Popular Post bluesman Posted May 6, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 6, 2021 Hi and welcome to the AS community, Phil! I have no experience at all with Tekton or their products, so I can't help you with that. But we see so many rants about similar problems with so many products and vendors that I thought yours called for a bit of clarification. I've been a professional musician for 60+ years (Local 77). Although my main instruments are guitar and keys, I follow at least one web forum for each instrument I've played over the years, of which sax is one. I've never played one of yours myself, but I can tell you (and any on AS who might be tempted to take issue with your post) that you have a rock solid reputation among those who own and play Barone instruments and accessories. Although the sound and playability of your instruments and mouthpieces draw nothing but praise in the many posts I've seen (e.g. on Sax on the Web), I've been particularly impressed with the praise for your level of customer interaction, responsiveness, and care. As a working musician, I want to thank you for the level of service you provide us. So when someone who takes it as seriously as you do complains like this, it's worth hearing. I don't recall having seen any posts here from sax players at any time over the years I've been participating, so I'm fairly certain that few (if any) AS regulars are familiar with Barone saxophones. So to all who are tempted to take the OP as just another rant, please take my word for it - he's not asking for anything he doesn't provide his own customers. By reputation, he's as good as it gets in this regard. We hope you find sonic satisfaction, Phil. Thuaveta, Bill Brown, lucretius and 2 others 5 Link to comment
bluesman Posted May 6, 2021 Share Posted May 6, 2021 42 minutes ago, PhilBarone said: there's this one A in the left hand of my vintage Steinway that I can always pick out. It's so amazing, it's so rich and dark and has like a million overtones Maybe that note was inspired by my favorite piano story. Legend has it that when Rubenstein struck middle C, it sounded better than when anybody else did! PS: I've been a Prima Luna user and lover since soon after Kevin Deal started bringing them in. Your EVO is a wonderful amp that should get the most out of almost any speaker. My KT88 Prologue has been living very happily under our Yamaha grand for almost a decade. Despite its "low" power rating, it's had all the juice needed to drive the many speakers I've had on it, some with sensitivity well below the Tektons and some with highly reactive loads that dropped 'way down there at some frequencies. Link to comment
bluesman Posted May 6, 2021 Share Posted May 6, 2021 1 hour ago, PhilBarone said: Just one question, where do I go about selling them? Just list them in the classified section on this site - the link is in the header. Link to comment
bluesman Posted May 6, 2021 Share Posted May 6, 2021 50 minutes ago, PhilBarone said: I'll give the Klipsch Forte's a shot The PL should be an outstanding match for the Fortes. In case you missed it, there's a 2019 Stereophile review of the Forte here that lays it all out well. I assume you're getting the Forte IV, since the III is out of production, and that's reportedly even better than the III. I haven't heard a IV, but the IIIs I've heard sounded quite fine to me. The Klipsch / tube amp combo is truly old school (and an excellent example) - I could live with it very happily, and from your posts I suspect you'll do just that. Bill Brown 1 Link to comment
bluesman Posted May 7, 2021 Share Posted May 7, 2021 45 minutes ago, PhilBarone said: I never would have bought these speakers had him and another chucklehead said that the speakers were worth much more. The young kid that does the reviews on YouTube actually said that people were trading in their 30 thousand dollar speakers and I bought it hook line and sinker. Such BS. The concept of worth is purely subjective, Phil. With so many wonderful audio products now available at a fraction of the retail costs of their predecessors, MSRP and market/street price lack strong and consistent correlation with sound quality. And with so many new methods and materials available, even design and build quality are less strongly tied to cost than they used to be. My audio source and close friend for decades was a crusty lawyer-turned-dealer who opened one of the few high end shops in about 1950. One of his many pet peeves was people who said things like "they sound great for small speakers". For Dan, the question was only how they sound - period. If he were still here today, he'd undoubtedly voice the same objection to those who say "they sound great for inexpensive speakers". There are those (myself among them) who would sugggest that spending $30k on any but a select few speakers is buying it hook, line and sinker. I've been blown away by a few 6 figure systems over the years, but I've been equally impressed with the naivete and stupidity of those who bought what I consider to be exotic audio debris. And I've been more impressed with how close to greatness some $500 speakers can come than I have been with the marginal improvement for that extra $29,500. You've given the world $3k saxophones that rival the best Mk 6s, so you understand this far better than most. Quality is now almost independent of price, and speakers of equal sound quality to your ears are now classic commodities. They're differentiated from each other largely by price and esthetics. Go with your ears and your gut. Link to comment
Popular Post bluesman Posted May 7, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 7, 2021 1 hour ago, PhilBarone said: Thanks Bluesman, much appreciated. If you ever need anything, let me know and I'll hook you up good. Phil I appreciate it, but I'm 'way too old to try to keep my chops up on wind instruments. After playing piano for 70 years and guitar for 65, I'm finally developing some grace on both. So I've chosen to focus my energy on further development of those skills. 😉 My use of trumpet and sax is probably of interest (and amusement) to you and many AS people, and it's consistent with the thrust of my AS article series on realism vs accuracy in audio systems. I've probably played 2000+ weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, etc and at least as many jazz dates. But I love to play the blues, and I've been fortunate enough to be a sideman for some outstanding national and international acts over the years. Mosst bluespeople love to feel a horn section riffing behind them, but most bluespeople can't afford to pay one. So I found a few ways to solve that problem. I learned to play trumpet and sax when I was in high school because I was writing tunes and arranging other people's music with no regard at all for how difficult it might be to play what I wrote. Not playing wind instruments, I had no knowledge or experience to guide me. This was made clear when I handed out my chart for the theme song to the TV show "That Was The Week That Was", and the horn players (high schoolers for sure, but more than decent because Atlantic City High was big and had a diverse student body) all screamed "nobody could play this chart". So I borrowed a trumpet to find out what was what, following that up with an alto a few months later once I had some facility. It was a evelation to play instruments that let me add my breathing to the factors that shaped my sound - and it taught me about phrasing, because guitar and piano players don't have to stop to take a breath. I loved it! Fast forward to the introduction of the vocal harmonizer (which, for you nonmusicians, is an electronic box that adds harmonized notes to whatever you sing into a microphone connected to it). I bought one, played a horn into it, and a horn section came out of my amplifier! So I brought it on a gig with a Louisiana bluesman, who loved it - and it got me a lot of gigs. You have to set it for the scale and harmonies you want and the key in which the tune is being played. Sometimes, you have to fudge the key setting to accommodate some different scales and harmonies, as necessary. But the bottom line is that it works really well. This meant having to keep up my chops on both sax and trumpet, to provide whatever the bandleader or contractor wanted. For those of you who have never played a wind instrument, let me assure you that playing the sax or trumpet well is HARD!! Maintaining strong enough facial muscles, wind power, etc to play well for a few hours is very difficult, and you have to practice every day (or, at least, I did). But it gets worse...........I discovered that I could play the trumpet with my right hand and a keyboard with my left at the same time, which got me even more gigs but threw one big monkey wrench in the works. A trumpet is a "B flat" instrument, which means that a C on the trumpet is a B flat on the piano. This means playing different music in the same song at the same time on two instruments in two different keys. Since you can't play much on a saxophone with one hand, I had to default to the trumpet. I did that until the first good guitar synthesizer came along (the Roland, in about 1995), at which point I put Roland pickups on my working guitars, started playing the horn section parts from my guitar, and hung up my horns. Between the harmonizer and the synthesizer, I've been the horn section on hundreds of club dates, concerts, and videos - and no one has ever noticed that the horns don't sound quite right. The vocal harmonizers at the bottom of the price range are far from SOTA audio electronics. And in addition to the imperfections in synthesized intrumental sounds, there's a slight delay in the guitar synthesizer. So I had to learn to lead the beat just enough to be close to perfectly synch'ed with the band. Interesting times for sure! sphinxsix, coot and Iving 1 2 Link to comment
bluesman Posted May 7, 2021 Share Posted May 7, 2021 2 hours ago, PhilBarone said: Imagine playing in the style of Warne Marsh and those guy, there's no gigs outside of Europe. Are you from AC? My best friend and incredible tenor player Frank Vicari used to gig there all the time. When those gigs dried up he ended up helping me in the shop. Very sad story given that he played with Maynard, Buddy Rich and tons of others and a tremendous friend and great guy which is probably why he didn't make much money. Maybe you should tell me which speakers to buy if I don't like the Klipsch Fortes I just bought. If they don't work out I'm considering the Harbeth but now we're getting into much more money. AC born and raised! Back in the '50s and early '60s, the old boardwalk hotels had a lot of dances for kids and parties year 'round. I wasn't in that social circle, but I'd been playing locally at our community centers etc from the time I was about 10 - so I was known to (and apparently liked by) the group that did go to them. Between classmates who went to those events and their parents who knew my family and trusted me, I was able to get regular work playing them with drums, bass and tenor. Then I got my band a regular gig my first year in high school playing for radio station WMID. We opened their record hops (run by a DJ named Larry Keen, aka "the fat cat in recordland") and had regular work for the next 2+ years in addition to the parties etc. And when we were old enough (and good enough musicians to pull it off), we started playing local clubs. The summer of '64 was a dream time for me. I'd just graduated from high school and landed a 7 night a week gig for the opening season of the Golden Inn in Avalon. The owner wanted piano, bass & drums - so that's how we auditioned and got the gig. But we then convinced him he'd be better off with an organ-guitar-drum trio, so he bought a B3 with Leslie and we had an absolute blast!! There have been many world class players who can't secure the stability and recognition they deserve. I played with the biggest and best society office in Philly from summer '69 to December '73 (when I got married and passed my chair on to an 18 year old Mike Sembello) - we did weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, commercial gigs like fashion shows and big charity events. There were 5 "major" leaders, about 10 lesser ones, and over 200 regular sidemen. I can't tell you how disheartening it was to be playing a wedding with guys who'd just been on the road with Basie - I played a few affairs with Al Grey in the band! Even the guys who made it big had to struggle much too hard. I felt terrible playing Sunday jazz brunches at local restaurants with true greats like Jeff Lee Johnson, Gerald Veasley, and Eddie Green. As for what speakers you "should" get, I don't believe in the concept of "the best" of anything. It depends on what kind of sound you like. I'm a Focal guy - I love the character of their speakers. I'm truly old school and still love the Rogers LS3/5as I bought new in 1975. These are ideal for the PL amps and have a combination of clean analytical sound and tight upper bass that makes my music pop. They image beautifully and are amazingly realistic even on big band stuff (like Rob McConnell's Umbrella direct-to-disc double album, which I strongly urge anybody to find). They don't do deep bass, but down to 55 or so they're killer - and there's so much of the second harmonic in the bass that even the octave below that is there and tight. When I first got my Prima Luna amp, I was so happy with the sound into the Rogers that I disconnected my subwoofer and haven't used it with them since then. There are several LS3/5a clones today from Harbeth, Falcon, Spendor, Stirling, and Chartwell (among others) that are still available new and are similar in character to the originals with some minor but audible improvements ovr the years. But our living room system uses a PL Prologue Premium driving Focal 726 towers (which are well within your price range - you could even go up to the 8 series, although I personally didn't need the minor bass extension the 826s had on bass heavy music). In truth, I could live happily with any of several currently made speaker systems. I even love the little powered monitors in my recording setup (JBL SLR 305s) - they sound mighty fine on their own, and I stuck my sub in that system when I want a big kick. But see how you like the Klipsches - they're also wonderful speakers. Link to comment
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