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Sucker for SET: Sophia 91-01

I am new to SET. My first unit was the Assemblage 300B which changed everything. I bought it out of curiosity and at not much of an investment. I listen primarily to full orchestra Late Romantic classical. I had thought SET couldn't handle this material. Quite a surprise to find that they can, at least with sensitive speakers (I use Omega Super 7s).

So, being a good American, soaked in the More is Better philosophy of that strange land, I jumped at a pair of Sophia monos at about half their usual price, and now, after some grief trying out various preamps, all of them unable to process out a really shrieking brightness coming from the Sophias, and on the verge of sending them back, I read somewhere in these forums that often in the course of their manufacture polarity is switched on these units. So, I swapped plus and minus at the speaker terminals and ... yeah, Mahler grooves!

Although they are still burning in, already I hear magic coming from these amps. I don't think that I can return to push pull now. It's over. I'm hooked.

For preamplification I tried out all my various units intended for resale and found the best match for the Sophias to be a Joule Electra LA 100.

As for brightness, with the polarity switched the Sophias are in fact rather lush and dark so far, although yielding a tremendous depth of soundstage. In the past, I've found that the sweeter, more tubey sounding amps (C&J, for example) tend to flatten space and I've been willing to put up with a more forward presentation, at the cost of some brightness, to obtain that space. The Sophias do both.

Yeh. I've come to that impossible condition among audiophiles: CONTENTMENT.

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Topic - Sucker for SET: Sophia 91-01 - Brent Powers 14:13:49 11/13/15 (48)
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