My relationship with the Consolidated Audio Monster Can Step Up Transformer began sometime between 2015 and 2022 at the High End Munich show, but I did not know at the time…..
Rewind tape to 2014 and press play. At my first year at the Munich show trying to promote the upcoming Little Fwend automatic tonearm lifter to the world, there was one room that stood out.
Silbatone Acoustics—The obsessive Korean enthusiasts had shipped species of the elusive Western Electric and Altec cinema horn systems and 1.5w unobtanium DHT tubes across several seas to the Bavarian Jungle.
I have no idea when this tradition or ritual started, but it seemed they brought something different every year. Silbatone also promoted their modern amplifier designs, but that was secondary to the primary (no pun intended) goal - to demonstrate that a 100 years old gear can kick contemporary high-end sound system butt.
The room was always filled with curious visitors. There were reports of grown men crying listening to mono recordings from the mid-fifties of the NBC. Was it the CSO? In any case, Italian Arturo Toscanini was conducting the players, igniting the signal chain, which turned into sound pressure waves, causing this emotional response from the humanoids in the audience.
I noticed a character dressed in a white shirt and black tie with soft, silent-running sneakers emerging from behind one of the horns like a ninja - screwdriver in hand. He had apparently done some minor tweak, inaudible to the hoi polloi. There were quite a few other characters there - Jean Christophe Morrison aka JC - the mad professor, trapeze artist, circuit designer and mensch who escaped the USSA in the late 00s and relocated to Sweden. Joe Roberts is the man behind the excellent Sound Practices magazine and, I understand, is the connection point of the “Triode Mafia USA” with the Koreans / Japanese freaks, the “Berlin Triode Mafia” and other satellites of the underground movement of the Do It Yourself Circus Sideshow. Some of the supporting cast were the German tonearm designers and DJs Thomas Schick and Frank Schroeder (Herr Schroeder did have a colourful shirt).
I had been curious about Thomas Schick´s tonearms. (I could not afford a Schroeder; it was way out of my league.)
That day, I ended up ordering a 12-inch Schick.
Fast-forward to 2017. The Silbatone room was still the most interesting room (and arguably the most “interesting” sounding system) to hang out at, but Kevin Scott of Living Voice also had a really good sounding system. At the time, he played CDs through the Kondo Ongaku with his cost-no-object Vox Olympian horn speakers as the star of the show.
I think it was that same year that Thomas Schick lured me off-site and introduced me to the Martion & Friends under-the-radar unofficial exhibition across the street from Hall 4. In a two-storey brick building, Basil Heiner Martion had his Bullfrog speakers on the ground floor and variations of his Einhorns upstairs. The turntable was a Martina Schoener-modified Garrard 401 with an Origin Live arm and Lyra Delos or the L´Art du Son Reference with an Origin Live arm and the Lyra Atlas. The sound was outstanding, probably the best at the show - without being part of the official program. The Martion & Friends-rooms were frequented by numerous hardcore legends of the audio world. It felt like I was part of a reasonably well-kept secret world.
Fast forward again. In 2023, Little Fwend exhibited for the first time at the show inside the daylight-deprivation chamber that was Hall 3. On one of my many walks escaping the office space vibes of the Little Fwend-stand, I ventured to the OMA-room, where outspoken head provocateur Jonathan Weiss was the master of ceremony. I sat down and listened to one of Todd Garfinckle´s MA-recordings on the OMA K3 turntable and a Frank Schroeder “Crane” tonearm. It sounded very, very good. I noticed a guy without shoes sitting beside me, softly headbanging his wild hair to a pressing of Sera una Noche. It was producer Rick Rubin. I also observed a big silver can to which the tonearm was connected. I walked over to the turntable rack to take a closer look. On a bronze plaque, it said Consolidated Audio Berlin.
The day after this first encounter with the Monster Can, I walked up to the Living Voice room. The sound was beyond great and, as usual, sophisticated—it sounded very expensive (and probably was). This time around, Kevin Scott had dropped the digital source and, if I recall correctly, played a record on a Kuzma turntable. What quickly came to my attention was the big can next to the turntable. I walked over to confirm. Yes, another Monster Can.
Across the street at the Martion & Friends-room was yet another Monster Can, this time hooked up to Thomas Schick´s highly modified Technics SL-1200.
How can it be that the top three rooms at the High End Munich in 2023 all used the Monster Can as their Step Up Transformer of choice? These people are arguably the most demanding connoisseurs in the world of analog playback.
2024. Back under the Bavarian sun. Little Fwend was not planning to exhibit under the official program. It was too depressing and way too expensive the year before. I thought, why not just ask Basil Martion if I can have one meter of table space in a corner over at the Martion & Friends house off-site? I was told to come by on Thursday morning, and they “would see” if they had space for me.
They had. Suddenly I was hanging out with this legendary bunch of very friendly German designers of audio gear of the uppermost quality. They even have daylight coming in through the windows and cold beer in the fridge if you are inclined. What an extraordinary turn of events.
The building now dubbed Martion & Fwends - is where I met Michael Ulbrich. His Monster Can was in the signal chain as usual, connected between Martina´s super table and an unnamed prototype phono stage I believe is Mr. Ulbrich`s upcoming creation.
Over the course of these days, I got to know Michael a little better. He is a humble, soft-spoken electrical engineer with a background working at Neumann and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt. When he was a teenager, he helped out in his father's electronics repair workshop—they did repairs the other repair shops gave up on. ;) I asked him a million amateur questions, and he patiently answered. I think I started to understand a bit more about the somewhat mysterious art of transformer design.
Later that year. I visited Michael in Berlin twice to learn more about transformers and meet with some of the other characters of the Berlin Triode Mafia. A fun and friendly gang with tons of knowledge that meets every Thursday for their Stammtisch, a sort of round table meeting of discussions, listening to music, and just hanging out. I wish we could have something like this in Oslo.
Anyway, at the end of the second visit, I took a chance and asked if I could represent Monster Can in the Norwegian market.
Michael agreed, I ordered my personal / demo transformer, and here we are.
I will not go into details about how a Step-up Transformer (SUT) works or whether you absolutely need one in your system, but I can say this much: When you go from the standard built-in active circuit in your phono stage amplifying the fragile signal from low-output MC cartridge to an external SUT, you will most likely never go back.
My experience with SUTs only goes back around 10 years and is mostly reasonably priced transformers I built into DIY enclosures. I have had Partridge, Neumann, Joergen Schou, CineMag, UTC, EAR Yoshino, Haufe, Fidelity Research, Ortofon, Denon, etc. on the medium-priced end of the scale, and I have had very expensive ones, like the Audio Note Japan S6 in my system. They all add their unique spice to the mix. Even if the turns ratio, impedance and induction math is a-ok in theory or a little off, I firmly believe you must audition a SUT in your own system to see if it's a match. More importantly, it matches your personal taste.
The concept behind the Monster Can is that Michael constructs the transformer so your specific MC-cartridge has optimal working conditions and also takes into consideration how your phono stage handles the incoming signal from the transformer.
An analogy could be the choice of the F1 Team before sending a supercar out on a track under certain conditions. They probably don't just throw on a set of random summer tyres if they want to be contenders.
In my case, I wanted a Monster Can for a Lyra Kleos and a vintage Koetsu Black. They have, respectively, 0.5mV and 0.4mV output. They both have low internal impedance (5.4 ohms / 5 ohms), so Michael wound the primary for low inductance. If you aim for the transformer to amplify the voltage up to the “standard” 5mV, you´re ballpark good as a starting point. Michael advised me to go for a 1:12 turns ratio, given that my EAR324 phono stage does not have a lot of headroom to handle an excessively amplified input voltage. The transformer will amplify the Kleos (0.5mV x 12) to 6mV and the Koetsu (0.4mV x 12) to 4.8mV.
The decisions you have to make when ordering a Monster Can can seem a bit overwhelming, but it’s quite simple. It’s all about the turns ratio. I will take care of all the details and communication with Michael before placing an order.
The next decision is what kind of core material you want. 90% of orders are of the Nano-Crystalline core, which I won´t go into details about here, but an amateur's analogy could be that the electrons skate smoothly along a mirror-finish frozen lake and not through the labyrinthine cracks and crevices on the way to reach the phono stage on the North Pole. He can also wind around a “classic” Mu-Metal / Hi-Nickel-core, but that can be discussed based on what kind of sound characteristics you prefer.
The winding material is either copper, silver or a combination of both. If you want copper on the primary winding, silver on the secondary, or vice versa, that's no problem. The copper cable can be standard copper or Cardas copper, which, according to Michael, “improves a tiny bit on warmth and body.” If you want balanced XLR connectors, that is also possible.
Puuuh. The Monster Can is an LP Magazine “Product of The Year 2023/2024” and in Stereophile “Recommended Components”.
