Questions about HK components
dromunds
Posts: 10,010
in Electronics
A friend of mine has some older HK components that need attention but he’s not sure if they are worth putting money into. He has a pair of Polk RT-5 speakers that work fine. Here’s what he has:
HK 870 amp
HK 825 pre
HK TU 915 tuner
Nakamichi OMS 2A CD player
First, what is the perception of this kit, is it held in good regard, worth anything? He says the “volume control doesn’t work right and the left and right channels goes in and out”.
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks
HK 870 amp
HK 825 pre
HK TU 915 tuner
Nakamichi OMS 2A CD player
First, what is the perception of this kit, is it held in good regard, worth anything? He says the “volume control doesn’t work right and the left and right channels goes in and out”.
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks
Comments
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I think the Nakamichi cassette players are more well thought of than their CD players.
The specs don't read out that well. I say move out of the 80's to a mid nineties Sony
HK has built some real sleepers...Speakers: Polk Lsim, ATC SCM19 v2, NHT SuperzeroSpeaker Cables: DH Labs, Transparent, Wireworld, Canare, Monster: Beer budget, Bose ears -
Wonder if the push on/off buttons & volume knob just need a cleaning ? I've worked on many Marantz Pioneers & many Yamahas that was the issue. Some it was the Tape buttons because they weren't used often & lost contact. Sprayed Deoxit on pots & worked the buttons seem to work. Contact cleaner can is cheap & shouldn't take half hour. Might be worth a try..
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The controls on the (EDIT) tuner & preamp, especially those itty-bitty pushbuttons, do need cleaning and they are finicky/hard to clean.
Not impossible, but a pain.
I like that era of h/k stuff (FWIW). The tuner is very cool (is it not?
) but nothing special. The preamp's decent, but also nothing special AFAIK. The h/k power (and integrated) amps of the era, I am pretty sure (?!) were made based on Matti Otala's work on TIM (transient IM distortion) and thus are wide bandwidth, (very) high slew-rate designs. The years have dimmed the enthusiasm for that approach somewhat, but - on the other hand - there are plenty of folks who pay surprisingly high prices for the h/k amps of that general era.
TL/DR; The power amp, at least, is probably worthy of attention.
Pretty sure the OMS-2 was pretty low-end. The OMS-7 had some cachet, but the problem with these old Naks, IIRC, is frail lasers with hard-to-source replacements.
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Thanks, fellas. I’ll pass it on.
