The Tweaker: Audiophile Stocking Stuffers… If You Can Find Them

I love these things. I put them under everything. Three of them will support anything, at least anything I’ve tried them with and that includes a 70-pound integrated. They also level anything, using a very clever hole in the tip of the spike that you rotate with a pin, an operation that can be achieved (not easily but it can be done) even when the spikes happen to be under a 70-pound integrated.

I also believe they make a significant sonic difference for the better. I’m aware that the “believing” is the important part of that equation and that doesn’t bother me. Of course, obsessive compulsive as I am, I have A-B’ed my gear on these cones and then off the cones many many times. Over and over again I have heard a positive effect with my gear on the cones, and that’s with just about every component, source and amplification. Sound becomes tauter, more open, more spatially delineated. Not a night and day thing but very noticeable.

Before you ask no I’ve never done a blind ABX test because fuck that. I’m not sure I’d even know how to manage that with these things and plus I trust my ears and I have no skin in the game whatsoever – if I’d heard no difference I would happily have stuck them in the already very crowded and ever expanding drawer marked “Tweaks That Don’t Do Shit.” (Maybe I will reach a point where I actually will try to measure these kinds of observations – at that point I imagine I’ll be divorced and living alone in a decrepit house somewhere far out in the boonies with records and tweaks and tools thrown all over the floor as I wander around in my bathrobe talking to myself and trying to find that one dabnasted spectrum analyzer I like. In other words, I hope this never happens. My condition is dire enough.)

Plus the best thing about these very attractive very sturdy leveling spikes was that it didn’t matter much whether I was deluding myself because they were a very cheap investment for self-delusionary purposes. They used to be $14.99 each at Music Direct, and were often marked down to ten bucks a piece.

I never thought much about their provenance, always figured they were some cheap crap that I was getting ripped off for even at $10 a pop by some enterprising hi-fi hustler. But I didn’t care because they worked and were well-made so it seemed like a win-win to me. Lo and behold, I discovered today that if they are indeed cheap crap… they’re German cheap crap. I looked them up at Music Direct and discovered that they’re no longer available there. So I Googled the brand name – Audio Selection – and arrived at the unternehmen’s startseite, where the cones in question were to be found, of course, under the link marked Kegel.

It’s a very nice website with all kinds of nifty doodads that I likely would buy if I could, but the one thing the site lacks is a place to order anything. Or I think it lacks that. It’s in German, and when you press the button for the English version of the site, it just takes you to a different layout of the page where the text is… in German. So who knows. I couldn’t find anywhere else online that’s selling them. All I can tell you is this – it doesn’t surprise me to find that they’re German made, because like many of the German-made things I’ve owned in my life, they’re better built and engineered than they need to be for what I paid for them. If you can track down a set, they’d make for a wonderful stocking stuffer for that special audiophile on your list, even if that special audiophile happens to be you.