Hi James
Happy New Year and I hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating the new year.
I did, I can tell you honestly. It has been an eye opener but also a revelation. The former and latter sound the same but they are not. The eye opener is looking back a what the dealers and magazines "tell you" and the revelation is about what I experienced within the first 15 mins of playing the whestTWO.3 in my system.
That first 15min has changed my entire outlook on vinyl. OK, my Thorens TD1500 turntable / Ortofon 2M Black may not the very best out there but what I am hearing now is really what I was expecting from it after I bought it. My hifi dealer convinced me that I NEEDED to buy a $6K turntable and that my Sutherland Phonostage perfection. WOW... he was so wrong. !!!
Trying a VPI Prime Signature was better but not by much. I couldn't justify that price difference. But after a private DM with a forum member and a chat with your goodself, my life completely changed.
The TD1500/ 2M Black with the whestTWO.3 is phenomenal. The improvement across the whole spectrum is unreal. I can hear so much more of everything and I am hearing things that the Sutherland Phonostage could not bring out. My Blue Note/ Tone Poet albums sound stunning !!!!! Instruments sound REAL and not muted/ fake which is what I was experiencing before the whestTWO.3. The separation between instruments is also amazing but it doesn't lose musical integrity. 2026 will be a great year. Thank you.
Thorens TD1500/ Ortofon 2M Black/ whestTWO.3 / Audio Research/ Harbeth LS.
Don Spelling - California USA
