beck wrote: ↑2020-01-14 08:23
It does not look like hard work to me :-). More like a comfortable afternoon at the kitchen table having a nice conversation.
beck,
That is
exactly the demeanor you would want in a quality surgeon!
I am the guy in the grey sweatshirt pictured above. Tom is the one wearing the blue shirt with a ponytail. Tony was busy taking photos and helping with unboxing. The surgery went better than expected, it took about 40 minutes from us listening to Urika to hear the Entity.
There was a huge midwest storm Tom and I had to deal with which meant our visit was cut short. Tom brought another Entity as he and Tony both wanted to hear if two Entity's run mono improved the sound. Unfortunately, we didn't have time. More unfortunately, when we returned to Tom's house, I was too tired to listen to his hi-fi; including the SINGularity's!! Damn.
I did get to look at them though. Another day, another story for the future.
Back to Tony's Entity: There was a communication problem that Tony wanted a burned in Entity but Tom brought a brand new one for him sealed in the box. Tony looked like a kid at Christmas opening it. I have heard and seen Lejonklou products before but I was still surprised how small the Entity and its' box are. Very well packaged and includes a manual. I have read of many buying and keeping a Urika to keep their "box count" down. The Entity is so small, I don't see that being an excuse, but it does take up one more power socket.
Nothing else was disturbed or changed in our comparison. In fact, the same Linn Silver cables from the Urika were used.
Listening was very straight forward; I picked a record and Tony picked a record. We listened to the Urika, then played the Entity with the songs in the same order. There was a bit of a learning curve for Tony as the Entity is a lot louder and he needed to find the right volume level.
After the listening comparison, Tom turned to me and asked what I thought. He didn't ask Tony as he was sitting frozen in a comatose daze. I believe his mind was blown. I told Tom, "In no way does the Entity sound worse". Tom was a bit insulted but after reading the other two reviews above, I was expecting the brand new Entity to sound weird or even bad.
The Entity sounds better in every respect to a Urika. In some ways much better. The PRaT is mucho betterer. Anyone who has heard a Urika knows it is
very quiet. Yet the Entity has an even lower noise floor. We listened to another four or five records and the
tone coming out of the Isobariks was so tasty. Tony threw on "Industrial Military Complex Hex" from Steve Miller's recent
Welcome to The Vault record. The tone from Steve's Strat using the middle and neck pickups together just sounded so full-bodied and cool, and
tasty! Tony put on Bahia and Black Magic Woman from Santana's live
Moonflower record. Carlos' guitar tone is legendary and the Entity brought it out in spades.
As we were listening, we could hear it warming up and burning in. It kept improving on every track. Right before we left, I touched the top of the Entity and the Klimax Radikal next to it. The Entity case was still physically cooler to the touch. I would expect the better part of a day for it to normalize. I would like to hear Tony's impression if it ever sounded odd, weird, or worsened as it broke in.
My favorite Lejonklou product used to be the Tundra Monos; they are an incredible value compared to anything out there and may be the best regardless of price. I get the same impression from Entity. I have no intention of ever buying another moving coil cartridge again in my life. But if I did, I'd buy an Entity first.
Ron The Mon
Needle-Freak