Misho Myronov's WoodenAmp landed at my studietto

My pal Misho paid a visit to yours truly on his way in his roundtrip to another common friend, Markus Klug in Bavaria... he was accompanied by his wife Irina and his son, Misho.

Misho Myronov, Misho Jr. and... Gotorama.

He was able to squeeze in his car trunk the full WoodenAmps' monty - i.e. the world - at least among discerning, braveheart audiophiles in Australia, Philippines and... Italy - renowned birch plywood chassis tubes pieces of gear using seldom seen valves.

I unwrapped the carefully bubble-plastic cocooned line-stage, phono-stage and PSU and 3,5W amp and... simply admired the care for details, the smooth surfaces, the hex-nuts choices, even the smell of this freshly brewed handicrafts, carefully hand-made in Bulgaria.

First of all, as I plan to take my time to taste and enjoy the above mentioned electronics, I was sooo curious about the Siemens C3M tubes' based line-stage and I immediately connected to the smaller system, swapping it for the ex-residing Luxman AT-3000 passive preamp.

The first disk I enjoyed was a Stefan Micus' ECM... I immediately appreciated a sense of free-flowing easiness, a definite improved headroom and an impressive load of highly realistic detailing: the Stefan's shakuhachi has impressively dynamic, the before-the-note breathing and inspiring was absolutely true-to-life, as well.

The one of a kind, variable-strings classical guitar had a voice superbly various, rich in texture, decay and loudness, with extremely precise and dramatic dynamic changes...

The strong sensation of an inspired musician playing, improvising, breathing in front of me was nothing short of awesome.

The Partridge 300Bs mono blocks were like they found a new partner, a companion... a lover!

... and the WoodenAmp line-stage proved to be a truly fantastic lover: it owns one of the rarest capabilities - i.e. to work so well with amps it seems they were done one for each other.

I listened to the smaller, Tandberg System 11/300B/Meridian based system since yesterday early morning, for about 5 hours, now... tand he overall sound seems to blossom at every track, on and on...

This evening, I swapped the Foundation Designer/Tandberg System 11 for the larger Tandberg 114-116-8 speakers, sweating and puffing just to learn more and find confirmation of the merits of the just added Misho's line-stage.

Something really special whose building quality is up-to-par with its superb sound qualities, a single-stage with a 6x amplifying factor using a sought-after, great sounding, transparent Siemens tube used decades ago by German Post for trans-oceanic, long distance telephone calls.

The tubes were extremely expensive at DM 200 each, when a Volkswagen was DM 5,000.00... but what impresses is the transparency, resolution and dynamics... everything is so fresh and beefy.

I look forward in the next tasting on Gotorama, with RIAA phono-stage and Neumann DST and Tim de Paravicini's The Head, The Peak arm and Garrardzilla... my dream-system.

Ohhh, yes!

Bravo to Misho and his Audio Antiquary's partner Yanislav... his success and worldwide recognition as a first-class builder of bespoke, hand-made gears is my sincere wish to a friend and a man of integrity.

Personally knowing who de-facto winded the transformers used in these units only adds some drama to the whole matter... but, hey!... sounds and music first: the technical aspects are functional to the musical result, NOT a per-se exercise of hype & complication, as sometimes (too often?) happens...

Something which definitely I find quite boring and annoying these days.

Someway wrong, I should better say...

... stay tuned for more Misho's, folks; it will be worthwhile!


P.S. - forgetting to say this  a w e s o m e  unit is conservatively priced at EUR 3,200.00... including the premium, N.O.S. tubes! A bargain of HUGE proportions, IMHO.