E.A.R. 834P

Dan,I was not at the comparison,but was told about it,recently.I don't want to take anything away from the Aesthetix stuff,which has always sounded fine to me.

BTW--Just got(Friday)my cute little stylus pressure guage,we see advertised on Audiogon,these days.A few of my pals got it too,as I've mentioned,but I got to re-set my pal's arm with it.Truthfully,it is very accurate,and incredibly easy to use.We compared it to my friend's Winds guage,and it was "almost" exact.Close enough to not be a problem(actually within 6/100 gms).Who knows which guage is really the more accurate,so a good deal for 95 bucks.

My only concern is that it looks to be a bit cheaply made.I would have been glad to pay another fifty bucks,to have a higher quality plastic/fit and finish.The measuring tray is "tin" thin,but the owners manual actually claims that aspect,as some kind of selling point.Maybe it equates to more accuracy.Of course if it lasts as long as I hope,than my criticisms are moot!!

Best!

after having the 834p in my system for the weekend there great differences between the two, the 834p is super quite, has the tube blum, great mids, no problem driving my dynavector 20xl, and a real pleasure to sit down and listen for hours, the gcph is great at imaging and is a little nosier, it is also a easy listening piece, its going to be a tough choice, and like you said sit audio is one fun hobby, and a terrible disease but our ears love it, we have so many choices and to little time,

Stltrains,

If the two units are that close now I can assure you that moding the 834p will take it way beyond where it is now. There are actually several sources for mods. There was a thread not too long ago on the topic of modding the 834p, so do a search and it should come up easily. One thing you might consider with either unit is how easily is it to change loading. An outboard step-up might just be the ticket and would probably be a good improvement over the stock trannies. BTW, is that the 834p model with or without the volume control?

SriSpeedy, thanks for the report back on the guage. That really sounds promising. I've got a few more months until I have analog again so I'll see if you have any trouble in the mean time. I hope I didn't come off as defensive in my comments about the Rhea/834p. They both have their own strengths and weaknesses. These days I'm starting to rethink my approach to audio reproduction and wish I still had my little black box to do some experimenting with.

I modded my 834p myself. Not a big deal to do the work. The results put the unit in another league. I would like to get a set of the tx 103's that Bent audio sells. I can't decide if I want to go with the mu setup or the raw 103's.

Tim

Underwood is offering a mod to the GCPH promising wonderful improvements. I recently saw this in the classifieds on A'Gon but do not know any more about it.