Baby, it's cold outside...
or, what to do when you are up to your arse in snow!

Liverpool, NY. . . circa late January 2004

We just finished up our most snowy January on record here. Around here, just a few miles north of Syracuse, New York, frigid arctic air plus a stiff wind from the Northwest means lake effect snow... lots of it. I'm just happy I don't live 15 miles further north of here where they have three more feet of the stuff on the ground!

So, besides shoveling, what does one do around here if your not into skiing or snow-mobiling? Well, if you're HiFi geek like me, you fire up the tubes, hook up a pair of hot new speakers, and bask in the glow of some cool tunes played on a great HiFi.  In this case, the hot new speakers are the very first pair of Merlin TSM-MX speakers (actually they should be more properly called a preproduction pair as there may well be some further small refinements incorporated into the speakers) and tubes are a pair of Joule-Electra Heavens Gates 70W single ended mono-block power amplifiers ($8,750/pair).

The new TSM-MXs powered by the Joule Heaven's Gate monoblocks are making incredible sounds here. I wanted something "different", so I had Merlin do this pair of TSMs up in a color called Imola Yellow. We have since nicknamed this pair, the "Bumble Bees" for obvious reasons!

It even looks great with the grills on! :-)