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The pictures below are of my old system. Please click here to see how things have changed in March 2008

The room I am using is about 4m long and 3m wide. At the time of taking this picture I had only recently moved into the house and so the system hasn't been tweaked at all. I just plonked everything in the room and started listening to music. Almost everything in this system is either home-made or refurbished. It sounds great. I can sit back and listen to this for hours.

The LS3/5a pair I am using are 15 ohm, assembled myself in Stirling Reference cabinets and with home-built external crossovers. The AB1s are home-made copies with modified crossovers and they are put behind the Tallis LS3/5a stands accordingto the method suggested by Jo Ki.

The equipment rack. The Quad 22 isn't one really! I got hold of a scrapped 22 case, resprayed it and built a very simple tube (E88CC) line stage preamplifier with power supply (EZ80 rectifier) into the case.

I totally stripped down the TD124 and completely rebuilt it. I even stripped down and replaced the motor bearings. It was a real labour of love but well worth the effort. For a while I had a Linn LP12 running alongside, but for sheer solidity of the sound the TD124 beats it. Two TD124 owning friends, Peter Roberts and Jim Creed provided invaluable support and advice. Put on a LP, sit back, and one is forced to wonder why we ever bothered to invent the CD!

The arm is an Ortofon RS-212 with a lovely old Supex 900 MC cartridge. The previous owner of the Supex had written it off and I rescued it from the trash. All that was wrong with it was that the stylus was covered with black LP gunge. Fifteen minutes work with some solvent left me with a shiny diamond and a fabulous sounding cartridge! The plinth is made from two pieces of Beech kitchen worktop. Just find a friendly kitchen fitter and get the pieces left over from sink cut-outs.

The Marantz is getting rather old now but I only use it as a transport. Underneath it is what appears to be an Arcam Delta DAC. I found this at a Boot Fair for £15.00, gutted the analogue electronics and built two tube stages using EF86s strapped as triodes into the case plus a simple power supply using an EZ80. (EF86s make great triodes). So on CD replay ALL the analogue signal path is tubed. At the moment there is a little Project MC preamp tucked away for the vinyl replay but I am working on a tube MC preamp (slowly!)