Zaikes, loved your response!! Thank you, especially "...surprise, intoxication, confusion, ennui." Very funny and good writing BTW. I think you said it all there, not just accurately, but with..."communion", if you know what I mean. :0)
Yes, I knew you meant wistfully, not so volitionally. What followed were my views. I should have been clearer to avoid the implication. Oh, and you are hardly a novice, although I appreciate the gesture of feigned humility, really. You wouldn't "feel" this if that was so. As I said somewhere, can't remember where, this all becomes less of an accumulation of accuracy after awhile, and more of a...quest, for lack of a better word (mystic-haters can go back into the closet now, although, if it makes them feel better, they can yell "Stone the Witch!! a few times before they go back in). When that happens, when your means of percieving what is happening becomes more than a sum of its collected parts, becoming integrative of the parts, then you start "feeling" these things. It happens in every area of knowledge, but it is difficult to explain to those still caught in the accumulated web of ideas, in this case coming from a King, or, er, Audio Guru. Its like you can sense some underlying current to what's going on, right, like about these amps? We all know the end-point truth is in the pudding, but reading the mags, at some level, becomes more of an art of seeing between the words, through them. It still has value, relatively speaking, but you are more on your own (as you always were...). We all want someone to tell us what is what or who to be - we want the King as father - but sometimes, to go farther on the quest, as opposed to rotely following each word in conformism, you have to look ahead yourself.
On these amps? I know what Zaikes is saying, and he has said it compellingly, but the "convergence thing" is happening with TAS and he is getting older. If he finds a nice amp for a nice price in a world of greed, and he now favors to an even greater degree full bass structure as a bias, that's OK with me. As for whether just another KT88-based amp has suddenly hit the levels of "continuousness" that Harry has been looking for, is another matter [I mean, if he didn't appreciate it in SE's - saying that he considered their popularity attributable to a harmonic band-aid to the digitally bound (an accurate statement in some places, but certainly not exclusive), then how could he suddenly see it now in some KT88's, and not even NOS Lions at that?].
I think ASL makes some nice stuff and I appreciate their effort to bring their nearly-kit-like amps (remember, SF started out with kits, and McCormack was a mod guy at first)to a higher level, allowing those who have harder to drive speakers, or need more power to assure a more wall-of-sound foundation for more energized works (rock and classical), yet can not afford the behemoth, exorbitantly priced tube amps to power them, to go to the next level. In that context, and considering all the other really bad bull that is passed on in mags, its a "good" thing.
On the other hand, when those KT88's start going in two years or so, and guys don't want to retube the set, and the cache of Harry's most recent incarnation has faded from memory once more, and the amps start hitting the market, I hope that the people who chose to take a chance - and it may very well be a good chance if they know what is - then I hope they are still happy with the music, regardless of who said what, or even what I say right now...
