But all was not lost—I called Dan Wright and told him we had set up the ModWright, and he asked if I had a CD player, which I did—I had the Brennan 2, a piece that I'd bought for my own personal Rega rig (see my Issue 99 article on Gregg Allman HERE), but back then I was mainly using it as a CD storage unit.
Dan suggested that I go ahead and set it up and play CDs so that I might begin breaking in the Athena v.2 speakers as soon as possible while I waited for the turntable to get set up. So I hooked the Brennan up to the ModWright and waited to hear what would emerge from the Daedalus floor-standing speakers. What to play? Why not my favorite guitarist, Pat Metheny? I cued up the album Secret Story that I'd previously stored digitally on the Brennan hard drive.
Before I knew it, I was listening to "Antonia" on a warm, early August Monday evening, and was hearing percussion, whistling, bell trees, chimes that I never heard before. How is this? I been listening to this album since it came out in '92—wrote my dissertation on it, went to several concerts and heard it live, spoke to Pat, etc., in other words, I thought I really knew this music and this album…these speakers are already impressing me, and we're just getting started! I turned it up—a bit higher, then even higher to see how it might respond, and I was amazed—nothing but clarity, no distortion. "The Truth Will Always Be"—all the moving parts as the tune stacks up gradually with instruments. The intensity slowly builds to a fever-pitch and a dam is about to burst, and finally does with Metheny screaming with passion, fury, pain, agony—and everything else. When the snare pops on beat two it really reverberates—and Metheny's synth guitar cuts through like a bright shining razor—and the upper octave pedal it screams like white lightning. The basement is totally filled with sound—admittedly much more than my beloved splendid Spendors! Is it actually true what they say? Is bigger really better? The goddess Athena has passed her first test! I'd loaded tons of CDs on the Brennan—my entire collection of several of my favorite artists that I never get tired of hearing—all my Miles Davis, my entire Metheny collection, Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Hendrix, Tom Waits, et. al—and I let the machine play on non-stop shuffle rotation for quite a while. Hours at a time, days at a time—just trying to get the speakers and the entire rig to "bloom," in the words of David Robinson. It was really great hearing music practically non-stop, and every time in went downstairs it was a nice little surprise regarding which artist would be cued up at the time. But mainly I was constructively killing time, logging in some playing time on the speakers until Nate could get there to break out and begin breaking in the VPI Prime Scout. That's when the real scrutinous (is that a word?) listening would begin, and my ears might experience the full blooming of the Daedalus Audio Athena v.2.
As soon as Nate Lennox arrived, he went right to work unboxing the my VPI Prime Scout turntable that had been patiently waiting, casually saying how it was routine for him—indeed, this is what he does regularly at Acoustic Sounds in Salina.
Watching him assemble the turntable from start to finish was thrilling—seeing the plinth in a naked state was exciting, and slowly watching it get dressed was beautiful.
Nate pulled of the red protective cap and proceeded to sit the platter over the shaft.
"Sometimes, when setting a platter down, the seal can be so tight that it airlocks," Nate informs me. "The airlock on the bearings are so tight, a suction is created that won't let it slide down gracefully." So he removed a bit of grease by taking a toothpick and dabbing some of it out.
It worked like a charm. We then went to work on assembling the arm.
