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

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!

I'm running a pair of the Telefunken E88CC from Upscale in my Aesthetix Romulus Eclipse. This CDP takes 1 pr 6dj8 and 1 pr 12ax7.
The Funkies are definitely very nice. I would describe them as "clean".
BTW: I too would like to hear the new Acute DAC.

Yes, I also owned an Acute CDP, liked the "sound" very much.