A dealer in my area actually had one back in nineteen ninety something and I had read the review in Stereophile (I still have that issue of Stereophile) and was so intrigued I took the dealer’s Baron home for a weekend audition. If I decided to buy ity he said he would take my Cary SLP70 in trade.
It certainly was a looker--dual monoblocks in one chassis, rack handles, a dozen output tubes, switches, knobs, meters. . . .
One of the features that intrigued me was that it could be switched in increments from full triode to 1/3 triode, 2/3 pentode to 2/3 pentode, 1/3 triode to full pentode. The dealer advised me that most people seemed to like 1/3 triode 2/3 pentode so that is how I conducted most of my weekend audition. I do not remember how I set the adjustable feedback.
Anyway: my first impression was, "Wow--this is neat!!" What I noted was that the soundstage filled the room and was right up front in my face (which I liked). Leonard Cohen’s voice sounded close and menacing. Margo Timmins’ (Cowboy Junkies) vocals sounded a bit husky (which is not my usual perception of her voice) but at the time that did not bother me. Overall, my perception of the sound was that it had a musky quality to it . . . the best way I think to describe it it was like being in a smoky room. Which I realize does not make sense, but that’s the way it struck me.
But it was new to me and I liked it at the moment and I had made up my mind to trade my SLP70 in.
The Sunday night before I had to bring it back, the last thing I did was listen to (with the Baron) (again) The Cowboy Junkies/Sweet Jane off either Trinity or their at the time only live CD. Then I hooked my little SLP70 back up. The difference was a "wow" moment. The sound stage shrunk back to around the speakers (B&W 805s Matrix series) but it was then that I understood the meaning of a black background. The Cary produced a black background with shimmer of cymbals hanging in the atmosphere and the Mesa baron produced a sound that was, in contrast, rather muddy sounding.
It pained me to do so, but I returned the Baron that next Monday morning. I described the experience of putting the SLP70 back in the systwem after listening to the Baron all weekend. The dealer made some comment about "not wanting to get rid of old shoes because one was used to them." Which was not accurate. I truly wanted new shoes, but in certain aspects the quality of my old shoes was way better than the new shoes Mark let me try on.
Anyhow, there were aspects of the Baron that I really enjoyed and I wound up buying a pair of ARC VTM 120s secondhand from the classified section in back of Stereophile that they ran used to run at that time. REALLY nice clean full sounding dynamic amps, but they did not fill the room with sound like the Baron did. (But they didn’t sound "smoky" either.) They also blew grid resistors on startup whenevewr they felt like it. I went to a Cary V12 because it was switchable in thirds like the Baron was . . .I still listen to that amp (as a matter of fact I still own the SLP70 I was going to trade for the Baron) but like the ARCs, it never filled the room like the Baron did, no matter what I did with the pentode/triode switches. But the V12 is clean and dynamic and full sounding without being "smoky" sounding and although I now don’t know if it is quite as dynamic as the ARCs were, it does not arbitrarily blow grid resistors on start up, and when I finally paired it with a Cary SLP05, it did bring out more "holographic" features of a soundstage, although still not to the extent that the Baron did.
Oh well . . . Ramble On. . . .
