KHARMA OWNERS, KEEP THOSE LAMM AND TENOR AMPS!

It has come to our attention that a number of you Kharma speaker owners are selling your Tenor amps (both the 75’s and 300’s) and perhaps even, *gasp*, your Lamm amplifiers in exchange for other amps, most notably the little Kharma amps and darTZeel amps, both solid-state.

Now, far be it for us to get in the way of anyone’s expresion of audio nervosa, but… Why?

Why breakup one of the most synergistic combinations known to high-end audiophiledom?

The answer we hear most often is ‘well, the bass wasn’t as tight as it should be, or there wasn’t much detail, or the sound was muddy, etc.’.

But before any of the rest of you sell off your tube amps, often at a significant $$$ loss, ask yourself one thing: what are you doing to isolate vibration away from those oh so sensitive to vibration tubes? Do you have them on a decent amplifier stand, one commsurate with the amp and your investment in your system?

We see so many people disparaging tube amp sound only to find out that they are using little better than furniture underneath their amps. Those rave reviews you read about how Tenor and Lamm goes so well with Kharma speakers are with the amps on a good amplifier stand.

Jonathan Tinn of Blue Light Audio uses custom Silent Running Audio (SRA) platforms (all SRA platforms are custom) underneath the Tenors at CES and the Stereophile Shows. We use Harmonic Resolution Systems (HRS) Isolation Bases under our Lamm amplifiers (and, actually, just about everything else we pump music through) with amazing results.

Using a world-class amplifier stand for your world-class amplifiers makes a world of difference.

Otherwise, the amps will sound wonderfull, but nowhere near as tight and detailed as one might prefer after extended listening. One might wonder why they don’t just build the amps a little sturdier, so that we did not have to worry about them vibrating like Tom after Jerry wacks him another one – but they don’t, and they are not likely to anytime soon, either.

OK, ’nuff said. And we can assume you are all using world-class power cords already, so no need to go into that…right?

And you can ignore all this if you really want to get back into the component-a-month club.