@Todd Anderson My previous post was a little history I know about Keith Yates. This is a bit longer...please excuse my writing as I am not very good at this and just write off the top of my head as I remember.
Back in the early 80s when I lived in Sacramento, I heard about Keith Yates and his Stereo Shop that he had. One day I went down there to check it out and meet Keith Yates and his staff. When I walked in the Store it appeared to be a typical small Hi-end store,. When, you walked in there was a small area out front that sold phono cartridges, and other accessories, and the next room was a really nice listening room with a coffered ceiling. The room appeared to look like a typical living room with all the equipment on top of a furniture cabinet along the back wall, and opposite of that wall was a spot where a pair of speakers were (seating was between the back and front wall of course). As I recall they put pieces of tape on the carpet to let them know where each speaker went for optimum placement. On the left side of the room was a small area where other speakers were stored for demoing. Now the store was right next to a laundromat and Keith had a 6' deep wall constructed between the laundromat and his store....the wall was filled with sand! The room was so quiet that you never would have known there was any business next door.
One thing I was told (not sure if it was Keith or the salesman) was that they are never to say anything bad about anyone's equipment setup...that was something I had never experienced and I really appreciated the salesman not pushing their products on to me and saying how bad mine was. How refreshing that was! Now I went their a bunch of times, and I really like the ML Sequel IIs they had, but at the time I could not afford them. It was a while later that Keith Yates opened up a new custom built store across from Tognottis Speed Shop (as I recall). He must have spent a mint on the new store...it had a table made of granite slabs, and several listening rooms. The top equipment there was Mark Levinson, Mitchell turntables, B&W speakers, and Wilson...to name just a few. Sadly he went out of business, and then started fresh designing HT rooms for the rich. Keith Yates is a very nice guy with excellent knowledge of virtually everything to do with audio. If you ever want the best in a HT...I highly recommend you contact Keith Yates (might be expensive, but it will be done right and sound great).
I ended up taking a job in Detroit and I went around to several dealers and none of the dealers had ML Sequels that I liked the sound of...not even close. I ended up transferring to San Francisco where I purchased my first Highend setup... I purchased their demo ML Sequel 2s, and a used Classe DR6 preamp (the model that was being passed around to the reviewers), a pair of the matching DR10 power amps (run in bridged mode), and lastly I picked up a used Mitchell Gyrodec from the repair tech at a Bay Area dealer which I kept for a year or two and sold it to a friend when I found a demo version from a dealer on the east coast. Here is the interesting piece...the Mitchell Gyrodec I purchased from a dealer on the east coast was from Keith Yates Audio. It was the same setup I wanted at the time, but could not afford it. It was a Mitchell Grodec SE with a Sumiko modified SME arm (best setup I have ever owned).
