My new listening room - see it develop over the next few weeks

When my Wilsons came from the US to Australia I found a little customs flyer inside. They unscrewed the top of the crate, looked inside, were happy that speakers are inside and closed them professionally up again. They did not touch the speakers which were still in there original shrink wrap.

 

Give me a little time to set things up properly and I'll invite you over for a little listening session.

 

Wow.

I'm glad everything landed in good shape.

... I'd swim over to hear that rig.

 

MilesSmiles: Well, that's cool...I figured they'd rip the whole thing apart.

 

You might wanna wait a few years until I'm back in Miami.

 

I'm a good swimmer.

 

Talk to your seller in Tokyo and see how much experience they have with US sales. It won't hurt to talk to someone at US customs first as well. They are like the IRS, it's better to ask questions first, rather than later.

If seller in Tokyo has done a lot of business here, they will probably have worked with customs enough that the product will go through customs no problem. If they have a partner dealer here in the US all the better.

Since 9/11, it's gotten increasingly tough to just airfreight stuff for personal transactions. They will want your SS number, etc etc and you might want to check to see what the import duties will be too. Most intl. shippers will only hold stuff for a few days and then they start adding some pretty hefty penalties on the bill.

You might even see if you can buy the speakers in Canada and drive em over the border. Might be less hassle.

 

Ok, cool. Thanks. Good ideas there. The 4344s can of course, be had here on the used market. I haven't seen the 4348s, however. The 4348s are for the Far East only, according to the sales rep for my region. He was steering me towards the 1400 Arrays. Not a slouch of a speaker by all means. The 4348s are studio monitors, and that's what I'm looking for. Anyway, being in Japan, Kenrick Sound has them readily available at pretty decent prices. They are in fact an authorized JBL dealer.

http://www.jbl.com/home/products/pr...e=ENG&Country=JP&Region=JAPAN&cat=BFS&ser=LSR

 

Those are stunning speakers. Beautiful system, which must sound incredible...

 

My move from California to Virginia this year was nothing compared to yours but for my LP's I bought 13' x 13' boxes, packed the LP's fairly tight and then put those boxes into 14' x 14' boxes. Out of 26 units not one had the least bit of damage. I was relieved!!!!

 

That's an excellent idea!
I was going mad trying to find some very high-test, double or triple wall cartons, but your double boxing idea is even better.
Any other tips for moving a vast amount of LPs or precious equipment cross-country? I'm facing the prospect of having to move some 15k LPs early next year!

 

I just moved two stores (30,000+) worth of vinyl in the last year and a half. My main advice - get the Uline 13"x13"x13" cube boxes (will hold ~70-80 LPs each) and the Uline high quality 4 inch packing tape. Fill the boxes, pit a couple of LP cardboards on top to fill the space and you can seal the box and easily stack em 4-5 high. The key is to use the same size boxes for everything, it's MUCH easier to handle.

I have a similar secret for moving CDs but don't have the box size here in front of me (and the CD boxes run about 110 lbs. each full, but hold 350)

 

15K LP's!!! That's a lot of vinyl (but I'm sure you've heard that before). For equipment I have all of the original boxes so that made it easy. Triple wall cartons are expensive so that's why I went with the double box method and kept telling the movers "these boxes are very important to me." Since the company contracts with my employer they may have been more considerate to my instructions.

 

Many thks, am on a business trip this week so more improvements and better pics will follow this weekend.

 

The weight of my CD collection was the biggest surprise to me. I shared the custom made boxes for 40 CDs in one of the pics above, 4 of the CD boxes did fit perfectly into one of the moving boxes - still heavy but much more manageable. I ended up with about 50 moving boxes which were then secured on a palette.

 

What can I say?!!

Nice painting and frame!

 

Thanks Pablo - an original by a guy named Emanuel Mattini who specialises in musical paintings.

Cheers

 

Off topic...

Rick of KenRick is actually based in the States, Ken in Japan does restorations and Rick does NOS builds, the White ones on their website and the ones with all wood finish are build Stateside by Rick.

Best way for you to do this is actually ask Ken whether you could opt for a "Build to Order" replica, using NOS parts and get it all sorted Stateside and not shipped from the US to Japan and back.

The Build to Order are more expensive but the difference should be offset by the shipping.

Good luck.

BTW, imho, Brystons and JBLs are not best mix. The new SST squared versions might be different, but I have listened to the 4343BWX with Bryston 14SST and it was not flattering to either of them. Bass, as you could have guessed, is not a problem, but the mid up becomes dry and relentless.

Brystons are fine however with UK "super monitors" such as ATCs, B&Ws, Harb's M40 or Spendor SP100R, however. (Strangely enough, PMC, despite their relationship with Bryston, sounds better with ATC amps in a domestic setting, where the treble again is elevated, esp. with modern excessively limited cds.)

Happy to discuss it further should should want to open another thread...

 

you've got damn fine system, if my mate's Esoteric/Accuphase/Sophia is anything to go by.

As an aside, if it is a dedicated listening room, having the gear closer to you and not between or near the speakers might be better. If you have suspended floors, Cerapucs in place of Wilson spikes might offer cleaner yet more natural sounds and happier co-habitants, be it family and neighbours.

decdicated mains spur is never a bad thing either...

good luck with the rest of your set up.

 

I finally have an exact meassure of my room - 18.5ft wide x 24ft long x 7.5ft high.

My remaining CDs and all the selves arrived yesterday, I should be able to post some updated pics over the weekend.

Played a lot with speaker placement after I had set up the shelves and placed the big rug. It starts to sound like real music now.

 

Many thanks for your suggestions, I might still re-arrange how I positioned my gear. The listening room is on the ground floor of the house we are renting here in the UK - I only have the wife and the kids to complain about noise , but even on high volume the sound level outside my listening room is pretty acceptable.

I would have loved to get a dedicated mains and had somebody look at it but it would require too much work around the house for the landlord to play ball on this one.

 

Damn little red x's. Can't see a thing!

 

Ok, I finnaly found my little camera in one of the moving boxes, I will still have to wait for my buddy and fellow forum member Lontano to come over and take some more professional shots once I'm fully set up.

The movers left on Thursday and I now have all my gear, shelves and CDs ... should make for an exciting weekend, right now only a terrible cold is holding me back from jumping right into action.



I have never seen my CD collection so compact ... no pun intended.

 

The selves are ready and waiting ...