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Just disposed of some more disposable income... I really am working hard to become the crazy Hi-Fi lady. Bought a lovely little 4W per channel single-ended class A tube amp (uses a pair of FU32 tetrodes and a 6N2 dual triode) from a Chinese seller on eBay:  A pair of new old stock 1963 date coded RCA 832As to replace the crummy Chinese FU32s:  And a beautiful 1960 date coded Wurlitzer branded RCA 12AX7 dual triode (will replace the Chinese 6N2 with a minor heater wiring change), which would have originally been fitted to a jukebox or organ amplifier on the Wurlitzer production line, and should look lovely in between those fat 832As:  Also got some vintage bakelite covered brass anode clips for the tops of the 832As - Should add to the vintage look. The best thing? Wife Approval Factor is utterly irrelevant when you *are* the wife. If this sounds good with headphones (which it apparently should after the tube upgrade), then I'll probably buy a set of the Fostex P1000E cabinets and FF105WK 4" full-range drivers from Madisound. I've already got a small sub to use with them, and they're basically designed from the outset to work with very low power amplifiers:  Even with binding posts to replace the springclips, and a set of spikes so I can have them levelled or angled, they're only about $200 a pair. Oh, and I also had a t-shirt made... 
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May 4, 2014 05:28
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Vestax? Numark? Nu-uh. Sony PS-F5 or PS-F9 all the way... Portable, battery powered, linear tracking, and actual hi-fi. Good luck finding one though.   (Tube amp arrived yesterday. Expect an update soon.)
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May 8, 2014 23:45
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BigFactory posted:Speaking of B&W, just picked up a pair of DM2 mk 1's. Probably from 73, or 74. Pretty excited to give them a listen tonight. I bought a pair of DM303s about 12 years ago. Haven't yet had the need to upgrade them.
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Nov 27, 2014 14:42
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Ron Burgundy posted:Linear trackers should be better at tracking in theory but suffer from the fact that it's almost impossible to implement well to any price point with the same low level of friction you'd find in a regular pivot tonearm. Air bearings work wonders. Also, some of the motor-driven linear trackers (like my SL-10) used optical systems to detect the movement of the arm, which, when properly adjusted resulted in sensing some *extremely* low lateral deflection angles... As in less than the range of cantelever movement on a normal (imperfectly centred) record.
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Dec 16, 2014 03:32
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KozmoNaut posted:If you look at the 2M cartridge itself with the stylus removed, I'm pretty sure you could actually mount an OM stylus to it. It would look weird, but it wouldn't surprise me if it worked. Certainly does. I've had several of the OM stylii on my 2M red body after I accidentally bent the 2M's cantilever. The cartridge needs to be set back and the VTA raised slightly as the whole lot is a bit longer and taller, but it certainly works.
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Apr 27, 2015 00:07
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For those of you that haven't yet seen this extinct audio playback format, I'm going to leave these here: https://youtu.be/nBNTAmLRmUg https://youtu.be/9tTURrAWVYE German post-war technological innovation at it's finest.
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Mar 11, 2016 15:10
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 Bought a new shelf today, and opened some boxes of gear that have been packed for the last two house moves. That’s 13 CD players, 2 tape decks, 2 amps, and a laser disc player unpacked so far.
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Feb 11, 2018 10:01
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I made a new video taking a look at some early CD players. Also repaired one of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlk2wzZ_s78
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Feb 28, 2018 01:18
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Hmm. Did scrape off the old chrome before you applied the vinyl stuff? If you didn't it may continue flaking off under the vinyl, could cause bubbling or something similar. Neat video! Oops. I forgot to mention that in my voice over. I sanded both pieces back to clean metal before I put the vinyl on.
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Feb 28, 2018 02:15
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This week I made a video on a Grundig EN3 dictation recorder. Odd little vintage piece of gear with a 1/4" reel-to-reel tape cartridge. I had to fix it before it worked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NflrwT619kU This is only the second video that I've uploaded to YouTube but I think it's better than the first one I shared here.
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Mar 8, 2018 15:37
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Dr.Caligari posted:Long shot, but does anyone know much about the West German built AEG 3074 Does not appear to have the problematic electrostatic tweeters that were incredibly popular in deutsche radioapparaten back in the 50s. They have foam in them that degrades and it's a PITA to replace. If you can, check to see if the electrolytic and paper capacitors in it have been replaced at some point. If not, they'll need replacing pretty much straight away if you want any sort of long-term reliability. The tubes in this should all be available, and it's wise to keep a few spares on hand. Other than that, it's a pretty nice mid-range unit. They sound great, too. Germany really got into to manufacturing quality stuff in the post-war era and it shows.
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May 15, 2018 09:39
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Finally decided to upgrade the 2M Red to a Blue. The upgrade may or may not have been motivated by my cat batting the tonearm into the side of the platter and snapping the cantilever off. It's going on this (which currently has my backup OM10 fitted): 
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Aug 20, 2018 16:58
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Electric Bugaloo posted:How do you like those weirdly-shaped Pro-Jects (I forget the name)? Do you find that it’s an upgrade over the Debut Carbon? It's an RPM1. Mine is a MkII, and it's about 14 years old and has a serial number in the 2 thousands, so it's a fairly early production model. It has an aluminum arm tube and the 16VAC motor (I've added the Speed Box II), where the current model has a carbon fiber arm and DC motor with it's own speed controller built in. I do like it, but mine was purchased as a scratch and dent model so I had to fix a few things which a normal buyer probably wouldn't - The tonearm bearings were all slightly loose and needed adjusting, there is a ding in the underside of the platter I had to smooth out, and the original design relied on the arm being grounded through the bearings, so it had a faint hum, and touching the finger lift made it buzz loudly. I also replaced the belt after a year because it had stretched enough that it was running slightly slow. Other than fixing that stuff, I've also rewired the arm with Cardas litz wire and cartridge clips (the original wire was quite flimsy), added a ground wire from the horizontal bearing shaft to the arm base (fixing the hum), and polished the inside of the platter bearing and added some silicon oil which fixed a very faint rumble. I want to change the feet for some that are a bit stickier underneath as the plastic cones mean it slides fairly easily on top of my hifi unit. It's a great table now, but like I said, my ownership experience is probably not indicative of buying one that wasn't in a damaged box. These are a definite upgrade over the Debut in a few ways, the platter is thicker and much heavier instead of being pressed steel, it came with a better cartridge, and the bearing housing is made of metal instead of glass fiber reinforced plastic. I think it's visually nicer too, but it does cost more. The Debut is still an excellent table. Bass Ackwards fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Aug 21, 2018 |
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Aug 21, 2018 10:28
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 Defective out of the box. Cantilever azimuth isn’t straight... Motherfuck.
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Aug 23, 2018 06:30
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Finally built a Flexy rack of my own. It's only taken me about fifteen years to get around to it. Finger jointed 1200x405x19mm Acacia panels, stained golden teak, with M16 zinc plated rods and hardware - except for the dome nuts, which are chrome plated. I just love the way it looks, even though I can't get a good pic of it in place because there is gear *everywhere* in my study right now.   
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Jan 9, 2019 14:37
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A coworker gave me this Akai 4000DS this morning for free. He got it from someone who found it in a shed where it had been sitting since the late 1980s. I don't have a before picture, but imagine a piece of equipment that's been sitting in a shed for three decades and is full of dust, dead bugs, spiderwebs, and covered in corrosion from winter humidity. After a *lot* of work (and a quiet grateful prayer of thanks that it had been stored with the transport disengaged, i.e. no indents in rollers and idler tires) this is the end result. Amazingly, the belts in it are in excellent condition, and the idlers and pinch roller just needed a light burnish to take off some glazing, and the rest of the mech needed cleaning and regreasing. The physical restoration on the other hand, that was a little bit more involved. Lets just say I've gone through half a tube of metal polish, a sheet of 1500 grit sandpaper, and two of those fuzzy little polishing wheels for my Dremel.  (click for bigger) It doesn't look 100% perfect, but it it's at least 90ish percent, so I'm happy. The other bonus is that the heads don't have any wear indentations, they were just really filthy, so a deep clean, polish, and demag, and then some internal adjustments and control cleaning, and it sounds great. W&F is in spec, but I think the preamp board could do with a recap, so that is next on the list. It's a very different use experience to my Teac X3... No push button convenience, this is all solid clunking levers and knobs and switches that click with a very satisfying feel.
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Jan 16, 2019 17:36
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lookslikerain posted:
Man, there is just something about gear designed with that angular mid 80s design language that really grabs me. Looks like it was just milled out of a big solid block.
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Feb 6, 2020 02:16
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 Currently sitting here listening to a system made entirely of things I've restored that people have thrown away, even down to the headphones. All of these were acquired from one of the local rubbish dumps over the last year or so. The most recent addition was the Rotel RA-820BX, which had primary filter caps that failed... Epically:  They were doing more shorting than filtering, and blowing the supply rail fuses in the process, so I replaced them with some new higher value caps (10000uF vs 8200uF), and swapped out every other electrolytic and tantalum capacitor in it with better quality ones, cleaned all the controls, and reset the bias. Not a particularly difficult diagnosis and repair, but satisfying because now it's making beautiful music instead of rotting in a landfill somewhere. I've just packed and carted over 50 of my other hifi components into storage during a house move, so I don't really need another amp, but I'll keep it, of course. 
Bass Ackwards fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 14:56
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large hands posted:Yeah if my local hi-fi place had had the 701 on consignment I would have picked it up happily and used it with my Topping D10s, which is now gathering dust (anybody want to buy it?) I have an A-S301 and an A-S700 (and a CA-610 if we're having a Yamaha amp dick waving contest) and I can highly recommend them. Fantastic amps, clean power to spare and an understated style that pairs very well with older gear. strtj posted:Also just a quick public service announcement to say: please don't buy anything from Sony having to do with tape. I've had the prosumer DAT deck I mentioned eat a very valuable tape, I've had two good condition ES-line cassette decks eat tapes, and I've had a prosumer VCR eat a tape. I don't know what they were using for belts, or what the other common factor might have been, but they seriously could not manage to keep reasonable tension. I have a DTC-59ES and it's one of the most fussy, finicky pieces of gear in my collection. Early Sony DAT decks are very well built, with a machined or die-cast chassis, Delrin mechanism guides, and solid brass rollers. Later decks, like mine, are made with a pressed steel chassis, ABS/nylon mechanism guides, and nylon rollers. It was a bastard to get working correctly in the first place (even with a set of the very rare alignment tapes) and even now it still has it's moments where it will stop reading TOCs, or start dropping timecodes, or randomly decide to attempt to cycle through threading and unthreading the tape in a neverending loop. This is after recapping the RF amplifier, a new old stock mode switch, and replacing the capstan/mecha drive motor. The heads are absolutely fine, it just seems to have the math skills of a toddler when it comes to reading tapes.
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Aug 26, 2021 13:14
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large hands posted:Trying out a class D(Peachtree Nova 300) for the first time ever and I think I might be happy with my system for a few years now: How are the Lintons? I'm thinking of buying a pair when my house is (eventually) built for my main system.
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Apr 3, 2023 23:20
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large hands posted:They're fantastic, I've had them a couple years now and still get a kick out of listening to music on them every time. Best speakers I've owned and really do everything very well. This seems to be the general consensus. I've had a pair of older Wharfedale Sapphire's for the last few years and they're surprisingly good considering their age. The Lintons look like a natural progression for my main system, and I think they'd probably pair quite well with my A-S700. The Sapphires will get moved on to another system somewhere else in the house... I've literally designed my new place to have 4 listening areas.
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Apr 5, 2023 06:13
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wa27 posted:
Heck of a bargain. Those sell on eBay for anywhere between several hundred and a thousand dollars in good working order.
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Nov 27, 2023 13:59
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HKR posted:Forgive if I get a bit too basic here, but you said you don't have the first clue on what you're looking for so I'm gonna roll with that. Yeah, that poster has a changeover stylus, as fitted to many, many automatic record changers with ceramic cartridges. It will absolutely play modern records. It has a 78RPM sapphire stylus on one side of the cantilever, and a normal spherical diamond stylus for modern LP records on the other.  You select what type of record you're playing by flipping the little white tab to the left or right side of the cartridge so it shows either 78 or LP on the top, which rotates the cantilever, and puts the correct stylus facing groove side down. oXDemosthenesXo posted:Thanks! I'd start by making sure it's on the LP side first.
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Feb 26, 2024 11:20
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Megabound posted:I'm always down to recommend the Pro-ject Phono Box S2. It's small, neutral and supports both MM and MC cartridges so if you change in the future you won't need to also change your pre-amp. Seconded The adjustable gain and cartridge loading make this drat near universally compatible, and the price makes it a no-brainer.
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Apr 3, 2024 13:41
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 03:55 |
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Megabound posted:For Aussies, JB HiFi are having a deep sale on the Soundburger. poo poo. I might have to buy another one. I got my first one from JB for $369, but it's black and I wanted one of the colourful ones. I can justify $214 for what'll basically be an ornament. edit: They're no longer on special. Poop. Bass Ackwards fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 07:29
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