This joint needs some more vintage hifi

TNHNDYMAN

Here's some nudie pics of my Lafayette LR 4000. Removed the covers the other day to clean out and work on the controls with deoxit. After going thru it, still has some issues with the back L channel (no sound) and I don't have anything quad capable to hook into the 4 ch inputs to test throughly. Tried a portable cd player but only got sound out of the right side using two of the four connections. Wish I hadn't sold my quad Reel to Reel so I could further test it.

It sounds really nice with a great tuner and decent phono section. Only 40 WPC but seems to have some weight behind it.

TNHNDYMAN

Think I have a few too many. It's time to thin out the heard a little. The SL1600 is staying, but I have a couple of SL23's a SL DL5, SL 5, SL J3, and a SL 1900 that I need to put on CL and find a new home.

mhardy6647

TNHNDYMAN wrote: »

Here's some nudie pics of my Lafayette LR 4000. Removed the covers the other day to clean out and work on the controls with deoxit. After going thru it, still has some issues with the back L channel (no sound) and I don't have anything quad capable to hook into the 4 ch inputs to test throughly. Tried a portable cd player but only got sound out of the right side using two of the four connections. Wish I hadn't sold my quad Reel to Reel so I could further test it.

It sounds really nice with a great tuner and decent phono section. Only 40 WPC but seems to have some weight behind it.

That's a very cool piece! Talk about a "below the radar" piece of hardware. :-)

Did you know she was the 1973 cover girl for LRE?

drumminman

Check this out: http://raleigh.craigslist.org/ele/3347739809.html

Never heard of this model before, but then again I'm not a Sansui expert. 220 wpc separates (pre amp/tuner, PA). Must have been Sansui's top 'o the line.

No affiliation, only a curious bystander :cool:

TNHNDYMAN

^ That is one of the top 2 big boy Sansui pieces, but his price is way out of line. $1200-1500 depending on condition would be in the ballpark of reality. People are paying crazy money for them though, so maybe he'll get it.

cnh

That particular market is on the other side of sanity. Like the JVC boombox that went for $4000 a while back!

cnh

mhardy6647

Actually, if memory serves, there was a Sansui G-33000 which was even a notch above the G-22000.

These Sansuis, the Technics SA-1000, the Marantz 2600, the Pioneer SA-1980, and a few other behemoths, were like the apatosaurs at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, lumbering across the landscape just before the asteroid (or economic downturn/decrease in value of the dollar relative to the yen, and other socioeconomic changes) hit :-)

TNHNDYMAN

Don't have any of those moster receivers; however, I do have Kenwood's not too shabby KR9600- 160 WPC of sonic thunder. Picked up from my uncle last Christmas. All original, lights working, very little noise, and uncommon wood case. It did certainly make the JBL L100's dance :biggrin:

cnh

The 9600 is definitely considered Monster class, though not as big or heavy as the Sansui above. That was pretty much TOTL for Kenwood at one point. A very nice piece. I have a much lower KR 5400 I occasionally use with some old Wharfdale bookies to stream some Pandora, listen to the college FM station, etc. Those Kenwoods also have "nice" tuners in them.

A nice match for classic JBLs. There are a "few" of us that appreciate that old JBL R&R sound, here.

cnh

George Grand

And there's a few of us that appreciate more listenable loudspeakers.

mhardy6647

more listenable than...?

I actually prefer to listen to my loudspeakers, too... given the average cosmetic values of most of 'em around here, they fare much better aurally than visually!

Here's a cogent example - ugly as sin but they sound really very good... 'specially for the 10 bucks the pair cost at a charity fleamarket in a nearby town...



Gonna cosmetically rehab these someday...

mhardy6647

another truly, deeply profoundly ugly pair of loudspeaker foundlings from my favorite local emporium... they sounded just fine, though.




I literally couldn't give them away, and I got a nicer pair, so I actually ended up parting these out in (partial) barter for some ReVox reel to reel tape deck work to a fine, talented fellow who was, at the time, rebuilding a pair of Cello Amatis. A fitting fate for the fine drivers... but still kind of sad.

TNHNDYMAN

George Grand wrote: »

And there's a few of us that appreciate more listenable loudspeakers.

The JBL's were not my cup of tea either. I traded them to a guy near Knoxville for a couple hundred bucks and 2 older Pioneer turntables- a PL-15D and PL-A35.

TNHNDYMAN

Mr. H- ^

I recognize the Time Window's. Was the other pair AR-3's? I had a pair of the KLH SIX's that were a little rough around the edges but sounded very nice to me. Sold those to romeo23 and then picked up a pair of KLH 23's in better shape.

ambiophonics

My DQ's ... they've been in the closet for a while but I may have to pull them out again and take a listen

edit - please ignore the large squash sitting atop my subwoofer...

mhardy6647

TNHNDYMAN wrote: »

The JBL's were not my cup of tea either. I traded them to a guy near Knoxville for a couple hundred bucks and 2 older Pioneer turntables- a PL-15D and PL-A35.

I feel (FWIW) that many JBL loudspeakers, as well as most of the heritage Klipsch products, likely violate the Geneva Convention and might reasonably be considered as instruments of terror if misused.

TNHNDYMAN wrote: »

Mr. H- ^

I recognize the Time Window's. Was the other pair AR-3's? I had a pair of the KLH SIX's that were a little rough around the edges but sounded very nice to me. Sold those to romeo23 and then picked up a pair of KLH 23's in better shape.

Yup and yup, respectively.
My KLH Sixes aren't quite as rough as the above, but I've never taken a photo of 'em AFAIK.

Here's a single KLH Five that drifted through here a while back; nice speaker but having one is not particularly value-added (it's just not the kind of loudspeaker one would build an "audiophile" mono system around). I traded the KLH Five for a pair of EV Model Fours. The latter looked really nice but sounded disappointingly mediocre, so they're long gone.

mhardy6647

ambiophonics wrote: »

My DQ's ... they've been in the closet for a while but I may have to pull them out again and take a listen

edit - please ignore the large squash sitting atop my subwoofer...

Two thoughts come to mind:

1) perhaps the squash (I believe that's actually a baking pumpkin, isn't it?) adds critical damping to the subwoofer enclosure?

2) if that's not its purpose - my reaction is more along the lines of "don't ask, don't tell" ;-)

ambiophonics

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Two thoughts come to mind:

1) perhaps the squash (I believe that's actually a baking pumpkin, isn't it?) adds critical damping to the subwoofer enclosure?

2) if that's not its purpose - my reaction is more along the lines of "don't ask, don't tell" ;-)

I think you may be on to something with the critical damping idea... the bass used to sound very "squashed" and enemic, now it is much more grounded and smooth like "butter"

The guy at the farmer's market said it was a butternut squash - the lady friend was going to make some soup with it!

cnh

Boy those DQs (a nice speaker sound-wise) sure look fugly without their grills! Better keep those drivers hidden.

I know JBLs are not big on this site, I'm aware of what George and Mark are alluding to above. And to be honest, my favorites are really various '80s monitor versions with the pure titanium dome tweeter which I do think was a tech. move forward for them. And I have a set of those. But other than running those on tubes, I mostly listen to my vintage speakers.

I've never heard a set of KLH 5s but I have 4 Nova 8s (which I gather are imitation 5s sitting in the dinning room of a friend down south-will pick those up eventually, probably only need two, sorry to hear mhardy give the 5s a meh!).

But I have hooked up a pair of Nova 7Bs today. And I'm fairly pleased with their sound. Some of these classic Realistic attempted reproduction of KLH aren't bad! If I had a better camera I'd put up some pics! So here is a stock photo:

cnh

mhardy6647

I must have not been too clear. The KLH Five is an excellent speaker; very possibly the best all-around Henry Kloss KLH-era effort.
Having ONE of them is kind of meh :-P

The PAIR of EV Fours... those were meh. Very meh. A single one of those would be even meh-er.

Clearer? ;-)

TNHNDYMAN

meh be

mhardy6647

For completeness, the EV Fours.


In the interest of disclosure, one of the midrange horns was MIA as this cosmetically nice looking pair of speakers was received. Listening to the fully intact one was not all that impressive, so I ahem took the liberty of investing in a pair of really cheap "Gemsound" brand compression midranges ($5.99 a piece!) available on special from MCM at the time. They were drop in fits and (in all honesty) didn't sound much different than the rather uninspiring AlNiCo compression driver that EV put in the Fours originally.

original EV MR driver/horn:



Gemsound horn and driver (actually a fairly beefy compression driver, 'specially for six bucks):



(note that the EV woofer is a 'component woofer' version of the later cast basket EV SP12B/TRX12B drivers - sans the paint job)



I sold the Fours with the ghetto MRs as well as a single EV MR horn/driver for a pittance (and with no regrets).

gdb

This appears to be somewhat vintage. Such a stylish curve on the tonearm.


[video=youtube_share;DxqQxJt_LQI]http://youtu.be/DxqQxJt_LQI[/video]

mhardy6647

It's a Maggotbox - and that's a Collaro changer.
This one appears to be a soiled state, "Astro-Sonic" model... one of its vacuum tube forebears dwells in my basement.



(perhaps one will recognize the speakers being used with it in the photo)

mhardy6647

crouse

I loved quad sound way back when. I vividly remember a friend playing the bells from "Dark Side of the Moon" on his car quad system. The sound was racing around the car and we were all in a, shall we say, very receptive state for sonic overload.

mhardy6647

it ain't all pretty...

gmjungbluth

neat!

I have a set of Realistic Nova 6B that I picked up with my new (to me) Pioneer SA-708 TX-608 combo.

They look like a little set of Pioneer CS99s - nice walnut veneers, lattice grilles. They're heavy too. I polished them up and they look quite nice now. The 6bs are a two-way, 8" woofer and 3" tweeter. I have a set of recapped KLH Model 6s right now that I am meaning to do an A/B test with. My first impression of the Realistic speakers was that they were good in the mids and had some low end, but that perhaps the high end was a little muted. I also didn't get a clear soundstage from them I'm sure a recap would clear that up, and I read somewhere online that another Nova 6 owner found that one of his woofers was wired from the factory out of phase, which screwed up the soundstage. Since my speaker count has crept up as of late I'm not sure if I'll put the work into rewiring these - trying to sell them on right now. They would make a great basis for a frankenspeaker too - the cabinets are solid and you could probably find some interesting drivers to test out of the Parts Express catalog!

cnh wrote: »

Boy those DQs (a nice speaker sound-wise) sure look fugly without their grills! Better keep those drivers hidden.

I know JBLs are not big on this site, I'm aware of what George and Mark are alluding to above. And to be honest, my favorites are really various '80s monitor versions with the pure titanium dome tweeter which I do think was a tech. move forward for them. And I have a set of those. But other than running those on tubes, I mostly listen to my vintage speakers.

I've never heard a set of KLH 5s but I have 4 Nova 8s (which I gather are imitation 5s sitting in the dinning room of a friend down south-will pick those up eventually, probably only need two, sorry to hear mhardy give the 5s a meh!).

But I have hooked up a pair of Nova 7Bs today. And I'm fairly pleased with their sound. Some of these classic Realistic attempted reproduction of KLH aren't bad! If I had a better camera I'd put up some pics! So here is a stock photo:

cnh

dudeinaroom

I've done one of those pilots and had a Fisher like that on my bench last week(500c)

dudeinaroom

Have a Lafayette on the bench waiting for dexoit to come in.