I discovered Falls Lodge when planning a trip to the Blue Mountains. I chose it as it looked great and had fireplaces (a must for the Blue Mountains in the winter). There was mention of a Tube Sound System and a turntable, so I reached out to the host and asked "Are you pure analogue? Can I bring my vinyl?". Stephen answered yes to both - and sent me details about Fall Lodge, the audio system, and his record cleaning products. It was the latter than intrigued me most at the time. I had bought a lot of second hand records, and they all needed a good cleaning. I was skeptical of the claims Stephen made - there's plenty of snake oil in "record cleaning", but he agreed to clean some of my records as a "try before you buy".

Suffice to say that nothing disappointed: the sound system - Elekit amps and Stephen's custom built speakers, were outstanding. There was a noticeable difference in my cleaned records, and I took home a bottle of his Restore! to get my vinyl collection to the best condition.

I was also intrigued by the DIY approach to building my own tube amp, and decided I really should take the plunge - the amp and speakers at Falls Lodge sounded amazing - there are no words: Top notch hi-fi just has to be experienced. So agreed to an "amp camp" - as I wanted supervision and proper equipment; I also had a set of speakers built by Stephen. Why buy from a conglomerate when you can support a local Artisan?

COVID ruined my chance to build the Amplifier. Stephen did that and delivered it and my speakers - which was welcome during the Lockdown. I eventually attended a second amp camp to build the pre-amplifier which completed my system (although with such good quality gear, I ended up upgrading my turntable, my headphones, and I got a proper DAC to get the most of my digital files).

The journey completed with a final trifecta: I returned to Falls Lodge for another stay to upgrade the output transformers in my Amplifier - as these are DIY, they are fully serviceable so you can swap out parts for better ones. I also had the opportunity to hear Stephen's upgraded turntable and phono stage - along with those magnificent speakers of his. It is something special on a cold winter's night spinning your vinyl with an open fire and your favourite tipple on a system that ought to cost 10 times as much!