Friday 22 December 2017

Yamaha Pacifica 112VM - A Great Electric Guitar

By Sophia Agathangelou: A few months ago whilst listening to music and writing my diary, I was struck by the excellent guitar playing by AC/DC in Thunderstruck and thought, I would love to be able to play the guitar like that and so I began the journey looking for my first guitar. ...I quickly realised that I wanted an 'S' type or Fender Stratocaster type guitar and I did like the Fender HSS, but it was a bit heavy. he important thing for me was to find a good quality instrument. In the end I found the best balance was the Yamaha 112VM. Let me recount some of the ways.
I love the metallic red colour and was glad abut the maple neck option, but better still on closer inspection the finish throughout is of a very high standard for a very reasonably priced guitar. This doesn't feel like a poor cousin to much more expensive 1000 pounds plus guitars I've tried. I also like the satin smooth neck, the mahine heads seem very good and with the original stings, which I'm also not inclined to change, came into tune quickly, stay in tune well and sound good too. It adds to the overall feeling of quality that nice chrome knobs are included. The body feels very comfortable and it has the perfect weight.
This is the perfect guitar for me, a guitar for life, they can bury me with it.

Saturday 9 September 2017

Bowers & Wilkins P9 Signature Review

By Sophia Agathangelou: As far as we're concerned, there are headphones and there are Stax, having said that, all Stax are open backed and we've yet to find an able portable 'energiser', so there's still a place in the world for closed back headphones e.g. on an aeroplane or in any other environment were you don't wish to disturb others. So to our Bowers & Wilkins P9 Signature review.

Our hunt for closed backs is about convenience or portability, hardware quality that is able to withstand travel and acceptable sound quality.

What's that, acceptable sound quality? Let me explain that statement. Having searched far and wide and reviewed the top Audeze [very heavy and not in our opinion ideal for travel] and the much awarded and similarly exorbitantly priced Focal Utopia headphones and having done so with good gear of Chord Dave quality and above, in our opinion, Dad and I both say that no commercially available headphones today warrant more than a 6/10 when set against our well sorted listening room and reference system 'The Bunker'. Even the extraordinary Stax 'ear speakers' only warrant an 8/10 at best in our current configuration that we rate as the ultimate Stax system available today and it's not the combination you might think... [Click here for our first Stax review].

It was a lovely day, so Dad and I decided to drop the roof and go for a nice cruise down to, ...sunny Swindon? Well the good folks at Audio T had a pair of B&W P9 available along with a Chord Mojo and Hugo2, so off we went.