter. I was even surprised to learn that Dynavector was Japanese. I always thought they were British, too.

But I’m paying even closer attention to Japanese amplification, the beautifully handmade products from such places as Shindo, Komura, and 47 Labs. Everything is so simple, yet imbued with the soul of the visionary men who make them, like Shigeti Yamamoto. While I don’t think I would ever buy a Japanese turntable (except for maybe the stunning $19,000 Garrard 301 modified by Shindo), or a Japanese CD player (I do have a singular, focused hatred for Sony products, having had bad luck with them in the past), I can’t see owning anything other than my Yammies.

There was a point where, during the frustrating stretch of time when everything wasn’t quite right, I heard a system using the Unison Unico SE integrated amplifier and a pair of Harbeth Monitor 30s, which have long been a favorite speaker of mine. I almost called Brian Bowdle up, asking him to take everything back. Now, I realize that as good as that combo was, it could never approach what I’m experiencing right now, in my home. Yes, I’m turning Japanese. I really think so.

Marc Phillips has been writing about hi-fi and music under the Vinyl Anachronist banner since 1998. His earlier columns can be found on the Perfect Sound Forever website. You can discuss vinyl with Marc at Vinylanach@aol.com