Pub Number 2: Stephæn and Marcia's Place
Stephæn left Bill's place a few minutes early to warm up his system before the gang arrived. Stephæn's rig consists of Cain & Cain I-BENs, Audience AU24 cables throughout, Art Audio PX-25 amplifier, Herron Audio preamplifier and phono stage, Nottingham Space Deck turntable and a Sony SACD player. Stephæn has spent a lot of time tweaking his system to perfection and it sounds it: organic, natural, smooth, a touch warm, detailed, dynamic and not even a trace of edge. It plays music and it sounds great! What more is there?

I wondered whether inserting anything into Stephæn's rig could make a positive difference given the high level of synergy he has going at present. I was a little relieved when we put the Yamamoto in and when to my ears, it delivered the musical goods on an equal level of musical engagement to his Art Audio PX-25. However, that's not to say the PX-25 and Yamamoto 45 sounded anything alike because they didn't. They do handle the notes with lots of space and soundstaging information in a similarly musical and effortless way, with plenty of subtlety in the musical nuances. But I thought the Yamamoto was more detailed and more resolving of harmonic detail - the notes rang out longer. It also had more bass detail and resolution but less bass impact. The Yamamoto was also less warm and more brightly lit, both in its overall tonal signature and the way it lit up the soundstage. With the Yamamoto, I saw farther into the recesses of the soundstage. The Yamamoto was less dynamic but I think that was more a function of its lower power output than anything else. The images weren't quite as solid as they were with the PX-25, and the PX-25 had more deeply saturated tonal colors than the contender from Japan.

The Art Audio PX-25 is a truly great amplifier and one of my all-time favorites. Which amplifier you would prefer in your own system boils down largely to matters of cost, taste and speaker sensitivities. I could be happy with either amplifier but better yet, I'd like to add them both to my collection. And perhaps one of these days, I'll be able to afford to do just that.


Pub Number 3: Jeff’s Place
We lost Terry and Leslie Cain on the way to my place - they had to leave early to make it to a family birthday party on time. Hardy boys Harry, Pete, Stephæn and yours truly continued the audio crawl by cueing up my review system of Avantgarde Duo loudspeakers, Nirvana cable set, Fi 2A3 monoblocks, Tom Evans Design Vibe preamplifier, Audio Logic DAC and Meridian 508.20 as a transport. We listened to my system with the Fi 2A3 monos and then switched out the Fis for the Yamamoto. My system is voiced to be as realistic and direct as possible, with the intent of duplicating the natural timbre of instruments I know well like my Gibson Adirondack/Brazilian Advanced Jumbo guitar.

After listening to a medley of Greg Brown's Honey in the Lion's Head [Trailer Records TR0035], Lucinda Williams' World Without Tears [Lost Highway 088170355-]), Jorma Kaukonen's Blue Country Heart [Columbia 86394] and my new favorite album Beautiful Dreamer, the Songs of Stephen Foster [American Roots Publishing 591594-2] with tributes by Alison Krauss, John Prine, Roger McGuinn and Ron Sexsmith among others, Harry said to me "This is the best sound I've heard all day - this is the kind of sound I like." I puffed up like a proud papa and put the Yamamoto into the system. Harry then said, "The Yamamoto is in another league from the Fi." I know what Harry meant - it has a level of detail recovery and spaciousness that the Fis just can't match and which are traits that can be very addictive.
But Stephæn demurred. "The Fis do tone better. The Yamamoto's tone is a little bleached by comparison." Stephæn's right. That's exactly what I was hearing, too. Of course you might not know that unless you had the Gibson guitar and Stephæn did a nice job of playing a couple of impressive
lead runs before we sat down to listen. The Fis represent the reality of what music actually sounds like better than the Yamamoto does and the instruments sound more like themselves. The Yamamoto makes the music mesmerizing and astonishing -- beguiling even -- perhaps more than it ought to be but it is a very very alluring presentation of the musical message nonetheless.
Pub Number 4: Pete's Place
At Pete's Place, we gained a new listener joining us from College Place/WA which is adjacent to Walla Walla - Ken Hanafin, an acquaintance of Harry's. Ken hadn't partaken of the single-
ended triode and horn culture before so this was a first for him. Ken owns a pair of Maggies driven from Pass amplification - great stuff. Ken was impressed by how tangible the Fairfield Four's Standing in the Safety Zone [Warner Brothers 26945] was presented by Pete's rig. It has an enormous soundstage in both depth and width and a similarly big, airy and natural presentation to Bill's Cain & Cain Double Horn Bens. Pete's got a relatively big room and it sounds good to boot which helps a lot in the soundstaging department. Pete's 97dB-sensitive dark Cherry Cain & Cain Single Horn Bens project that big soundstage aided by his own integrated 845 design, the Guilty Pleasure connected by 35' cable runs. Interconnects are Monster Studiolink 500s, with Sound King oxygen-free 12-gauge stranded pairs from Parts Express for speaker duties. We listened to Harry's Dan Wright-modified Sony 999 CD/SACD player for digitunes but unfortunately didn't get around to listening to Pete's mint Thorens 124
turntable. Harry also brought with him a gorgeous vintage Scott tuner, which he ended up trading for Pete's Voight Pipes single-driver Fostex speakers.
There's no other way to say this: the Yamamoto fell flat on its face here. Those 35-foot long runs of speaker cable just killed it with too much of a load to handle, the result being the same as on Terry's 92dB IM Bens - the little Yammy got edgy and bright. If you want to hear what the Yamamoto is capable of, you'd best stick to highly efficient speakers and relatively short runs of speaker cables.
Last Call on the Crawl
So how should I sum up my time with the Yamamoto 45? The Yamamoto is the best-sounding 45 amplifier I have personally heard. When you hear it for the first time, you'll simply be stunned as Harry was. As for Bill, he wants to buy it. Stephæn liked it too, but was not as impressed as
the rest of us. Pete liked it a lot even though it didn't work in his system. If I recollect correctly (and I think I do but cut me some slack), the Yamamoto 45 sounds and plays music better than my bygone $15,000 Wavelength Custom 45 monoblocks. That is remarkable because the Wavelengths were remarkable themselves. The Yamamoto is that good.


The Yamamoto remains true to the 45 family sound. It is clean, refined, detailed & nuanced, musical and airy and spacious. But the Yamamoto then takes it further than any 45 I have heard before. It has a beguiling tangibility that seems to breathe and flow with the music, infusing it with an effervescent life and sparkle of its own. The Yamamoto is the Wizard of Space and nothing that I know of can match it in that regard - huge, billowing, breathing, luminous space that seems so real you can almost reach out and touch it. The Yammy also recovers an incredible amount of information, more than any other SET in my experience. I was constantly hearing new little details poke their heads out of the musical fabric but it never came across as being detailed in an amusical or analytical way. There is just the right touch of natural roundness to the notes that always made the detail consonant with the music.


And in case this comes as any news by now, the Yamamoto 45 is an incredible value. It uses the best-quality parts available and most of those are made in-house at Yamamoto. It comes with a custom chassis, custom transformers, custom RCA connectors, custom speaker binding posts, custom Teflon tube sockets and NOS tubes. It looks gorgeous and simply sounds stunning. Products like the Yamamoto amplifier --and men like Yamamoto-San and Brian Bowdle who offer such stellar products at such reasonable prices -- give me hope that audio is headed in the right direction after all. Truly, I am awed. Gentlemen, I bow to you in respect: Bloody well done!
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