New Gallo 3.5's

Hi Dave, thanks for the quick response!

Let me try to clarify my 1st question.

This is from a previous post of yours up in this thread:

A fellow owner and friend brought over one of his stock Ref 3s and after getting a fix on how my "new" pair sounded, we substituted his for the left speaker with mine as the right speaker, then played a variety of mono stuff. Using the balance control on the remote of my Aesthetix Rhea phonostage, I can quickly switch from left only to balanced to right only. It was uncanny. In balanced mode, we could hardly tell the stock speaker was playing!

So my question is: Wouldn't the fact that the 2 speakers, one with the MS base and one without, were in physically different locations in the room (where you normally have your L & R speakers) significantly affect the bass response you would hear when listening to one speaker at a time? Where you place the speaker affects the room response. I was just curious if you had attempted to calibrate that out by listening to or measuring two identical speakers, one at a time, installed at those same locations.

The effects you describe make me want to go buy a pair of those bases! I'm just naturally skeptical.

Okay, I should have looked at that old thread, but i'm still a little unclear. We put my friend's left speaker (the one without the Mapleshade base) in exactly the same location where my own left speaker originally sat. We were both then struck by the fact that his speaker appeared to be missing, relative to the way they were both projecting sound. My speaker (with the Mapleshade base) simply appeared to be substantially fuller-bodied than his. We didn't do detailed tests beyond this. The difference was so obvious that he ordered the bases for himself that same afternoon.

If you want a detailed explanation of the price hike have a read of the 6moons article. It's a sobering read.

Mike

I wrote a short review on the 3.5's and posted in the speaker reviews if anyone is interested.