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Thursday, September 24, 2009

An extraterrestrial landed near Bodensee shores... or the proceedings of Thomas Mayer's assemblying my new preamp








I received this strange pix a couple of days ago - apparently a Tetsuo-like inspired stuff ("The Iron Man" b/w movie - Japan 1988 - look at a film frame... heavy stuff, indeed)... it's the WE 437A module - one of four - ready to be mounted in top plate of phono-preamp Thomas is assemblying, smoking his beloved cuban cigars, seated in his lovely Lindau am See's house garden, soldering and twisting cables and fiddling around my bespoke gears.

What a gap with the often psychothic way (seems appropriate Tetsuo's picture vs. Vitruvian, Leonardo da Vinci's, man...) of considering audio: computer designing, computer soldering, 0,00001 distorsion figures... not the case: it's like he's infusing in "our" preamps a peaceful, human soul and quietness, something coming from the sunny weather and the breeze from the lake in this end of summer and, most of all, from the trusty baldness due to having done his homeworks - i.e. designing and building a preamp never is an easy task and errors are costly and painful and dexterity with solder-iron must be supported by solid technical background... sure Thomas' strenght... the results are always no-frills, industrial design with a madcap wizardry coming from Meccano playing;-) in Thomas' youth... the love and admiration for this UK-made "toy" sure remained in Thomas' brain-cells.

Thomas knows it... the recipe is easy, anyway: buy and use the best components you can afford and have it mounted in a carefully designed layout. Easy like breathing, don't you?!?

Delivery is scheduled in few weeks, now... Vielen danke, herr Mayer.






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