Anyone heard the E.A.R. "Acute"?

I've owned the EAR Acute 3 for about 1 1/2 years and have never had one issue with the player. It is without a doubt the most musical player I've ever heard or owned. I would also recommend tube rolling as a good NOS tube provides that little bit of magic people talk about. The only player I would be interested in going to would be the new Acute 4/DAC 4 combo.

Sense63 - Which NOS tubes have you tried and which ones were your favorite? What are musical tastes? Always glad to hear of another who loves the EAR Acute. It is a great player.

I live a 15 minute drive from Van Alstine, twice in last couple months I've taken gear over to him to fix loose jacks which were MY fault for using death-grip locking IC's

He showed me why it happened, fixed them both on the spot,charged me nothing,.let me listen to his yummy new Janzen electrostatics and was I on my way in 30 minutes .

CalvinJ,

Just talked with Kevin at Upscale - did you ever try his Telefunken E88CC/6922's on his site? He said that are very open and have a sweeter midrange than the Siemens. These are interesting to me as well.

In the 1970's Frank Van Alstine had the stones to offer a slight redesign of the pre-amp everyone considered THE pre-amp to own, the Audio Research SP-3. In his writings he explained exactly what his circuit changes did (improved the SP-3's linearity, improved the phono stage's low-frequency overload characteristics and corrected it's slight RIAA EQ curve inaccuracy--- main priorities in Frank's designs), and why the SP-3 needed those changes. It proved that, though Bill Johnson was a fine designer, he wasn't omnipotent!