Michael "confidante to el Presidente" Salmons wrote:


Washington DC: At a press conference today, President Bush admitted a
recent shocking revelation that he purchased a pair of pristine Boston
A40 loudspeakers froma stranger on Ebay, and furthermore, enisted the
Secret Service to keep knowledge of the purchase from First Lady Laura
Bush. "Yes, it's true. I had the secret service deliver the packing
crate directly to my secret listening room." Upon further pressing,
Bush explained the origins of this heretofore unknown room in the
White House. "Clinton advised me to check out a certain bust in the
Lincoln bedroom, and to my surprise, the head began to swivel,
revealing a switch. Upon depression a wall of the bedroom just opened
up, and inside I found a fully plush listening room filled with
awesome vintage gear. There were racks of old Marantz and Macintosh
equipment, Quads and Dynacos, and some gems from the transistor era,
too, including brand-new Naim surround sound gear and several products
by Creek. The speaker selection includes Epos, Dynaudio, even some
vintage magnaplanars."

Bush went further to explain his own forays into the audio realm.
"With all that gear in that comfy room, a place where I felt I'd be
completely uninjured if i choked on a snack and crashed, apoplexic,
into the thick wall-to-wall shag, I kept going back more and more,
later and later into the night. Laura became an Audio Widow, I'm
afraid. it became incresingly impossible to resist trying a variety of
equipment in the environment, despite the obvious unending sources of
pleasure available to a man of my authority in the richest country in
the world. I had the sonex panels adjusted to my own taste and had the
ambient sound levels checked. I traded the barcolounger in for one of
those fancy new La-Z-boy recliners. After that, the ebay cash just
began to flow."

The President explained his most recent, secret purchase. "I had a
pair of these when I went to Yale. There wasn't much room, and these
sweet little Bostons really filled the bill. After that there was a
period of, er, adjustment in my life, and the Bostons were lost to the
sands of time."

"Recently, while trolling ebay at three in the morning, I found a
pristine pair of A40s, series I, not II, mind you, with fully intact
walnut vinyl. I had to have them. After a brief bidding war with a guy
with the handle resell2u4profit, i bought those puppies for a whopping
$40. they arrived ony six weeks later. i highly recommend that
seller!"

And the results? "well, i felt it was unfair to compare a pair of
fifteen-year-old mass market mini speakers to the speakers in my $50k
white house dream system, so i just pretended that I was a typical,
underpaid, midwestern-american lower-middle-class information
technology shmuck. I used two integrated amps, a late eighties yamaha
and the venerated eico hf81, the closest the working class can get to
first-class amplification without a rent-to-own contract. for input i
used a classic kyocera cd player. all decent components but nothing
fancy. I didn't want to outclass the little guys right off the bat, so
I compared them to some newer speakers, the Paradigm Titans (a
christmas present from Dick Cheney back when dad was in the oval
office), and some older speakers, the celestion Ditton 15s (Somebody
left those at my house after a party- the beer stains and anonymous
bits of hair are still there!).

"I had to start with a little honky tonk, so I put Hank Williams III
on there. The bass was punchy, not as punchy as the Titans and not as
effortless as the Celestions, but the kick drum attacked with fullness
and authority. The only complaint I would have is the topside, while
mostly very smooth, did have a tiny bit of sound separate from the
woofers. Now, this is not a problem at all with the Titans or the
Dittons. And actually, it's not as bad as, say, my obnoxious old pair
of Rogers Sound Labs monitors- god those are awful. Still for a budget
speaker, they do damn good. It also depends on the program material. I
put on a album one of my daughters had lying around by some weirdo
named Sparklehorse, and I could swear I could read the serial number
on the Neumann that guy was using on Little Fat Baby. Not bad for
forty smackers.

Onto the little 18 watt Eico and some Mingus. I was floored by these
little champs. They have efficiency to spare, so they make a great
companion for this amp (although the titans match the Eico even
better). The tweeter didn't sound nearly as out of place. rather, with
the help of the silky-smooth Eico, they added exactly the right amount
of sizzle. Among the budget vintage amps, I find the bottom end of the
Eico to be nearly unrivalled. And the Boston, which is a sealed
design, not ported, had extremely quick dynamics and offered up just
the right amount of bass with more authority than my own signature on
a presidential decree.

"all and all," summed up the President,"more pleasure than $40 really
ought to give you, unless you hang out in the hallway behind the oval
office. you never know what $40 can buy you there."

Michael Salmonsm
salmonsm @ missouri . edu








LOL!

Excellent. A much more entertaining and relevant post than recent, endless
political threads. The only thing missing was a notable lack of mention of
vinyl hardware. So what type of turntable was dubya using? My guess would be a
rehabilitated Rek-o-Kut, or perhaps via eBay, a Dual.

Unfortunately, noting the presence of significant amounts of English gear on
his list of goodies, even his audio purchases represent a regrettable tendency
to not buy American! No wonder, our trade deficit sucks!

It's much more entertaining to read audio fiction that shows some creativity
than political fiction spewed forth by right wing zealots.

Nice job.



Bruce J. Richman