This joint needs some more vintage hifi

mhardy6647

... and I decided I'd had the Sony 777 as an avatar for long enough; thought a crop of this photo would make a good replacement.

ReVox WHRB Dead aircheck by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

(I kind of like this picture, even though the reel to reel gurus always castigate me for having mixed plastic and aluminum reels)

mhardy6647

Motivated by a thread at www.hifihaven.org (and, more to the point, one member's beautiful photos of his sweetie's place in VT) I snapped a few "as is" photos upstairs this afternoon -- soiled-state/monkey coffin hifi system still set up from the past couple weeks' refoaming activities :-P

013 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
010 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Excuse the clutter :-p

lightman1

Clutter!!?? That's a fargin playground of audio fun! Toys! Looks fun Mark.

oldrocker

Jeez oh pete M.
I was having a good day with my, uh, oh never mind...

oldrocker

And on another note M.
I just had to do a shot of vodka to calm down after seeing all them goodies...

Hope the wife doesn't pick up on it when she gets home. It's a tad early for that...

lightman1

Mhardy...the king of hoarders!! All hail King Mark!!

oldrocker

Amen, Bro...

mhardy6647

lightman1 wrote: »

Mhardy...the king of hoarders!! All hail King Mark!!

Note that I don't share any photos of the basement :-/
(not a pretty sight)

mhardy6647

back on topic -- JVC... I don't THINK I shared these befo' (at least, not in this context):

Scan0012 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
GMM Receivers p2 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Polkie2009

Dittos on loving the old gear Mark, keep it coming.

lightman1

IIRC...my Dad had a Tandberg receiver at one time. One of his prized pieces. Wish I knew where it was today....

mhardy6647

Tanbdbergs are very interesting. Aesthetically beyond reproach. Stellar FM tuner sections. Some ahead-of-the-curve features... and fine sound.
A little less robust than average, though (i.e., a little more trouble prone).
There's a really motley collection of Tandberg things here -- wish I had some of the bigger/better stuff, to be totally frank.

Scott and Tandberg by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

ledhed

Was in a photo mood last night so I took a couple of shots of the Pioneer PL-530 my dad handed down to me.
Really need to get a good cartridge on here.

mhardy6647

Nice photos -- and (FWIW) I don't see anything at all wrong with having a Grado on there! :- )

Nightfall

After my dads DBX preamp and amplifier were struck by lightning and not worth fixing he replaced both with a JVC JR-S501, powered his SDA 2.3's and sounded okay to my young ears but I had no clue back then.

jcaut

I think SDA's - especially the big ones- sound best with more power, however I don't doubt that the JR-S501 would handle them. Really beefy receiver. Note that even my little 301 at 60wpc has 18000uF caps. Bigger in fact than this 120wpc amp...

This is not really what I'd call vintage, being from mid '90's, but I just finished re-capping and fixing some relay and solder joint problems. It's a really nice sounding amp, the 120wpc AA-2120 from Proton. The build is a lot different from the D1200 Protons, but still pretty nice and real dual-mono construction. Doesn't look like it's common ground so I guess it's a no-go on the SRS2's. Makes my RT800's sing though. I'd sure like to find a service manual or at least alignment specs on it, if anyone has an idea where to find that.

jcaut

Got this elegant-looking Nikko NR-1019 on my bench (er,uh.., the breakfast table) tonight. It works. Needs a good cleaning. But, whoops!-- Looks like someone has installed an odd-ball output transistor! Guess that means I'll be ordering up some Sankens and rebuilding an amp...

boston1450

Those Nikko's are nice & they pair well with just about any of Polk Monitors

jcaut

Thanks! It looks well-built and it's certainly easy to work on: I had the whole power amp out of it in about 5 minutes. I've never owned a Nikko but I've always heard good things about them, so I'm looking forward to getting it restored.

[Deleted User]

Looks like a showroom with warmth to me!

mhardy6647

That Proton amplfier is really something -- I've never seen that one before, but it looks very... purposeful.

I mean that as a compliment!

jcaut wrote: »

Thanks! It looks well-built and it's certainly easy to work on: I had the whole power amp out of it in about 5 minutes. I've never owned a Nikko but I've always heard good things about them, so I'm looking forward to getting it restored.

Unlike that JVC a page or so back, eh? That ol' girl looked like she put up a fight to tear into :-P

mhardy6647

Not to change the subject or anything :-p but see if you can guess what one of my other obsessions might be?

013 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

EDIT: Bonus points to any Baltimoron (past or present) who can recognize the facility depicted in the framed picture on the top "row" of Expedit cells :- )

ledhed

jcaut wrote: »

This is not really what I'd call vintage, being from mid '90's, but I just finished re-capping and fixing some relay and solder joint problems. It's a really nice sounding amp, the 120wpc AA-2120 from Proton. The build is a lot different from the D1200 Protons, but still pretty nice and real dual-mono construction.

I REALLY like the looks of this. I'm such a suckered for analog meters...

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Nice photos -- and (FWIW) I don't see anything at all wrong with having a Grado on there! :- )

The Grado (a basic Black) isn't the worst but compared to the Shure V15 that was on here, it's just grating and very harsh on the top end. Replaced the Shure (was a type IV iirc) as the stylus was shot and replacements are insane.

Polkie2009

Those protons look sweet, I almost bought one of them years ago. I'm not sure if they are common ground or not, worth checking into. Some amps you can strap the the ground posts to work with the SDA's. I know many here did that on some of the Aragon amps. Or just go with a dreadnaught I suppose.

soundfreak1

Those meters look awesome. It should be illegal to make an amp without METERS!

mhardy6647

I am actually surprised to hear that. While most generations of the V15 were pretty darned superb, I never found the Grados harsh nor grating. Ortofons and A-Ts, yeah... but not Grados.

I wonder what is up with that?

jcaut

Love the cameras too. I'm going to take a guess at the photo and ask if it might be the old Memorial Stadium?

mhardy6647

You are correct, sir :- )
We could walk to games there (and often did) when I was in college.

Most of the cameras & lenses are in good working order (a few aren't)

Some of them (in the interest of full and complete disclosure) aren't mine -- my son's finishing up his doctorate this spring & has started (slowly) to move, piecemeal, by schlepping some of his surplus camera stuff to our house while he's in transition to... whatever comes next for him.

He and I share a "thing" about Nikons :- )

shelfies1 120315 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

pumpkinman

Boston Acoustics A200's I picked up last Sunday. They were in worse shape than advertised. But I took them anyway. It will just take me longer to put them in shape. I'm thinking cherry laminate over the oak veneer. The grills were toast so I'll fabricate new ones once the spring allows me back in the garage. The new surrounds arrived last night so I took a little time today and glued the suckers on. Now we are at least playing. I like them.

mhardy6647

Cool.

What are you using for amplification? Is that one of those Mitsubishi "docking" power amps I espy at the bottom of the rack?
(Please don't be offended if I am way off base with that guess! -- that's just what jumped to mind when I squinted at the components on the rack)