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EOI for Monitor Audio GS 60 floorstanders. Santos Rosewood real wood veneer Original rrp I believe was close to $6k * Location- Melbourne Inner North * Item condition description- In excellent condition BUT a bass driver has several almost indiscernible dimples from a wayward small finger. It does not affect performance and is visible when close. In fact a friend pointed it out to me after I had bought them. I'll post photos when I get to it but do not be put off by this if you are looking for high quality speakers like these. They present beautifully, both sonically and visually. I bought these from Johns Hi Fi exchange late 2012 and they were sold with out the grilles so the listing is for the speakers only. They look stunning without the grilles and the quality and workmanship is highly evident. I partnered these with a Musical fidelity A5 but they are actually very easy to drive. * Price and price conditions- $2200 * Reason for selling- Restlessness and money for upgrade * Payment Methods: Cash - Pickup, Paypal or Australia Post COD * Extra Info: I prefer pick up only but can take to the nearest pack and send if delivery is required. Happy to audition them if convenient. The blurb from Monitor Audio http://www.monitoraudio.com.au/support/past-products/gold-gs/gs60/#/overview Developing the discrete cavity technology of the GS20, the four-driver GS60 recreates the deep bass and authentic scale of a performance, bringing lifelike power, dynamics and realism to music and film. Yet its tall, slender appearance is anything but overpowering. Like all models in the Gold Signature range, the flagship is a monument to the cabinet-maker's art: immaculate real wood or piano gloss finishes are blended with modern industrial design and superb attention to detail. Even if you think you've heard it all before, the GS60 will take your breath away. Anti-resonance build: driver held by innovative zinc alloy clamp system; traditional tongue and groove construction; extensive vertical and radial internal bracing. 6 1/2 inch die-cast aluminium chassis bass and bass-mid drivers featuring a new Rigid Surface Technology RST®II, C-CAM® alloy cone profile. A new 1" C-CAM gold dome tweeter extends high frequency performance to beyond 40KHz. HiVe®II port design: the new port technology uses a straight rifled construction to aid air flow and reduce turbulence. - See more at: http://www.monitoraudio.com.au/support/past-products/gold-gs/gs60/#/overview * Pictures Photos of actual speakers to follow soon sorry

One Silver Exposure Classic 28 power amp rated at 70wpc into 8 Ohms. Item: Exposure Classic 28 Power Amp (in sliver) Location: Bowen Price: $1200 (including postage to anywhere in Australia) Item Condition: Excellent, perhaps 200 hours of operation. Reason for selling: A little too warm for my liking. Payment Method: Pickup - Cash, Paypal, COD Only Extra Info: Retailed for about $5K when new. Check out http://www.exposurehifi.com/classics.html for more info. I also have a Classic 21 preamp available (in black) for $750 (including postage to anywhere in Oz) Pictures: Classic pre and power. And with some friends in my big comparo a while back. I could have sworn I had an internal pic as well but it appears I don't . Oh well, additional pics by request if anyone really wants to see the innards. Edit: Almost forgot, this amp does not like high capacitance speaker cables, so braided cat 5 cables, ribbontek (or ribbonflex) or gertz are out of the question! I've tried the first two and I've included the third by reputation.

The original idea here was to perform a two way shootout between the Redgum and Burson systems but while I was waiting for the Burson gear to show up I managed to get my hands on the Exposure Classic 28 and Classic 21 components so why not make it a 3 way comparison? After all the more the merrier, right? I have resolved that, for the sake of this trio of tests, I will take every step possible to make the systems sound their best. The only parts of the system that will stay unchanged throughout is the speakers and the speaker cables, I will swap and change ICs and cd spinners as I deem necessary. Due to a bizarre condition that I can only assume is my own personal curse I have had 'issues' with each and every system here. In the case of the Exposure gear this curse manifested in two ways. The first was the fact that the classic 21 was shipped from the UK packed on its back (this is assuming that the 'this way up' stickers were obeyed by the posties) with no packing. Well, OK, there was actually plenty of packing but all of it was on top of the upside down preamp and so of little use. I mentioned this to the seller and he told me that it was packed by the idiot son of his brothers first marriage (or something of the sort) and offered to have the boy neutered just to make me feel better. I doubt that actually happened but at least he offered! Thankfully it has performed flawlessly so it obviously survived its crossing of half the globe in good condition. The classic 28 caused me all sorts of anguish, it gave me a "bass note of death" experience, it's hard to forget one of those! And when I got it back from the tech (who could find no fault) one of the channels failed within a minute. The details are available in a separate thread; http://www.stereo.net.au/forums/index.php?/topic/54890-when-a-power-amp-goes-bad-goes-dc/ for anyone who wants the details. The solution was to use low capacitance speaker cables, which means the expensive Lenehans and not so expensive but much loved LBP Taranuis are out of contention. So I am forced to use something different, I chose the massively thick (7 gauge!) Redgum cables and the 28 hasn't missed a beat since. 1. Exposure Classic 21 Pre and Classic 28 Power amps. These puppies RRP'ed at close to $5K each when new so I was hoping for big things. The Classic 21 has a TT that looks to be the same size as the ones in the 28, I am guessing 350VA. Not bad for a pre that will use about 25 watts at most, you just have to love that level of over-engineering! The 28 is a dual mono design so the two channels share a power cord and on switch and that is all, it's all separate after that, a TT feeds each channel. Almost monoblocks but not quite. I tried the Exposures with my now standard consonance cd120 and I have to say they sounded pretty crappy. There was too much of everything, too much mid range, too much bass and I had trouble hearing what was happening in the highs because there was too much of the mid range muscling in on it. Not really knowing what was going on I tried the Myryad Z114 and everything fell into place. The darker nature of the Z114 was obviously what the doctor ordered (is this a case of English gear being happier to work with other English gear I wonder?). It was all good after that! I tried Aurealis ICs from cd to pre and pre to pwr but it was a bit too much for the highs, I tried Lenehan Ribbonflex for both runs and it came out to be a bit too much in the mids, in the end I used the Ribbonflex for the cd to pre run and Aurealis from pre to pwr. That did the trick. And now the details. Highs: Emerge delicately from a background of black, plush velvet, the detail on display is very impressive. Softly played piano is the best I have heard. Trumpets are just the right mix of rasp and prap, triangle is maybe a little crystalline in that is has more tinkle than twinkle. 8.0 Mids: nicely sweet in a bit of a “glam rock†kind of way, very nicely expressed over the top of the bass not quite as much detail available as there is in the highs but that is ok as there just doesn’t need to be. The only solid criticism I can find here is that there is a distinct lack of ‘zing’ in the transients, the Exposures are much more analytical and correct than they are energetic. Even so, very, very good. 7.5 Bass: This is the region where the Exposures shine, strong, full, expansive and enough to fill the room to the point where it leaks out the windows. The bass usually has something of a calming effect on me when it is on display like this, it fills the room with a mellow thunder, so it can manage to be both calming and spine tingling at the same time! It also has something of a liquidity to it and you have to love Evanescence when the gear can fill the room with mellow, calming, tingling, liquid thunder! Oh yeah, can’t help but love it! 8.0 (and I reserve the right to increase that to an 8.5 depending on the results of the next two stages of this exercise) Vocals: Female: Beautifully detailed and expressive but more airy than breathy and not particularly sweet at all. Whereas some amps focus on vocals the Exposures seem to treat them as just another instrument which means great detail but a bit of a ‘loss of sexiness’ in the case of female vocals. Even so, there is something to be said for listening to artists like Amy Lee and Norah Jones with just a little bit of sexiness removed, they still sound brilliant but you appreciate them for being an artist rather than for being sexy or good looking or desirable. Made me not only appreciate the performance more but gave me a different way to look at things and that is not easily done. 8.0 Male: The same treatment that seems to remove a bit of sexiness from the ladies seems to add a bit of it to the guys. You can pick the changes in pitch presented by ‘big range’ singers like Freddie Mercury and Justin Hawkins so much easier than before. It even lets you pick a few small alterations in pitch in the voice of Mark Knopfler, which is not something I thought even occurred. So, in short, it actually does a better job with the boys than the girls. 8.5 2D Soundstaging: Channel separation and stereo effects are crisp and clear. For the purpose of this comparison I am setting the Exposures performance at 7.0 and I’ll compare the Burson and Redgum directly to that score. 3D Soundstaging: well controlled but a bit shallow due to its personality (see below). Setting this at 7.0 as well. Overall Performance Integration: Listening from afar, The Exposures give you a performance that is definitely in front of you, like a show on stage. It doesn’t try to draw you in to the middle of the music but lets you appreciate and judge from a slightly removed position. I must say that I have never heard anything quite like it before, which makes it hard to score, it certainly seems to be very good at what it does so I’ll give it a 7.5. Ability to Emote: A bit strange in the emotion stakes. Since it doesn’t draw you in and make you feel a part of or surrounded by the music but rather lets you watch the performance from a step back I’m going to have to score this one based on how effective I feel it is doing its job rather than how much it makes my spine tingle or my eyes tear up (not that that ever happens!) and since it does its job very well indeed that means it scores quite high. 8.0 Electric Guitar Test: Again very interesting. I started out with an 8.0 but marked it down to 7.5 on the second round due to a lack of ‘edgyness’ but had to bring it back up to an 8.0 again once I noticed an extra level of detail that was available in and behind the guitars sound and while I was trying to work out how much detail was actually there I noticed that it uses a sort of mid-range ‘reverb’ effect to give the guitar the energy that it should usually have from said edginess that I thought was lacking. Once I noticed that I just had to mark it up to 8.5. So it scores as well as the Burson, even though it gets there in a slightly different way. 80’s Rock Test: Excellent, very clear and yet not overly processed or artificially clean. That sort of ‘reverb’ effect is very good but not quite as good as the ‘edgy rawness’ that I expect from some of the big hair rock bands. So it comes in as the third or fourth best I have heard rather than second or first. 8.5 Personality Summary: Crisp sounds are amazingly crisp, excellent snap too but the overall effect is not crisp or snappy, more fresh, open and clear in the mids and highs and that wonderfully fluid, strong and all encompassing bass underneath. Sort of like a world class garden salad served on top of a triple layer mud cake! Right about now I am very happy that I took the punt and decided to add the Exposure gear to this otherwise two way comparison. Very happy indeed. Next up, a revised review of the Burson gear (assuming it needs revising, there's no way to know without having a long, hard listen!) And photos, several photos. Cheers, Cafad.