A23 »Hommage T1« stepup transformer

Here I was, relaxing in the couch, been listening to good music all day long. I was pretty happy with how the music was presented. The heart in my system was my TD 124, newly restored by Classic Audio, DK, and equipped with the A-mag platter and all other parts from Schopper. I had also bought and eqipped it with the EMT 997 tonearm together with an SPU.  

Matching a system so that it gives you a holistic presentation of the music (that is, music with a flow as it sounds in real life without any HiFi booms and whistles) is certainly not the easiest thing! Once you reach that point of having a system that suits you well, changing even small parts of the setup can be hazardous. I had gotten a parcel from the Swedish post a couple of days earlier, the package contained the A23 Hommage step up transformer. It was a good friend who was generous enough to lend it to me so that I could try it out.  

I was already using the “standard“ A23 step up for SPU and was quite happy with that, I was expecting no big drama changing to another step up. I eventually plugged it in and put on a record and walked towards another room since my wife was calling for my attention. A couple of seconds into the intro I stopped and turned around towards my Horninghybrid speakers, Bachs solo suites for Cello had gone through a metamorphosis... the soundstage was huge, Maurice Gendrons cello was all over my room and the instrument had a sense of air and volume that I´ve never heard before... from the silky highs to the lowest bass, everything just came natural out of my speakers, small nuances, subtle changes in tempo suddenly occured.

Lots of equipment have passed through my setup, this time I really wasn´t expecting anything dramatical, merely a slight improvement from “upgrading“. What a nice surprise it was!

Mikael Karlsson / Sweden, www.holistiskhifi.se
Juni 2009