Tube dampeners on ARC gear ... FREE TWEAK

Revisiting this "tweak",
I decided to go back in to my preamp and do some experimentation with dampers and pulled off the ARC elastomer rings, and replaced them with some original herbies teflon halo's that  I had in a baggie, in the audio"junk drawer". I placed them in the same spot, (high up as the stock ARC rings were as suggested by oregonpapa). To my surprise, they did in fact bring a sweeter sound, and brought a greater sense of bloom to the instruments, without adding any muddiness.  

The ARC rings sound constricted by comparison and almost give, dare I say "nervous" kind of presentation. The herbies brought a very relaxed sound, with an added sense of ease and weight to the sound. I believe the rings have something to do with the ARC gear having that solid state kind of presentation.  I also feel like the Highes are cleaner and less bright than before.

 Now mind you, these are the original halos, and not the current top of the line herbies dampers.  I'm impressed so far. I will leave them in for a while and listen to more material to really see what they are doing.  I do like the increase in bloom for sure. I think the rings constrict the bloom IMHO.  

Audiolover718 wrote,

"The ARC rings sound constricted by comparison and almost give, dare I say "nervous" kind of presentation. The herbies brought a very relaxed sound, with an added sense of ease and weight to the sound. I believe the rings have something to do with the ARC gear having that solid state kind of presentation. I also feel like the Highes are cleaner and less bright than before."

That's my experience with all of the elastomer rings I have tried as well as ALL other types of tube dampers with the notable exception of Herbies dampers. I also started with the original Herbies Halo dampers and have had the latest version as well. In fact, removing the elastomer rings and using no tube dampers at provided a more open sound. Could this whole thing be an example of expectation bias?

cheers

^^^
Hmmm ... velly, velly interesting indeed. 

I'm going to have to revisit those Herbie dampeners. 

one observation is that all or almost all other dampers have a lot of contact surface area with the glass whereas Herbies dampers have the extreme minimum contact area due to their very clever construction. As Isoclean the Japanese high end emporium states so succinctly, "be careful of over dumping."

^^^ Agreed.  I've had the experience of over dampening a number of times. It calls to mind an experiment I did with shrink wrap on my Well Tempered tone arm.  First layer - overall improvement. Second layer - no change. Third layer - a dulling of the sound. I settled on one layer and that layer remains on the tone arm to this day.