This joint needs some more vintage hifi

PreCd

Thank you sir. That room is about 10' wide and 20' long and a rug would do some good. Have not thought of that and thanks for mentioning it.

DSkip wrote: »

How wide is that room? Good lookin' setup. Thought about a rug?

PreCd

Yeah it could be better but it beats the listening room I used to have. Not square. Not rectangular. We used our imagination when we built that one. This room is much better and at least gives me a optimum point in a room where I can place myself in order to take advantage of the SDAs. Next step is to place some bass traps in the corners and hit the reflection point at the ceiling just in front of the gear. That should help quite a bit I would think.

Great to have the vintage gear. We had family and friends over a month ago for a birthday party. I took some of the young ones in there and played one of the tracks that shine on the SDAs. Their mouths hung open and could not stop the compliments. When asked how they could have that sound I said fork over 5 bills and you will be close to having it too. $200 for some SDAs. $200 for a GFA-545. And I am running a $99 battery powered Bottlehead tube preamp. They would be close. Anyways some of the younger generation does not know what they are missing by not having a vintage 2 channel rig.

PreCd

And I will be adding a rug my friend! Thanks for the suggestion.

cnh

Nice rig, PreCd. But 10' is really not enough to effect the SDA experience. You're probably getting something from that set up but not the Full Monty. My basement room is the same size (20 x 10) and when I'm forced to I use the long wall with the SDAs--the problem there is the shortness of the 10' radiating space?

13'-14' is kinda the minimum wall space required for SDAs (3 feet from each wall = 6 feet, 4 feet, minimum, from each other, and almost 3 feet worth of SDA cabinet space: 6 + 4 (or more) + 3 = 13-14'.

SDA placement is 'frustrating' for anyone who does not have larger rooms in their house. I only have two rooms longer than 14', BOTH are narrow (10' and 11.5').

I guess you do what you can?

cnh

PreCd

Thanks cnh. Yep I know I am missing out but it is the best I have. If the room is wide enough in my house it is to short. Have not been able to justify building an addition for them yet! :-) If one day I cannot enjoy them in the required space maybe old St. Peter could oblige me.............

Like your Jolida gear.

jcaut

This may not be the "correct" place to ask this, but I think it's probably the "best" place: Does anyone have an owners manual for a Technics SA-400 or similar? That they might be willing to scan and send to me? I'm going to give my SA-400 to somebody and I think having the manual would be handy. Thanks!

Mikey081057

Sweet

cnh

Mikey081057 wrote: »

Sweet

Just breathtaking!

Enjoy!

cnh

cnh

jcaut wrote: »

This may not be the "correct" place to ask this, but I think it's probably the "best" place: Does anyone have an owners manual for a Technics SA-400 or similar? That they might be willing to scan and send to me? I'm going to give my SA-400 to somebody and I think having the manual would be handy. Thanks!

Not sure. But it wouldn't hurt to search hifi-engine:

http://www.hifiengine.com/

cnh

mhardy6647

jcaut wrote: »

This may not be the "correct" place to ask this, but I think it's probably the "best" place: Does anyone have an owners manual for a Technics SA-400 or similar? That they might be willing to scan and send to me? I'm going to give my SA-400 to somebody and I think having the manual would be handy. Thanks!

Probably not, but not a bad place to ask either! ;-)

I don't know if hifiengine has it or not, but it's well worth a look (free registration required for downloads... and well worth the effort). There are other sites with reasonable collections of docs (e.g., www.audiokarma.org for members there).

I might have one for either the SA-300 (which my wife once had) or an SA-500 (an example of which resides in the 'collection' as in fact in regular use at the moment). I'll check this weekend as time permits.

EDIT: hifiengine has the service manual http://www.hifiengine.com/library/technics/sa-400.shtml

Mikey081057

In the cool of the evening

Mikey081057

Listened to the 2385 with my modded LSi 9's for hours today. Took a peek inside today... VERY clean. Previous owner must have been a fanatic.

dudeinaroom

Behold the Franken Fisher!!! Okay nothing to crazy. Had a Fisher come in with a dead output tranny. We had a Sherwood s 5500 with a dead ps transformer, so I ended up pulling the output transfomers out of it and placing them in the Fisher. Iimpedance specs were similar on the good tranny from the Fisher. Size was close, but not exact. I had to drill 6 holes for mounting the trannies. And 14 wire connections later I had a motor boat running on my bench, at least that was what it sounded like. Changed 2 wires per channel and we were listening to a once half working Fisher 400.

You can see the old mounting holes right behind the mounting tabs on the left side of either tranny. Nothing special, just had to share.

jcaut

I just got done working over 2 more vintage receivers. The Sony STR-V5 was an auction site find, in functional but dirty condition. I probably paid more than I should have, but these are not real plentiful and I wanted one. It cleaned up real nice and functions well after recapping. The original meter lights were still working, but the dial lights were out and had just about melted the plastic around where they were. I switched it to LED lighting and I think it looks pretty good, though the original color was just a little less blue and more green. I made new walnut "cheeks" for it-

The Kenwood KR-6050 was not quite a basket case, as the face and hardware were in decent shape. The laminate was peeling off and it was extremely dirty. Had a sizzling power switch, dirty switches and pots, some leaky caps and a chewed-up power cord. Wouldn't actually produce any audio other than static when I received it. As you can see, it cleaned up pretty well too! I put mahogany veneer on it, for something a little different than walnut. I added an IEC connector for a detachable cord, used a triac to switch power on and off, to take the load off the power switch, recapped it completely and THEN ended up finding a rather mysterious (to me) problem that only really showed up as excessive DC on the left output, only when switching the subsonic filter "on". Turns out the problem was a 2SK150A dual JFET input on the amp- Long obsolete and not an easy part to find a substitute for. I bought one from overseas. Cost me about $40, but I'm happy that I did. Nice receiver!

Hope these pictures show up:

jcaut

Thanks! I'm a fan of the old Kenwood stuff, myself. For one thing, the few that I've messed with have been really easy to work on. And they do have kind of a signature sound.... I have a KA-8100 integrated that I really like, but this KR-6050 sounds similar, if slightly less powerful. Funny how the different brands really do seem to be "voiced" differently. In the past year and a half, I've,.. restored...I guess you would say, various receivers and integrated amps from the late 70's from Kenwood, Sony, Onkyo, Technics, Pioneer, and Realistic. And I've owned Marantz. Never had a Yamaha or a Sansui, but I'm looking...

That would have gotten walnut veneer if I'd had enough to do it, but as it turns out I think it looks pretty sharp in mahogany. I'm kinda proud of both of them!

soundfreak1

My Marantz 6100 turntable and mcIntosh mc2120

mhardy6647

jcaut wrote: »

I just got done working over 2 more vintage receivers. The Sony STR-V5 was an auction site find, in functional but dirty condition. I probably paid more than I should have, but these are not real plentiful and I wanted one. It cleaned up real nice and functions well after recapping. The original meter lights were still working, but the dial lights were out and had just about melted the plastic around where they were. I switched it to LED lighting and I think it looks pretty good, though the original color was just a little less blue and more green. I made new walnut "cheeks" for it-

The Kenwood KR-6050 was not quite a basket case, as the face and hardware were in decent shape. The laminate was peeling off and it was extremely dirty. Had a sizzling power switch, dirty switches and pots, some leaky caps and a chewed-up power cord. Wouldn't actually produce any audio other than static when I received it. As you can see, it cleaned up pretty well too! I put mahogany veneer on it, for something a little different than walnut. I added an IEC connector for a detachable cord, used a triac to switch power on and off, to take the load off the power switch, recapped it completely and THEN ended up finding a rather mysterious (to me) problem that only really showed up as excessive DC on the left output, only when switching the subsonic filter "on". Turns out the problem was a 2SK150A dual JFET input on the amp- Long obsolete and not an easy part to find a substitute for. I bought one from overseas. Cost me about $40, but I'm happy that I did. Nice receiver!

Hope these pictures show up:

Those are beautiful... great photographs, too!

The Sony receivers (from the 1960s on) are sort of 'sleepers'; they never quite caught on with the serious hifi crowd, then or now, but they're good to very good in general; most have excellent FM sections as well.

mhardy6647

One of my couple of recent vintage additions - I was really quite pleased with the sound of this amplifier.

DSC_9171 by mhardy6647, on Flickr

jcaut

Thanks Mark! I'm pretty pleased with the sound of the big Sony. It reminds me a lot of the Marantz 2270 I had a few years ago. It does indeed have a nice tuner. It was full of dust, though, and it took a lot of cleaning to get it working properly again. Maybe it could use an alignment, but I don't know.. It seems to work pretty well now.That's a nice HK, too. Is that mid- 80's vintage?

bobivxx

Spriggs wrote: »

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gonna join this place. example of the system im joining with.

Mother of all horns

You/he must be one of the kids at Deja Vu; Right? The big Western Electric horn and the killowatt phillips in the corner (with the cool blue mercury vapor tubes) were a giveaway. I doubt there are many rooms set up like that. Oh; And I was there dropping off those sansui monoblocs (second pic, second shelf).

If so; That's just the tip of the iceburg in there. There's another 2 or 3 rooms full of awesomeness... I can only imagine what's at home.

boston1450

Tweets

boston1450

Boxes

Headmanbrewing

Jeez, looking at some of these pics (and prices!) makes me wish I had been able to hold on to my grandparents' audio equipment after they passed away. But, I was a youngun' and didn't realize that the new equipment that was coming out would suck in comparison.

mhardy6647

:-)

The original Radio Shack version of those - Optimus PRO LX-5 - may be seen on page 66 of http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1995/

Later, R/S co-opted the "RCA" brand name (I guess they bought it, or bought the rights to it from Thomson Consumer Electronics)... The ones you have (I assume!) are the RCA PRO LX55, page 150 of http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/2001-a/

Thanks for posting those photos!

boston1450

Your welcome Mark. The tweets tested good. Did you want the boxes ? I ended up using the driver out of those & over all the boxes are very nice condition & cloth grills are nice too. The crossover on one of them- wire is broke. Let me know & they'll be on way Monday

deafbykhorns

Hows this for vintage audio ****?

deafbykhorns

I really liked this turntable

mhardy6647

deafbykhorns wrote: »

Hows this for vintage audio ****?

Very handsome - I don't recognize it offhand (I am chagrined to say)... HH Scott? Fisher? I know it's not an EICO.

EDIT: a-ha! Fisher SA-300... beautiful amplifier.

http://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/fisher/sa-300.shtml

deafbykhorns

Yes, that was one of my favorites, even better than some of the McIntosh I've owned

boston1450

You might have one of these ? Is it black ?