Howard, a guy who builds a WE91 clone (or two) for a few hundred
bucks, just how nuts is he? If it blows goats (and I think it does...)
he's out a few hundred bucks, or he can put it on ebay and get his
parts cost out of it. (Or use it for a guitar amp.) What has he lost?
The time spent building it? Amusement, cheaper than going to a ball
game. You are lumping the DIY building hobbyist with the guy who goes
to the saloon and buys all the latest fad stuff new at list.

And power conditioners are no nuttier for high end audio than in the
racks of touring musicians, almost all of them have one now. I have
stated my ideas on cost effective power improvement elsewhere and
while I believe them better than some commercial practices that doesn't
change the fact something needs to be done given power utility
practices today.

What about photography? Esthetically superior photos are often the
result of simpler optics and it's widely acknowledged that Japanese
optics which measure higher in sharpness are less desireable than
German (and overpriced) Zeiss and Leitz optics. Indeed a friend of mine
has had several published art nudes with his "secret weapon", a $2
Polaroid rollfilm camera lens put on a cut down extension tube he uses
with a 67 Pentax. Is the notion that a tube amplifier with a pair of
1940s tubes could be BETTER SOUNDING than a modern one so nutty in
comparison? The insistence of Objectivoids that it can't be so just
doesn't stand up to repeated listening, it is no different than if they
insisted that ABX testing proved soybean sandwiches were better tasting
than a Whataburger. Insist though they may, it will fall on deaf ears.

No pun intended.