Whats my weak link?

I will try to get my buddy, Steve (who I bought the kefs from) , to bring over a couple of pieces of equipment. He was on the next level, compared to me and my system (5 yrs of obsessing vs. 9 months). He really has had numerous power cords, conditioners, cables, everything. We talked a long time about synergy within a system. He was using really cheap pressed board from a hardware store to tame some flutter echo so I don't think that was the difference. I'm more picky about speaker placement than he is. My system just sounds like the mids are predominant. These same speakers on his rig sounded so smooth, transparent and perfectly eq'd, for a lack or better description. It did look like he had some sort of power conditioning going on also. He was a tweaker in that he is on the level of opening his pre amp up and soldering in better caps, op's (whatever those are) and a bunch of other stuff that went over my head. He had also put dynamat on the insides of some components and built shields around the power supplies. I'm not talking about his system imaging better, which it did, but more the overall sound (tone?) of his system. Again, my paradigm, vanies and now these kef's are just too pronouned through the mids and I can't figure out what's going on here. I guess I should add some powercords and room acoustics because those will help ang gear, and then try his pre amp as I'm suspecting that's where I could gain an improvement.

+1 Winoguy17. I would start by eliminating the pre/pro. I never found one that could do music right, including Classe. Your amp has an input impedence of 75Kohm, so a nice tube preamp should fill the bill nicely. Even a solid state stereo preamp would be an upgrade though.

Ps, Chuck, Bro, I know now that I am flying blind. I thought that the sound that I didn't like was because of my speakers. You hear from some people that speakers make the biggest difference in sound; I didn't believe that so much before but now I'm certain of it. Dealers around me don't know nearly as much as you guys; they're just there to sell equipment, and I do have some "hi-end" dealers around me. Ahhhh, going crazy here. I know the sound I'm after, i just can't seem to get there.

In addition to what Almarg said, see if your buddy will let you try his power conditioner. Plug source gear and pre-amp into it, not power amp. I suspect some power conditioning might make an improvement. Need not be expensive (unless for a power amp). I use a very modest Monster power strip with my source gear and it was a nice step in the direction you seek when applied.