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Switching speeds is nearly instantaneous on the direct drive turntable. Without any Acrylic or other plastics, this deck creates no static discharges. As a result, playback is completely quiet (except for the occasional pop from groove dirt of course).

A close up of a Schmidlin resistor.

A dead-serious battery bank capable of astonishing current delivery.

The Rubanoide project previously covered here now runs a new custom paper for its bending-wave diaphragms to be utterly impervious to moisture in any climate.

Despite high efficiency, driving a Rubanoide is no job for wimpy SETs. The feedback from the ultra-potent magnets dumps all damping burdens squarely on the amp. 300B aficionados may have to reconsider.

Back to the phono stage, the main reason for today's report. The six tubes are biased by batteries (massive capacitor banks without bypass capacitors) and big oil-filled caps handle the high voltage decoupling. Filtering runs Audio Consulting silver resistors and all supply voltages (107V for the anodes, 6.67V for the heaters) are pure DC. Max gain at 1kHz is 78dB and headroom of the circuit exceeds that of conventional phono stages by a factor of 100, i.e. saturation won't occur until the input sees 5-6 volts.

The high-level input of course bypasses the ECC88/99 stages and taps directly into the WE 437A output stage for about 26dB of max gain. Because of the active dual-mono TVC output, no separate preamp is required. A Mains Independent Phono Stage from Audio Consulting couples directly to your main speaker amplifier.

Prospective customers comfortable of playing these league have to commit a 1/3rd down payment and personal delivery and setup by Serge Schmidlin will occur approximately 4 months thereafter. All battery charging is fully automated and despite its tweaked-to-the-hilt nature, this Audio Consulting component should be set 'n' forget.
Because Serge's Rubanoide Subwoofers were awaiting new drive units to be out of commission during our visit, our brief sonic sampling was down by 6dB @ 100Hz. This, as you might imagine, was no proper condition to come to any legitimate
conclusions. But then this wasn't intended as even an informal review. Rather, it is an it's alive introduction to a new audio device that will bow a month from now at Europe's most important annual trade show. As someone who religiously read all of the La Revue du Son and its l'Audiophile precursor articles by Jean Hiraga, it's only fitting that Schmidlin and Hiraga, young and old master, should now openly collaborate in a joint exhibit. My master plays pool after breakfast...
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