Audiophilepure

Goldmund Telos 590 Nextgen II Integrated Amplifier

And it wasn’t just Lucille that benefited from the Nextgen II treatment. So did King’s smooth, vaguely Nat Cole-like tenor, which makes such a sweet contrast with his epigrammatic style of guitar playing. (As Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker put it in a 2015 piece honoring the great bluesman’s passing, as an instrumentalist B. B. King was “not at all showily virtuosic…but no one made a guitar talk as he did, as an…instrument of human expression more than of the adolescent finger-mania [of all those young British whiz kids].”) The Nextgen II not only brought Lucille and King back to life, it also had a similar effect on the sound of his marvelous rhythmsection, which, though reduced in size, impact, and presence (due to gain-riding), I could almost see again, playing and twirling in unison from stage left to right.

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