Steve Guttenberg finally reviews the Eminent Technology LFT-8b loudspeaker.

Yes ricevs, hardwiring even is always the best way to go.  Although it can also be inconvenient for moving, cleaning, upgrading, selling equipment.  I’ve thought of doing it many times to the speakers but haven’t.  Not real hard to do there.  I have hard wired from a couple sources in the past.  That at least gets rid of the connections on one end. 

The Apogee’s have to be fantastic. 

One application where I am pretty serious about hardwiring is in the tonearm. All my arms have single uninterrupted length of wires, from cartridge clips to RCA jacks. With a signal that low in level you really don’t want any extra joints (so to speak ;-) .

Right with you there bdp24.  Rewired my Saec with one length of OCC from cartridge to Cardas RCA jacks. 

I did completely upgrade the crossover parts in the LFT-8b with a copper foil inductor on the mid-panel, larger gauge copper wire inductor on the woofer, all high quality polypropylene caps and wires everything inside with Furutech OCC wire soldered with silver content solder and of course the Cardas posts.  The only resistor on the tweeter panel is the Mundorf MResist Ultra which are super clean sounding.  The sand resistors are terrible sounding.  Very grainy (no pun intended).  

Just the copper foil inductor on the mid-panel was a huge sonic improvement!   Much smoother sound and more revealing.  

The reason I kept everything inside was that the speakers would be much easier to sell if I ever want to.  I always consider that when modding things. 

I know many people feel the bare wire is the only way to go.  Yes it does sound fantastic.  At least for a year or so until it oxidizes.   I believe in soldering or at least tinning the wire with good silver solder so things don’t oxidize.  If you’ve ever had to re-terminated wire and stripped the insulation off and found the wire now needs to be scrapped off because of oxidation, corrosion, etc you see why I don’t like leaving bare wire.  

I’m a retired high end Audio electronics tech that’s always had the champagne taste but on a beer budget.  So I’ve tended to build most of my own equipment as you can see. 

The amps are about 125W per ch. using four KT-150’s with Teflon V-Cap coupling caps.  Power supplies are on the bottom. Uses two EL84’s for the current source to the cathodes of the two 6SN7 input tubes.  Right now using four Sylvania 6J5 tubes.  

The preamp is the exact circuit from a Cary SLP-05 ultimate without the headphone section.  All coupling caps are Mundorf Supreme EVO - SilverGold Oil Film Caps.  The silver chassis below is the PS for it.  There’s about 900uf of Solan propylene in the preamps PS section.  Each tube has its own 1-1/2 amp filament regulator so I can run about any 6SN7 replacement.  Right now running a pair of old Mullard  ecc32/cv181 tubes on the balanced input.  Also a use 6F8G’s in an adapter a lot.  All inputs/outputs wired with Kimber Silver wire.  The rest with Kimber copper in the preamp and amps.  

I’ve completely gone through the Schiit Yggdrasil and extensively upgraded all the PS areas, chassis damping, etc which was a huge improvement.  

I also have an old Theta 4-tube preamp that I’ve completely (I mean completely) rebuilt and has a large external PS with a lot of propylene (about 700uf plus electrolytics) and uses a toroidal xfrmer.   The phono section uses teflon V-Caps and 3.0uf TRT StealthCaps in the line section and I only use it as a phono preamp.  About the only original parts I kept were the Mills wire wound resistors.  I even installed 9-pin teflon tube sockets.  The controls are all bypassed.  This output to via RCA to the SE inputs of my main preamp. And is converted to a balanced signal.  My amps only have balanced inputs which keeps down the number of tubes needed. 

I’ve tried to max things out but still keep things convenient to disconnect and move.  

The Thorens tt has a Saec WE-308L with all the Fonolab upgrades and a Technics EPC-U205mkIII cartridge with a Jico SAS Boron stylus.  Really enjoying music from this system.