Tools of a gentleman

[jserio]

SPC     you order from Thompson for your smokage? I get their catalogues and have yet to be able to nail down a decisive sampler. Previously I got a small cherrywood humidor(which needs some repair now, the humidifyer portion was supposed to stick to the roof of the box but does not now) and a handful of their "house" brand cigars. My father orders from Thompson as well and seems to like everything. However, he doesn't drink so he can't really give me pointers on good cigar/drink combos.

[spc]

I order from cigarsinternational.com these days.  Thompson has issues keeping their warehouse properly temp/humidity control.   CI does a great job with everything and has some incredible deals.  They have a 'make me an offer' section that's a haven for dirt cheap, yet quality, cigars.  For humidification, CI has tons of options, I would suggest one of the gel compounds, they come in tubes or tubs.  Two tubes or one tub should be more than enough to keep that small thompson special properly humidified.

Great brand at a fair price suggestion: La Aroma de Cuba.  It's a newer blend with a lot of flavor, but not overpowering strength. 
I'm a fan of the darker blend Gurkha's....... G5, Triple Ligero, Assassin, etc.  They're, retail, 8-12 a stick, but using the MMAO option on CI, I've gotten them as low as ~$3 a stick.  Hard to beat at that price.   

As for drink combo's, one of my favorite things to do is grab the Sam Adam's  24 pack seasonal samplers from Sam's club and experiment.  It's reasonably cheap and SA makes a decent brew.  Scotch tends to go well with almost any cigar and the Glenfiddich 15yr is easy to find at ~$40 a bottle and pretty good, step up would be the Talisker 10yr at ~$60 a bottle and one of my personal favorite picks.  The Talisker is by far worth getting if you're at all a fan of Scotch, all of the flavor of Laphroig without the bitterness.

[spc]

First time with an AVO LE10 tonight.  The price is a little intimidating, but it's easily the best non-island cigar I've ever had.  Couples nicely with a 15yr Tobermory. 

[The Buddha]

Oooo man I got my carvin speakers installed (had em since mid sept ... just was being lazy carting the 80 lb monsters from the back of the truck to the house. Then I had to run and the whole day and the next I never got to hear em. Then friday evening I came home to find that this guy had dropped off the petula clark reel he had.
So I throw that on the sony and crank up the amp to 3 (yes I am a wimp) and set it in warehouse loft and play.
Her "My love" is the first song and seriously its super super cool. Caught me by surprise too cos I didn't remember.
Loud and clean and simply mesmerising. Of course I've run Issac Hayes hot buttered soul, ozzy osbourne etc through that setup, except I used to have the acoustic speakers before these carvins, which while good, these are louder and much cleaner. No wonder they call the 1204 carvins RE mach 1 killers. 18 inch metal horn will kick the mach 1's 15 inch plastic horns all the way to timbuktu and back.
Now if only between the 3 bloody reel to reel's one of em would record. I'd happily rip off the reel and hand it back to my friend. That dude has reels but no player.  ...
Cool.
Buddha.

[jserio]

Buddha: Do the different styles of music you listen to require much in the way of tweaking your system in order to have the best quality sound? I'm no audiophile personally so I don't really know much. I guess what I'm asking is if you go from Ozzy to Mozart do you have to change much in the way you have things set up in order to get quality sound?

[The Buddha]

Yes but its not that straight forward. Rather you can get something that works for nearly all types of music. The governing factor when it comes to speaker selection and to a smaller extent other equipment too is the room's acoustics and furniture. As is the fact that you dont want sound to go where you need silence. Like I want to watch and listen to stuff when my son is upstairs sleeping. That means the speaker should not wildly radiate in all directions. I dont need a 90 degree spread, I'd like a 30 degree spread only.

OK so here is the run down. The bass is almost in consequential cos its non directional. Its good with a good sub, and even bad speakers dont matter much, of course good/great fronts add to the experience a wee bit.

Mids and highs are where it makes a real difference. I have noticed that horns sound fantastic in the front position in my family room.
However they are not the best by any means. The absolute best for music I have ever heard are the infinity type ribbons - emits. Emits or even the new chinese copy cats available for 3-5 bucks on ebay work great, However they are very very directional, and are very subjective to furniture smear. But of course you could at the $ they sell em at buy a good 1-2 dozen in 120 ohm impedance and build a line array with 15 per cab and put em on a curved baffle and get great all round dispersion etc ... but I digress.

In the fronts in my fam rm, really horns have proved themselevs to be near failure proof.

For the mids which literally go smack in the middle of the room - I run ess heil amt 1b's. They are bipole tweeters and after my modification the woofers also are dipole. They you get plenty of volume from very little wattage enabling you to listen from the second 1/2 of the room without cranking the volume. Google em up, you'd see what they are, in short, that speaker gives me bragging rights in the speaker war. There are 2 other guys that have em in charlotte and I know both of them quite well. These absolutely decimate anything under the 5G martin logans, and ML's need a lot of power and they are very hard on an amp cos they have wildly varying impedance.

Then rear. Clean and straight shot to you wherever you are in the viewing/listening area, so I got baby advents with the ebay $5 ribbons in them in place of the tweeters, and an RCA linaeum fitted center. No problems with them ever, they never over power the fronts and sound great when they are called upon to deliver effects like a helicopter flying overhead.

Also the mode of the amp is important here. In warehouse loft the amp sends much less power to the mids and rear. In movie-spectacle its full power all around. I watch movies in that mode. But music is warehouse loft for old or dolby enhanced if its new cd based.

Home theater is very different from music, HT is very sub oriented. the rest of the speakers are almost secondary, sub and center channel will make or break it. Music is very different. The fronts are key for that, as is the amp. My dsp 3090 amp while its very good, isn't as great at music as my marantz 580. They both push the same 80w but the marantz is much more musical. However the dsp3090 is so far better in decoding dolby that the 580 is an awful HT amp. In music it will kill the dsp3090 but not by much, but it loses to the yamaha by a wide margin in HT. That is huge. I have an onkyo tx-sv909 waiting in the wings that I believe sounds like the marantz 580 while being as good @ dolby as the yamaha or even better. @ 262 watts a channel into 4 ohm its not hurting for power either.

Cant believe I typed this much. I also need to get a life.

Cool.
Buddha.

[The Buddha]

BTW you have heard chicks dig bikers right - OK that's a lie.
On the other hand you've heard chicks dig music and by extension the guys that provide them with music right ? Yea, that's a lie too.

Oddly my wife has no desire to move these things around, she doesn't see the point at all. Except after I do she goes man that sounds so much better, or why is 1/2 the music missing in this cd all of a sudden. Or That sounds damn good. However she doesn't see a point in swapping things round.  ...

I surprised her with Petula Clark's "My love" and she too melted. I'd say that Sony TC-580 will wipe teh floor with the pioneers 707 any day - which is highly sought after. However a 707 looks fantastic and I suspect it needs very little to no tinkering. The TC580 will not go even 1-2 weeks without me cracking it open ... or maybe cos its been sitting for centuries it needs that now ... maybe I think I've got through 3 weeks with it seeing pretty heavy use and its not stuck open/shut or lost a channel ... maybe its all good now.

Cool.
Buddha.

[mister]

BTW you have heard chicks dig bikers right - OK that's a lie.

I  don't know... what about this then... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qHRCSoxFkA

Michael

[The Buddha]

Bikers catch their eye. But once you've been caught and locked, they want you to spend all your time and $ with/on them. Of course then they will squeal and say you're smothering them.
Cool.
Buddha.

[The Buddha]

And, oh only some chicks dig bikers, the rest dont care, or hate em actively. Hope that defines chicks completely. Yea it does.
Cool.
Buddha.

[The Buddha]

Ooooo I scored a carver preamp for next to nothing about a month ago (along wiht the bose and crown) and finally got a chance to try it out.
Cool thing is, its a HT preamp, meaning its got 6 outputs including sub, so you can have line level amps and control them all with this guy, and it is awesome. I want to run it with the crown 402 (350 a channel into 8 ohm) for the fronts, the nad 2400 (100 a channel into to the rear and a onkyo 5150 (125 watts I think) for center and sub.

Sadly the wife is adamantly nixing it.

However the carver is actively screaming away in my room.

Cool.
Buddha.

[spc]

And another watch in the stable, just picked it up today

[yamahonkawazuki]

Oooohh daddy likes ^

[yamahonkawazuki]

terry if you ever decide to sell any time pieces, say within next 6 mos.  LMK. 1 is on my short list. BTW may i ask what you gave for it?, is a NICE example. i have a efw at shop im repairing for a client ( cleanouts mainly)

[spc]

I gave $250 for the Glycine.  It was a no brainer at that price, lesser condition specimens that haven't been serviced go for 5-600 on ebay and it seems the 'shop' price is anywhere from 1200-2000.

I may sell the Glycine sometime soon, but I definitely won't be selling the Rolex Oyster Essex.  I've grown very fond of that watch.

[yamahonkawazuki]

I gave $250 for the Glycine.  It was a no brainer at that price, lesser condition specimens that haven't been serviced go for 5-600 on ebay and it seems the 'shop' price is anywhere from 1200-2000.

I may sell the Glycine sometime soon, but I definitely won't be selling the Rolex Oyster Essex.  I've grown very fond of that watch.

Damn man you scored on that glycine. i was lookin on the bay, and hell 6 times higher was the norm. a few years back, i had scored a submariner for 500 sans stem. found stem on teh bay, repaired it, and sold it for 1750. wish i could score like that more often. but here in east tn. not many have timepieces of that calibre.

[spc]

The newer Glycine stuff goes for serious $$$, but then, the newer airmans have 4 separate movements.

The cheapest Airman 1 I saw went for $600.......not serviced and with no band.

[yamahonkawazuki]

aye. to be honest i had not heard of the maker too often, a rare bird i guess. until recently

[Toogoofy317]

My guy has this kick a$$ Citizens diver watch. I was messing with it one day and exclaimed "Hey your watch is broken!" He runs over to me saying "WTF" I pointe at it and say "see the second hand isn't working" He shakes his head and walks out of the room. Now I know why and felt stupid. How bout you guys?

Mary

[spc]

My Rolex has a hack.  It's a tensioned hack, you have to maintain pressure/pulling on the crown to engage the hack.
The glycine has a wire hack for the second hand at the 24 mark.  It engages everytime the crown is moved to set mode.