I first time heard the Mk II today in an extremely resolving, development orientated setup of a friend. In this setup one surprisingly hears hardly noticeable hum of guitar amps where we usually just hear the music.
I report mine and his experience although it’s not of much use for others so far, you’ll see why (uneven test conditions). Those who want valuable comparison results should stop reading here and wait for a later, better feedback.
Like mine, his equipment has molecular treatments (I name it MT here) of the signal path (his even more). This makes equipment a lot! better in all aspects. It’s not commercially available and would be insanely expensive then. His Mk II meanwhile has strong MT, as had his still available stock Mk I. My fully modded Lundahl Mk I has weaker and just partly MT at the moment as I exchanged parts like the transformers (I’ll have MT redone soon).
Impressions:
The stock Mk II was no big upgrade to the MT Mk I
The Mk II MT sounds much better than the Mk I MT
My modded Mk I partly MT (cold unit) sounds better than the non MT, stock Mk II (warm unit)
The highly MT Mk II (warm unit) sounds noticeably better than my partly MT modded Mk I (cold unit)
.
.
So you see, nothing of much value for the moment, but the following conclusions are halfway valid anyway for me:
The stock Mk II sounds great and much better than the stock Mk I
A fully modded Mk I with better than XS 4400 transformers seems to be somewhere around the stock Mk II performance with current firmware (I’ll know better after later, better test conditions)
Differences by MT compared to no MT are much bigger than the Mk I-Mk II differences (not of much interest for others)
Some active HF/noise cancelling devices we used on the test candidates also showed much more essential improvements than e.g. differences between the highly MT Mk II and the partly MT fully modded Mk I.
I’ll report back after better and more even test conditions, more similar MT and both units warm.