Roy Hall was blunt as usual. "I'm bringing in some obscenely expensive tubes. They're Telefunken ECC803Ses, which is one of the best tubes available, but Cool Valve measures them and selects the most perfectly matched, and then bonds their EAT Cool Damper to them. The result is lower operational temperatures, longer life, and lower microphonics. They cost . . . "

My hearing must have stopped at that point—or else I couldn't make any sense of what Roy had said. "Say again?"

"They cost $250 each." Pause. "You know me, I'm cheap. I'd never even consider them, except they work!"