JA - Things got complicated. I now have 2 matching amps coming this Thursday. I plan to send one to Jim Williams and keep the other for comparison when JW’s comes back. Both can be compared to the GFAII which I have in my stable.
JW’s approach is to identify weak links in fundamentally great designs and upgrade those weaknesses to new strengths. The upgraded GFA555s will have bandwith of 1Hz to 300kHz with decidedly lower noise and faster slew rate. Jim works in the pro world and doesn’t use ’audiophile’ parts, but rather best-of-form ’normal’, high-performance parts to achieve his results at minimal cost. His GFA555 upgrade costs $225 plus freight.
May I take a little side-trip here? I met Jim when I got two mic preamps from Tom Jung, founder of DMP. Tom used CS5s as his mastering reference speakers in his ground-breaking early digital label, and passed his STs along to me for my recording work. The Studio Technologies Mic-PreEminence was 1980s state of the art, but were a little noisy and had become less than best-of-form in some areas. Tom told me about Jim, who re-worked one of my STs with stellar results. I sold the other ST to a fellow audiophile recordist who had it upgraded. Subsequent upgrades included a reel-to-reel and recently the CS3.5 EQ. Jim doesn’t normally ’do’ power amps, but he uses GFA555 as his own amps, and has tweaked them to their best performance. I’m looking forward to his work on mine!
