Being versed in neither French nor wine, don't typically touch either, it was time for me to broaden my horizons. Simply because a number of new-to-my-vocabulary French words and phrases popped up on my screen as I was starting to read about a specific name - Montille, which is apparently a domaine. A domaine? I thought it was a wine.
French lessons for Gerry:
1. What is the difference between Château and Domaine?
Château is the French term for a country house or castle, and is most commonly used by the wineries of Bordeaux, while the term domaine, which refers to a territory or empire, is typically associated with the wineries of Burgundy.
2. Can we have more clarification of 'domaine' please?
Domaine is defined as both a “field” and an “area of control.” When used in connection with wine, the word combines both to mean a parcel of land under the control of a wine maker.
3. And Montille?
Domaine de Montille is renowned as one of the finest domains in Burgundy. While the origin of the Domaine goes back to about 1730, the modern history of the domaine started in 1947, when Hubert de Montille started to make the domaine’s wines at the age of 17, due to the death of his father. Four years later he took entire responsibility of the domaine.
Image from demontille website
Interesting French lessons to start with I thought and a family-owned winery.
Gerry, what does this have to do with audio?
Well, that was the French part of the connection. Onto the Japanese part then.
A Japanese manufacturer with a penchant for naming his audio masterpieces after French wine-related areas, communes, domaines. There is an Italian-sounding name as well.
In addition to the wine-related names, it has been written that the main colour of his steel cases is a 'bottle-green', related to wine bottles of course.
Who is this Japanese manufacturer?
None other than Shindo.
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
The Shindo family, like the de Montille family, creates masterpieces – one creates masterpieces for audiophiles and melomanes, the other for a different connoisseur. I know some who sit on both sides of this fence.
Unfortunately, the founder of Shindo, Ken Shindo departed this lifestream in 2014. His legacy continues to this day thanks to effort of his wife Harumi and sons, Yoshinobu and Takashi.
As per Art Dudley's (RIP) Listening column in the June 2007 edition of Stereophile (written prior to Ken's passing):
“Shindo-san is a Japanese electronics engineer who spent the first part of his professional life designing television sets for Matsushita. (Legend has it that the Shindo household had one of the first color TVs in Japan.) Early on, Shindo began to devote spare time to designing and building audio amplifiers, and he began the slow, cumulative process of learning how various circuits, parts, and even wiring techniques could be used to re-create the musical sounds he was interested in.
Shindo began doing something else during that time that he's continued right up to the present: Whenever he discovered that certain parts had a unique sound, and that those parts would be useful in some applications (there are no audiophile dogmas in the world of Shindo), he began, quietly, to stockpile them: Western Electric transformers, Allen-Bradley carbon-composite resistors, and all those colorfully named Sprague capacitors of the 1950s and '60s: the Orange Drop, the Vitamin Q, the Black Beauty, the Bumblebee.
And tubes—from Mullard, Western Electric, RCA, Siemens, and Telefunken. Shindo laid in a big supply of the ever-popular Western Electric 300B, but he also stockpiled tubes you've never heard of, which he discovered during his many years of experimenting and listening: the 349A, the 6CA4, and the lovely F2a from Germany. Nor does Ken Shindo hesitate to use tubes that are uncool, such as the RCA 6L6 and the Telefunken EL84, as long as they can give him what he wants.
And what Ken Shindo wants more than anything else is tone. The tone of real instruments. The tone of the concert hall. The tone that spells the difference between a person who's making an effort and a machine that isn't.
That in itself is the number-one reason why Ken Shindo doesn't use transistors. He's tried them on many occasions—especially MOSFETs, when they first came out in the 1960s—but has never succeeded in getting from them the tone he wants...”
So, Ken was in his own way much like a winemaker – multi-talented. According to Art, “Ken wasn't just a builder – he was one part engineer, one part curator and one part masterchef,” concocting specials that few others were capable of.
Or so I thought, I have subsequently discovered many hidden Japanese talents. But the other talented Japanese concocters can take the stage a different day. Today it is about Shindo.
Art reports in 2017, post Ken's passing, that “As it happens, Ken Shindo hadn't taught Takashi only how to build; he'd also taught him how to design. Even during those times when father and son weren't under the same roof, Ken would send Takashi products to update, instructing him to alter the circuit in a particular way and report back on what he heard. Thus did the elder Shindo pass on to the younger many things he'd learned over the years.”
My own impressions
Now that the groundwork is laid, I can happily provide a little feedback to what I can truly describe as an eargasm.
About a month ago I received the news from Stephan at Airmusic that a device I had been anxiously awaiting for had arrived in SA - my new 2A3-based SET integrated. No, not from Japan, but from Poland and not in a bottle-green finish. Fezz, a newcomer to these shores had landed.
I received an invitation from Stephan to come listen to my new baby along with a couple of other audio bobs that I had never had the pleasure of listening to at his prfemises.
Upon entering Stephan's abode, I was treated to the sight of his prototype Air floorstanders. They are visually impressive, even in a not quite finished state, and that positive impression was only the starting point of about an hour's worth of listening impressions, could have been longer as I tend to lose track of time when listening.
In all cases music was streamed using Qobuz via a Holo Audiio DAC and the speakers were the already mentioned Air prototypes. I am not going to report on the two Fezz integrateds, my 2A3 and a 300B, or the Moonriver 404 that were listened to in that order. Know that these sessions established a baseline, a varying baseline because of new valves and electronics still not properly burned in.
Well, the treat of the day was Stephan telling me that he was going to hook up his Shindo Montille. Now you undertsand the value of my passing on my French lessons.
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
Stephan's Montille was first introduced in 2012 and is built around the British CV391 tetrode tubes in push-pull mode delivering a healthy 20W per channel. This CV391-based model was offered as a slightly higher-powered alternative to the standard Shindo Montille, which in its first incarnation used two EL84 pentode tubes per chasnnel in push-pull mode providing an ouput of 15W per channel. The EL84-based design was replaced by a 6V6 beam-power pentode circa 2019.
A quick perusal of the Shindo website indicates that only the CV391-based model is now being offered.
These version changes only add to the eccentricity of the Shindo masterpieces!
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
I had to get up from my comfy seat to go pay my respects to the green steel box. Yes, Shindo has only ever built their enclosures using steel, Ken disliked the sound of aluminium. Quite diminutive in its metallic green finish and fronted by an acrylic faceplate that has the product name and company logo silkscreened in gold. Unusually, the front panel contains two individual gold-colored input-level controls for the left and right channels.
Green and gold. Reminds me of my old Leben CS300F. Wonder why these two companies chose these colours? Must be closet Aussie and Springbok fans.
What an outstanding beauty, photos do not do these steel boxes any favours.
The Montille is ready to sing, I sit down and wait for the first bit (pun intended) of music to be streamed and transduced.
What a surprise!
I could never hope to describe to anyone else what I heard in a way that justifies the Shindo listening experience. The earlier baselines were set by the Fezz's and Moonriver. The Montille didn't just raise the bar of amplifying electric signals, it lifted the bar in a way that I had not heard to date!
Now, having just written that, I know that I have not had the privilege of listening to every single amplifier that is out there, but, I have a few useful listening sessions to date including Krell, Perreaux, Plinius, Leben, Unison Research, BOW, Quad and many others across the various decades of audio reproduction, valve and solid-state alike. The one solution I have yet to listen to is Audio Note. Hoping that invitation comes soon.
Listening was no longer about electronic bits and bobs, interconnects and transports, it was all about the music. For the first time in my life I managed to sit through Nils Lofgren's 'Keith don't go” without feeling the need to leave the room after the first few cords. It was sublime!
We listened to other music, none of the songs I remember by name, but whatever was played that evening was a transport to a higher realm in listening.
An Italian Lesson
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
Apparently there is an Italian connection as well - the Masseto preamplifier. The Masseto vineyard in Tuscany producing a wine by the same name:
To open a bottle, is to unleash a liquid kaleidoscope. A rare combination of sumptuous opulence and polished elegance.
As a tribute to its rugged force, its softness, and the debt it owes to the soil from which it rises, Masseto was named after the rock-hard clusters of blue clay called ‘massi’ that form on the vineyard’s surface.
Image from Masseto winery website
I knew the Italian artists would be able to describe what I heard in an elegant and succinct manner:
To listen to a Shindo is to unleash an aural kaleidoscope. A rare combination of sumptuous opulence and polished elegance.
With apologies to the Masseto Winery marketing team.
Oh and there's the Cortese amplifier – Cortese being a white Italian wine grape variety predominantly grown in the southeastern regions of Piedmont in the provinces of Alessandria and Asti.
Enough said!
PS. Maybe not enough said. If anyone ever takes possession of the Shindo Apetite, please invite me for a listen – it is the only integrated amplifier ever designed and built by Shindo.
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
Maybe there's a Portuguese connection as well.
French lessons for Gerry:
1. What is the difference between Château and Domaine?
Château is the French term for a country house or castle, and is most commonly used by the wineries of Bordeaux, while the term domaine, which refers to a territory or empire, is typically associated with the wineries of Burgundy.
2. Can we have more clarification of 'domaine' please?
Domaine is defined as both a “field” and an “area of control.” When used in connection with wine, the word combines both to mean a parcel of land under the control of a wine maker.
3. And Montille?
Domaine de Montille is renowned as one of the finest domains in Burgundy. While the origin of the Domaine goes back to about 1730, the modern history of the domaine started in 1947, when Hubert de Montille started to make the domaine’s wines at the age of 17, due to the death of his father. Four years later he took entire responsibility of the domaine.
Image from demontille website
Interesting French lessons to start with I thought and a family-owned winery.
Gerry, what does this have to do with audio?
Well, that was the French part of the connection. Onto the Japanese part then.
A Japanese manufacturer with a penchant for naming his audio masterpieces after French wine-related areas, communes, domaines. There is an Italian-sounding name as well.
In addition to the wine-related names, it has been written that the main colour of his steel cases is a 'bottle-green', related to wine bottles of course.
Who is this Japanese manufacturer?
None other than Shindo.
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
The Shindo family, like the de Montille family, creates masterpieces – one creates masterpieces for audiophiles and melomanes, the other for a different connoisseur. I know some who sit on both sides of this fence.
Unfortunately, the founder of Shindo, Ken Shindo departed this lifestream in 2014. His legacy continues to this day thanks to effort of his wife Harumi and sons, Yoshinobu and Takashi.
As per Art Dudley's (RIP) Listening column in the June 2007 edition of Stereophile (written prior to Ken's passing):
“Shindo-san is a Japanese electronics engineer who spent the first part of his professional life designing television sets for Matsushita. (Legend has it that the Shindo household had one of the first color TVs in Japan.) Early on, Shindo began to devote spare time to designing and building audio amplifiers, and he began the slow, cumulative process of learning how various circuits, parts, and even wiring techniques could be used to re-create the musical sounds he was interested in.
Shindo began doing something else during that time that he's continued right up to the present: Whenever he discovered that certain parts had a unique sound, and that those parts would be useful in some applications (there are no audiophile dogmas in the world of Shindo), he began, quietly, to stockpile them: Western Electric transformers, Allen-Bradley carbon-composite resistors, and all those colorfully named Sprague capacitors of the 1950s and '60s: the Orange Drop, the Vitamin Q, the Black Beauty, the Bumblebee.
And tubes—from Mullard, Western Electric, RCA, Siemens, and Telefunken. Shindo laid in a big supply of the ever-popular Western Electric 300B, but he also stockpiled tubes you've never heard of, which he discovered during his many years of experimenting and listening: the 349A, the 6CA4, and the lovely F2a from Germany. Nor does Ken Shindo hesitate to use tubes that are uncool, such as the RCA 6L6 and the Telefunken EL84, as long as they can give him what he wants.
And what Ken Shindo wants more than anything else is tone. The tone of real instruments. The tone of the concert hall. The tone that spells the difference between a person who's making an effort and a machine that isn't.
That in itself is the number-one reason why Ken Shindo doesn't use transistors. He's tried them on many occasions—especially MOSFETs, when they first came out in the 1960s—but has never succeeded in getting from them the tone he wants...”
So, Ken was in his own way much like a winemaker – multi-talented. According to Art, “Ken wasn't just a builder – he was one part engineer, one part curator and one part masterchef,” concocting specials that few others were capable of.
Or so I thought, I have subsequently discovered many hidden Japanese talents. But the other talented Japanese concocters can take the stage a different day. Today it is about Shindo.
Art reports in 2017, post Ken's passing, that “As it happens, Ken Shindo hadn't taught Takashi only how to build; he'd also taught him how to design. Even during those times when father and son weren't under the same roof, Ken would send Takashi products to update, instructing him to alter the circuit in a particular way and report back on what he heard. Thus did the elder Shindo pass on to the younger many things he'd learned over the years.”
My own impressions
Now that the groundwork is laid, I can happily provide a little feedback to what I can truly describe as an eargasm.
About a month ago I received the news from Stephan at Airmusic that a device I had been anxiously awaiting for had arrived in SA - my new 2A3-based SET integrated. No, not from Japan, but from Poland and not in a bottle-green finish. Fezz, a newcomer to these shores had landed.
I received an invitation from Stephan to come listen to my new baby along with a couple of other audio bobs that I had never had the pleasure of listening to at his prfemises.
Upon entering Stephan's abode, I was treated to the sight of his prototype Air floorstanders. They are visually impressive, even in a not quite finished state, and that positive impression was only the starting point of about an hour's worth of listening impressions, could have been longer as I tend to lose track of time when listening.
In all cases music was streamed using Qobuz via a Holo Audiio DAC and the speakers were the already mentioned Air prototypes. I am not going to report on the two Fezz integrateds, my 2A3 and a 300B, or the Moonriver 404 that were listened to in that order. Know that these sessions established a baseline, a varying baseline because of new valves and electronics still not properly burned in.
Well, the treat of the day was Stephan telling me that he was going to hook up his Shindo Montille. Now you undertsand the value of my passing on my French lessons.
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
Stephan's Montille was first introduced in 2012 and is built around the British CV391 tetrode tubes in push-pull mode delivering a healthy 20W per channel. This CV391-based model was offered as a slightly higher-powered alternative to the standard Shindo Montille, which in its first incarnation used two EL84 pentode tubes per chasnnel in push-pull mode providing an ouput of 15W per channel. The EL84-based design was replaced by a 6V6 beam-power pentode circa 2019.
A quick perusal of the Shindo website indicates that only the CV391-based model is now being offered.
These version changes only add to the eccentricity of the Shindo masterpieces!
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
I had to get up from my comfy seat to go pay my respects to the green steel box. Yes, Shindo has only ever built their enclosures using steel, Ken disliked the sound of aluminium. Quite diminutive in its metallic green finish and fronted by an acrylic faceplate that has the product name and company logo silkscreened in gold. Unusually, the front panel contains two individual gold-colored input-level controls for the left and right channels.
Green and gold. Reminds me of my old Leben CS300F. Wonder why these two companies chose these colours? Must be closet Aussie and Springbok fans.
What an outstanding beauty, photos do not do these steel boxes any favours.
The Montille is ready to sing, I sit down and wait for the first bit (pun intended) of music to be streamed and transduced.
What a surprise!
I could never hope to describe to anyone else what I heard in a way that justifies the Shindo listening experience. The earlier baselines were set by the Fezz's and Moonriver. The Montille didn't just raise the bar of amplifying electric signals, it lifted the bar in a way that I had not heard to date!
Now, having just written that, I know that I have not had the privilege of listening to every single amplifier that is out there, but, I have a few useful listening sessions to date including Krell, Perreaux, Plinius, Leben, Unison Research, BOW, Quad and many others across the various decades of audio reproduction, valve and solid-state alike. The one solution I have yet to listen to is Audio Note. Hoping that invitation comes soon.
Listening was no longer about electronic bits and bobs, interconnects and transports, it was all about the music. For the first time in my life I managed to sit through Nils Lofgren's 'Keith don't go” without feeling the need to leave the room after the first few cords. It was sublime!
We listened to other music, none of the songs I remember by name, but whatever was played that evening was a transport to a higher realm in listening.
An Italian Lesson
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
Apparently there is an Italian connection as well - the Masseto preamplifier. The Masseto vineyard in Tuscany producing a wine by the same name:
To open a bottle, is to unleash a liquid kaleidoscope. A rare combination of sumptuous opulence and polished elegance.
As a tribute to its rugged force, its softness, and the debt it owes to the soil from which it rises, Masseto was named after the rock-hard clusters of blue clay called ‘massi’ that form on the vineyard’s surface.
Image from Masseto winery website
I knew the Italian artists would be able to describe what I heard in an elegant and succinct manner:
To listen to a Shindo is to unleash an aural kaleidoscope. A rare combination of sumptuous opulence and polished elegance.
With apologies to the Masseto Winery marketing team.
Oh and there's the Cortese amplifier – Cortese being a white Italian wine grape variety predominantly grown in the southeastern regions of Piedmont in the provinces of Alessandria and Asti.
Enough said!
PS. Maybe not enough said. If anyone ever takes possession of the Shindo Apetite, please invite me for a listen – it is the only integrated amplifier ever designed and built by Shindo.
Image from pitchperfectaudio website
Maybe there's a Portuguese connection as well.
