How important is it for you to attain a holographic image?

Boy am I lucky; this is one of the rare times that I have been on a thread with guys that I feel can give good advice.

Two 12AU7's are going bad on my CJ in the bedroom, and I'm hoping someone can give me some recommendations.

That guitar of Manitas looks like it has seen some tough times; maybe that's what makes the best Flamenco?

Manitas music has "soul" that you can feel, and that does it for me.

Orpheus10,

Telefunken NOS 12AU7’s sound great in my CJ.

geoffkait - I’ve purchased about 18 Mercury Living Presence pop LPs from Stan Ricker in the 1990s, the engineer of them and of Mobile Fidelity LPs. He told me that many of them had parts of the recording out of phase while other parts were in phase. They were not consistent as to being in or out of phase and changed phase positions within a track and between tracks. I don’t know if this afflicted the classical Mercury LPs but I don’t think so. The pop LPs definitely have some odd soundstage sounds with parts out of phase.

I have two copies of Brasil 66’ Stillness with A&M brown labels, different stampers. One is 100% out of phase. Very nice sounding AFTER reversing phase at the speaker or amp. The other is in phase and sounds the best of all pressings, really excellent. Tom Port of Better Records told me about 20 years ago that I should listen to each and see which one is obviously better and definitely listen to them in phase.

Out of phase recordings are generally not good sounding from my experience. Partially out of phase recordings can be okay like Stan Ricker’s pop Mercurys.