Thinking outside the bean

Last week, my friend Ryan (Ejlif) loaned me his Elrod EPS2-Sig to try out on my Lamm LL2 preamp. While the sound opened up noticeably, the bass was just too boomy, and the highs were too harsh. So I figured that while I wait for my Virtual Dynamics Master PC to arrive, I'd just put the stock PC back on the Lamm. Only problem was I had loaned the stock cord to Jax2. So a quick survey of our small house led me to the only detachable power cord that would work on the Lamm: the one off our espresso machine. Lo and behold, with the espresso cord on the Lamm, the music fell into perfect balance. But (and there's always a but), what about the lattes? I couldn't fire up the espresso machine now that the stereo was alight, and I'd have to turn everything off--preamp last--to make double-duty of that cord. Yesterday, my wife was happy to accommodate, stopping for a coffee on the way to work. But my neighbor's "Friends don't let friends drink Starbucks" bumper sticker was flashing an alarm in my mind, and I just couldn't make my wife go out for a latte two days in a row. What to do? Just then, I had an epiphany. Well, actually the Epiphany is on the CD player, so in effect what I really had was an Elrod. And this morning, I made lattes with the Elrod on the espresso machine.

First of all, for all of you power cord naysayers, let me just tell you that instead of its usual 45-minute warm-up, the machine was screaming hot within 10 minutes. The espresso dripped with a blacker background that recalled Nigel Tufnel's comment in "Spinal Tap": "How much blacker could it be?" And the answer is none, no blacker. But that wasn't all. The aroma filled the room like never before, with more pungency in the bottom end, and an airyness on the crema that I've seen only in the Pavoni costing five times the price of our Francis Francis. And what about steaming, you ask? You would have thought Guiness was now in the coffee business, the foam was so dense. It took only one sip to transport me immediately to the mountains of Columbia. It was that palpable, such a life-like reproduction of the event itself. I closed my eyes, and thought Juan Valdez was right there in front of me, tipping the cup to my lips.

This afternoon, I'm having a dedicated line installed for the espresso machine, and am considering a pair of custom IC's so we can set up a little transport/DAC-like action between our Rancilio grinder and the machine itself. I may even have Neuance build a custom platform for the ensemble so I can squeeze that last bit of extension out of the soy milk, which tends to express itself mostly in the midrange.

Still think that power cords don't make a difference? I can only imagine what the Statement PC would do with our lattes. Time to check the classifieds....