Hibernation mode, wife's sick!

Me: doctor, doctor! Help my wife!
Doctor: what’s wrong with her?
Me: she’s not well, could you help me?
Doctor: can she walk? Can she talk? Can she eat?
Me: yeah, all the above!
Doctor: then what’s wrong?!
Me: I don’t know, but I know the sex is not as great anymore!
Doctor: …
Me: 醫生，唔論洗幾多錢，你都要醫返好我老婆啊！Doctor! No matter how much it costs, you have to bring back the great sex again!

Man, I have never thought music could affect me so much! Every nite, I can hardly wait to pack up and go back. But recent nites, just when I started packing up eagerly, it dawned on me that my Classic 60 is sick!

It’s like part of your life has left you and you feel so incomplete. It’s like you walk into your bedroom, and realized that your wife has left you and you are left with the other half empty bed. It’s like when you thought of something funny and turn over only to be greeted by hollow space with no one to share with!

The problem was not that my Classic 60 was not singing anymore, she was still singing, but the sound was just not right! It’s like you having sex, but only the mundane and routine like procedures! There’s just no chemistry and explosiveness anymore!

Many things changed in recent months and that make it so much more difficult to identify the culprit. Initially I blamed it on my electricity condition, took blocks of Richard Gray back home, though it helped, still I could sense that the sex, ops, sound was not as great!

Changed many cryo-treated fuses, still the same. Blamed it on my newly acquired speakers, but NO! The problem sort of manifested since my last pair of speakers, though nearing to the replacement of it. Might it be AQ DBS Cheetah? Coz I started noticing issues after its arrival.

Many things tried and tested, still I could sense things amiss. No way man, I ain’t going to give in and accept the fate that I have to live with this sound for the rest of my life! Fast forward to now, almost 2 months later, I brought home the whole shebang of Siltech G5 series and replaced my resident AudioQuest.

No way man! The problem persisted! One by one, I eliminated the possible candidates of culprit. Not the speakers, not the cables, not the CDP and certainly not Richard Gray as I did bring home other products. Since the off the shelf products did not manage to help, I was thinking of giving some DIY products a try. Unfortunately, I did not get much of help there as I could not manage to get any.

OK, I’m just going to get the simplest way of getting sound to cut down on the candidates to eliminate! So there goes the pre, I bypassed the pre to connect the variable outputs of my CDP straight to my power. Dang! Still there! Yeehaw, it’s the power amp then! That makes it easy as the only thing could go wrong would be the tubes then!

Replaced the RCA clear top driver tubes with Ei, the same! Reverted the change and replaced the EH power tubes with Svetlana C wing and WTF, the problem persisted! OMG, now I am really freaked out!

Called Oh to reserve a ward number and lugged her to Leslie’s place for final confirmation. Damn, with Ei and Svetlana C wing in place, we still could not get the glorious Classic sound! Called Oh again to prepare for emergency warding!

There it was, my Classic 60 under ICU with Oh. She’s sick and that greatly affected me emotionally!