# Gizmo & ELT525M Arrival



## Krusty (Apr 9, 2008)

Hello,

Just wanted to share a few pics and initial impressions of the Gizmo. I wanted to upgraded my existing desktop speakers and thought that the Gizmo and the AV123 ELT525M would be a nice fit. I have mulitple desks in my home office, but the desk that I wanted to place the amp and speakers has limited space. This is a nearfield listening situation, so everything I had read about the Gizmo made me feel that it could handle the job.

New Arrival:








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In the box:








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Size reference:









By oct12th, shot with DMC-FS20 at 2008-09-23\

Color match to the ELT525M:








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Ready to go:








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Final pic:









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So far I have been listening to the system for about 3 hours at about the loudest volume that I find comfortable and the Gizmo has performed like a champ. Cool to the touch, drives the elt525s fine, the only hint of strain is occuring at max volume settings. I was a little concerned about the non adjustable crossover since I am initially not running a sub, but I found that with a little tweeking with my cp equalizer and the bass settings on Gizmo I was able to achieve the desired performance from the monitors. 

To summarize:

Small Cons:
Must use bannana plugs to connect speakers, if someone can connect directly your eyes and steady hands are better than mine.

My rosewood cap had multiple light surface scartches. Not an issue for me since it is under shelf.

Big Pros:
Impressed with the sound from such a small box.
Easily drives monitors at realistic volumes.
IMHO value is thru the roof.
Will be ordering the second Gizmo asap......

Really happy camper,
Krusty


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## billnchristy (Feb 12, 2008)

Thanks for the post!

With the recent price hike of the Trends there is really not much in the Gizmo's price territory anymore.

Great match with your speakers too!


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## snock (Jan 24, 2008)

Nice set up. I love the rosewood match. :thumbsup:


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## skeeter99 (Jan 24, 2007)

Looks fantastic! I'm ordering mine up this weekend and can't wait. 

It really looks fantastic :rock:


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## Ray3 (Feb 4, 2008)

Thanks for the info! Nice to see it performs well for you.


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## userlander (Sep 21, 2008)

sweet! that's the setup I was considering (with a Scamp, of course ), or else maybe with some paradigm titans. 

If you really want to go loud, not like "party" loud, but like "sitting in front of your computer" loud, can the gizmo handle it?


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## Krusty (Apr 9, 2008)

userlander said:


> sweet! that's the setup I was considering (with a Scamp, of course ), or else maybe with some paradigm titans.
> 
> If you really want to go loud, not like "party" loud, but like "sitting in front of your computer" loud, can the gizmo handle it?


Yes, for me sitting at my computer the gizmo can play plenty loud. I would feel that anyone using it in a desktop situation is going to be very pleased with the performance.


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## userlander (Sep 21, 2008)

Krusty said:


> Yes, for me sitting at my computer the gizmo can play plenty loud. I would feel that anyone using it in a desktop situation is going to be very pleased with the performance.


good to know. :thumbsup:

I have an 80wpc yamaha amp driving 2 bookshelves and a sub, and I have that maxed to like 95%. It gets pretty loud, but I could take even louder.  I just wondered especially how the gizmo performed with the super low sensitivity of those ELTs. That's the one thing holding me back on those speakers. Have you tried any other speakers with it?


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## Krusty (Apr 9, 2008)

userlander said:


> good to know. :thumbsup:
> 
> I have an 80wpc yamaha amp driving 2 bookshelves and a sub, and I have that maxed to like 95%. It gets pretty loud, but I could take even louder.  I just wondered especially how the gizmo performed with the super low sensitivity of those ELTs. That's the one thing holding me back on those speakers. Have you tried any other speakers with it?


No I did not try other speakers but I believe there are a few threads about the various GTG's where different speakers were matched up with the Gizmo and basically everyone said that at moderate to loud listening levels the Gizmo did fine, but when you crank it to "11" (or 50 in the Gizmo's case) you can hear some of the limitations. I would think that it is not going to outperform your Yamaha amp in terms of volume, the Gizmo does have to make some compromises to maintain the small footprint, price point etc..


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## Papajin (Mar 5, 2008)

Thank god you posted pics! Now I don't have to take any! Your desktop is FAR neater than mine anyway. Mine sounds great so far! The box on mine looked like someone dropped it down some stairs before delivery, but no damage seems to have occurred thankfully!

I'll second the banana plug comment. I'm sure you could wrap bare wire around the posts and torque the nuts down on it, but there was no way I was getting the bare wire through the holes in the posts -- too thick, so I went with bananas also since I had some handy.

Got mine paired up with some Ref .5's driven from my PC, and it sounds quite good! No lopsided channels at low volume like the Dayton Audio APA150 had (long story, but due to extremely high gain on that amp, I had to run with the volume set really really low, and if you go too low one of the stereo channels drops out)


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## billnchristy (Feb 12, 2008)

Great info guys!

Let us know if there are things within our control to change on future revisions...I know what you mean about the binding posts, my Mouse had the same thing...I think it would accept 16ga but even if you got one strand out of place it was next to impossible to get it through the hole.

:thumbsup:


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## PhenomeNhan (Mar 4, 2008)

This is pretty cool. Hey, Bill. Do I qualify for the intro price?

Also, do the tops come in a ferrari red to match my X-LS?


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## skeeter99 (Jan 24, 2007)

PhenomeNhan said:


> This is pretty cool. Hey, Bill. Do I qualify for the intro price?
> 
> Also, do the tops come in a ferrari red to match my X-LS?


That's actually _furry_ red according to Bill's daughter 

Oh, and it does, just grab a can of Krylon Ultra Gloss Red from the hardware store on the way home


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2008)

Krusty said:


> Hello,
> 
> Just wanted to share a few pics and initial impressions of the Gizmo. I wanted to upgraded my existing desktop speakers and thought that the Gizmo and the AV123 ELT525M would be a nice fit. I have mulitple desks in my home office, but the desk that I wanted to place the amp and speakers has limited space. This is a nearfield listening situation, so everything I had read about the Gizmo made me feel that it could handle the job.
> 
> ...


Howdy Krusty...

Thanks for your comments and my apologies for jumping in here... Very soon, I will be talking to Craig about the perfect little speaker wire with bananas package...  

Appreciate very much your post... made me smile today, and THAT really helps, as today has not been a good health day for me...

Humbly...

mls


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## JaredB (Sep 17, 2008)

I'm using my gizmo right now and I'm very happy with the results (hoping to add a small sub soon).
I'm using mine with some 90s vintage Polk RT10 tower speakers and I get plenty of volume just in the 10-15 range.

As far as the binding posts go, I like to use banana plugs, but the type I use (the slightly higher end screw down type) have a plastic mount that keeps the two plugs at the perfect distance for plugging into speakers. Unfortunately, this is too wide for the gizmo's binding posts. But this was easily solved by cutting the banana's plastic spacer in half and separating them (I had to do it for an another amp I had once and it's not that big a deal). Small price to pay for the VERY small form factor, which I love.

I would have preferred an off switch though. The flashing dashes in standby mode are a little annoying. In fact, I'd prefer to leave it on 24/7 since a solid lit blue number is less annoying than a flashing dash. I wonder if there would be a downside to that... do we know what the difference is in power consumption between standby and on (but with no source playing)?


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## Krusty (Apr 9, 2008)

mlschifter said:


> Howdy Krusty...
> 
> Thanks for your comments and my apologies for jumping in here... Very soon, I will be talking to Craig about the perfect little speaker wire with bananas package...
> 
> ...


Hello Mark,
Hope you are feeling better soon. After hours of listening/tweaking I have found that my favorite settings are the simplest. Computer eq set to flat, Gizmo bass to 14, treble to 6 and the ELTs are singing...:yes:


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