Time had come to get together to taste the Western Electric 13 taking the opportunity that our good friend M was in town, we gathered three nationalities Polish,  French, English and a German.

Having followed this blog you might not have overseen that someone was “deeply” involved in Western Electric Horns and playing around with them also self building the WE12a and the WE 13 for a historical 1st build and listen in Europe. But on topic we  have the stereo version installation of the Western Electric 13a.

More than just the horns we entered a world where lived some very nice original pieces like WE49 preamps, WE92b Push Pull 300b, WE1086e

WE46b restored to original condition with time and patience. Other nice pieces lived in the space. You can feel as you walk into Audio16 blogger friends “room” that he has consructed an enviromenet and judging his smile a place he is happy to be in.

But this was not a sight seeing adventure but one to experience these big horns in a home enviroment. Upstream gear was on as usual well suited for the adventure, EMT 927a and Studer 730a playing in this session with no preamplifiers. Yes the 86e and 92b can be set to produce 99db of gain….but here they were just set at 50db…

We had a session before “dinner” and “after” so that the the good French wine and the fantastic cheese served did not alter our ears…! But this gathering is mostely about people. JL up in Belgium and T agree that the audio and the music are the “material” that enables us to gather.

Still a few words on the sound warm, deep, emotional and engaging. Anything missing? not really…..

But the experince was three fold with WE92b, WE86 and last but not least WE46b. Each giving a very different experience. The simple fact that we listened to the records from beginning to end is we think all that has to be said.

The music sessions inspired us to exchange on topics outside the audio realm and given the nationality mix open our perspectives…and yes we had many funny insights ….

The next day we went for a good walk in  Marais and also had a look at some record shops finding some excellent Mono Jazz records.

All in all this was a very sucessful weekend not really tiring!