The Stereo Club

A Brick Armadillo, White Light and the President of Bolivia

2010-11-28T19:39:00.000-08:00

The Club House needs a bit of cleaning these days, both literally and figuratively. Tropical storm Hermine put 10 inches of rain on my house and 2 or 3 inches managed to make it inside, so life has been a bit complicated lately. But even before that the blog was suffering from projects set aside and articles abandoned. Maybe more details on that later, but for now it's time for a bit of catch up.

If you are an Austinite of a certain age you will know what this picture is:

This is the lead armadillo in the herd that adorned the wall in the late lamented Armadillo World Headquarters. The Armadillo lost the battle with Austin's high tech progress and the property was sold and replaced with a high rise office building. The contents were auctioned off and the building was demolished in early 1981, and my good friend Rob Haeuser grabbed the above in a daring daylight heist. I trust the statute of limitations for brick theft has passed.

An update from Rob, slightly edited...

"A minor correction:

The bricks were paid for, albeit reluctantly, by my ex-wife, aka the *********** from ****. We were in separate cars, and met at the demolition site. I rooted around for a couple of good bricks, and stumbled across a chunk of about 15, lying face-down. When I flipped it over I nearly died! So I hustled the chunk into my trunk, and the ***** headed to her car. On the other side of the site a guy in a pickup started yelling “It’s a buck a brick!” I headed off in one direction, ***** headed off in the opposite direction, and the guy jumped in his pickup and followed her. She pulled up to a red light, he hopped out of the pickup and ran up to her window, she rolled it down an inch, and handed him a five. Needless to say, I reimbursed her! So what a deal: 15 bricks at 33 cents a brick…"

Rob sometimes gives the impression that his divorce was not an amicable one...

This world is full of all sorts of odd connections of the Kevin Bacon sort. One of the occupants of the high rise built on the ashes of the Armadillo was IBM, and at the time they employed the future President of Bolivia, Jorge Quiroga. Jorge was part of a team that sold the state of Texas a large number of first generation PC AT's for a project that employed me then, and somehow employs me now. Jorge was an interesting guy and mad about soccer.

But I digress. Rob was (and will always be) a musician, and like most musicians he has a story about how he came that close to getting the big break. His band was called White Light and the big break that almost happened was a too brief connection with Bill Josey, founder of Sonobeat Records. Bill produced Johnny Winter, a very young Eric Johnson and a host of other Texas musicians. He passed away in 1976 after producing a demo tape for White Light. The tape disappeared for literally 30 years and, well, follow the links above and this one for more of the story.

I have to wrap up this little bit of unfinished business for now, but there are several stories in the above that deserve to be pursued. Austin is like that, lots of old business that needs to see the light of day. With luck I will get to these and a few more, including one very interesting one involving Janis Joplin.

Snap Out of It!

2010-11-26T20:51:00.001-08:00

Life has taken a few twists and turns around The Stereo Club and the blog has suffered. The last post was way last February, and blogging was sparse for months before that. That's just pathetic.

Well, today I was moping around the house, thinking about the blog I have neglected, and realized it was time for an intervention. I needed someone to step up, get in my face, and let me know what I needed to do.

And then it hit me:

Thanks, I needed that.

I confess that Cher has been one of my musical guilty pleasures, and the Moonstruck Cher just looked great. However, like many males in the late 70's, I found this Cher... er, intriguing:

Remarkably, this album is titled 'Take Me Home'. Ahh, sure.

On the other hand, this Cher was just scary:

What was she thinking? If you know, please don't tell me.

Of course, Cher got her start with former Phil Spector go-fer and future Republican Congressman Sonny Bono. Sonny co-wrote 'Needles and Pins' with Jack Nitzsche and I thank the both of them for that.

And he also wrote and produced this classic number, perhaps the first work in the rock genre to feature an oboe hook:

This Shindig clip from 1965 featured a doofy looking Sonny in his caveman outfit, but the song was very catchy, and Cher looked great and could sing. I was hooked.

Anyway, I hope Cher has snapped me out of it and the blog is back. I have tons of catching up to do...

Motorcycle Girl

2010-02-14T19:35:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I have been slackin' on the blog, these days, life has intervened a bit. The posts are stacking up like speakers in my closet...

In the meantime here is a version of Motorcycle Girl by Tito & Tarantula. Tito Larriva was the charismatic front man for the Cruzados, a great L.A. Chicano punk band that fizzled out after a great first record. I couldn't find a copy of the official Cruzados video from '85, but this is a scorchingly good version.

Tito's voice has a bit of road rash, but the band is in fine form. The video is from the German RockPalast and was recorded (very well) in Bonn in '08. I think the line up includes Cruzados ex Steven Hufsteter on lead guitar, Lucy Rippy on bass, and Alfredo Ortiz on drums. (I think... This band has been through some changes.) If Ortiz' drumming on this track doesn't have you bopping in your chair you are without hope.

As a parting shot here is an earlier incarnation of the band sharing the stage with Selma Hayek and a snake.

Yowza. Now that's what I call a show! The band contributed 3 songs to Robert Rodriguez' remake of Desperado in '95, and Tito scored the soundtrack.

Tito Larriva and Steven Hufsteter are currently residents of Austin, no doubt Robert Rodriguez had some influence there. Lucy Rippy is also a Texas resident, maybe even an Austinite as well. Austin will make room for Betty Page playing bass any day. That's a two-fer just made for South Austin. For the link inclined here are a few: Tito, the band, The Cruzados, Rippy on MySpace, and Alfredo Ortiz.

A simple vacuum tube amp

2010-01-31T15:12:00.000-08:00

I've owned and serviced quite a number of pieces of tube audio gear over the years. I've even owned more than a few bits of tube gear in the past that are quite sought after these days. Many were were a mixed bag to own and feed. Especially when the output stage becomes unstable, and eats an expensive set of tubes. My goal was to create something simple and musical. Hopefully, it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg.

Anyone who has built just about anything from scratch will tell you that the cost of materials and labor far outweigh the cost of an assembled product from a store shelf. It certainly turned out to be the case here. A pretty decent power amp could be purchased just for the cost of just the resistors and capacitors in this particular amp. Holco precision resistors, and Sidereal poly capacitors did add up. Throw in teflon coated silver stranded wire, and silver plated ceramic tube sockets, and cost added up even more.

The start of this project began with a set of transformers from an old Sansui unit. They were in great physical condition, and well suited for a project like this one. The output stage takes cues from both the Sansui they originated from, but from some Fisher influence as well. Unlike many common cathode designs of the 60s, I chose a simple self bias approach used in a smaller Fisher 6L6 based amplifier designed many moons ago. No tweaky bias adjustments needed at all.

Looking to cut costs somewhere, I discovered that the Pilot company used a simple 12AX7 tube for each channel of a power amp delivered in the 1960s. Half the dual channel tube used for the input stage, and the second half for the driver/phase splitter. The credit belongs to these trailblazers, and not me. The result is a musical amp that won't cost your entire rent check to feed with tubes. The cathode bias approach definitely squeezes a long lifespan from the power output tubes. Common cathode proponents might claim tighter bass, and a few more watts of power, but I say the trade-off is well worth it.

This amplifier is currently on display at Austin Stereo in Austin Texas.

The Audio Research SP3A1

2010-01-17T14:36:00.001-08:00

Produced around 1973 to 1974, this vacuum tube preamp definitely raised the bar for the state of audio gear. Many manufacturers had already made the transition to solid state circuitry for their entire model lines. Audio Research (often referred to as ARC) would soon follow with their own solid state audio amplifiers. The basic design of this preamp would continue to evolve for years to come, and carried on in models like the SP6, SP8 and SP10.

Features like a cathode follower buffer stage, a bypassable tone circuit, and a solid state voltage regulator were among the unusual features offered by the SP3. While not new features, few preamps (if any) at the time combined all of them. Add to this a large number of inputs, and a set of AC power outlets on the back that can switch 1200 watts of consumption via a separate power switch. This is great, and even necessary, when using this unit with a solid state power amp. A tube preamp should always be powered on first, and switched off last. Even with modern gear, it's wise to follow this advice.

Of course sound is where the rubber meets the road, and this preamp does not disappoint. Even compared to modern offerings, it can hold it's own. Especially when compared to less sophisticated designs.

This particular example is currently on display at Austin Stereo, in Austin Texas.

Dude, yer slackin on the blog!

2010-01-14T17:18:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes. True. I am now wrapping up week 4 of respiratory distress. And before that was the food poisoning. Normal blogging activities will resume when I can breathe.

But I care about the Club's entertainment. How about this:

What is it?

Glad you asked. It's a 38 pound, bluish gray, extremely high voltage ceramic insulator. That some idiot was using as a planter. Please, show a little respect for an industrial objet d'art. It comes in maroon as well... but that one needs a bit more cleaning.

The Pioneer PD 5010

2009-12-06T22:02:00.000-08:00

This CD player was built in 1986 and retailed for $400. It is nicely built, but not nearly as sophisticated as the Sony CDP 650ESD that graced these pages recently.

This post is mostly an excuse to share this link and this second link. These sites contain pretty much identical lists of cd players and identifies their DACs and transports. Cool, but why? you ask.

Well, some people are really obsessive about their DACs and transports. Just google TDA1541 and see what you get.

For the record the PD 5010 uses the Sony CX20152, a dual, 18 bit, two times oversampling DAC. You can see it at the right, above. In the previous picture it is in the far upper right. Note the nice film caps in the output stage to the left of the DAC. The clear ones are styroflex.

Li' Mar: Making the Best of a Difficult Situation

2009-12-06T20:03:00.000-08:00

Ahh, we are back to that troublesome little Marantz, are we? Yep. She has not been forgotten, although it has been tough to tell from this blog. I have been avoiding her.

In our last adventure (It was when??? October??) we made some progress by pulling a wobbly post off the preamp board. That solved a problem, but progress always seems to be followed by a setback with this amp.

Way back in August (!) I had recapped the amp board, and I vaguely recall checking the output transistors, but evidently I was not exactly thorough. With the preamp playing a bit better it was clear that the left front channel had an odd distortion. Mike ran it through the ocilloscope and exactly half of the wave form was missing. Literally. One of the 8 outputs was bad and I had either missed it or it had recently failed. Its mate was working on the positive swing, but the zero line was as far as the signal went.

When one is bad, replace them both.

Here is the board, pulled yet again. The replacements are the clean ones at the left.

Here is the heat sink and goo, the imprint of the dead output is the incomplete one at the top. Hmm, maybe it didn't seat well enough... No need to wallow, there is more trouble ahead!

Replacing an output isn't particularly difficult, but what followed was.

The preamp board: what a pain in the butt. The front channels seemed ok, although once in while it seemed... off. The rear channels were maddening. The treble was behaving like a combination tone control and volume pot all in one. The signal would disappear. The bass pot was more stable, but every once in a while it would distort. Maybe it was salvageable, but that treble pot was more a 'trouble pot'. I chased bad solder joints and bridges for far too long, and finally threw in the towel.

I talked all this over with Mike. His strong suggestion was to cut my losses and just run both front and rear outputs with the front section of the preamp. This was a very easy modification, but I really didn't want to sacrifice the quad features of this amp. I was hoping we could just jumper the rear channel treble pot and salvage as much as we could. Mike did not like this idea at all, too complicated and too many problematic components remained in circuit.

Before we could decide on a plan of attack, life intruded, and Mike had to leave for several weeks to visit his father in Midland. This has been a very tough year on our parents.

This past Saturday we finally had a good day on the bench. We settled on a reasonable plan of attack, and most importantly, Mike did most of the dirty work. So, next time, I promise I will have some good news about Li'l Mar.

The Very, Very Rare Sony CDP 650ESD CD Player

2009-11-15T18:53:00.000-08:00

This statement piece from Sony Esprit was built in February, 1986 and retailed for $1300. This unit clearly spent its last years in a garage since the back half was completely coated in fur. I spent a good hour cleaning it with cotton swabs and fired it up. It came up nicely on the Sencore Powerite, but the drawer wouldn't open: as usual the rail grease had become rail sludge. So, another 10 minutes of swabbing followed by the oil got the door to open.

There is almost no information on this player on the web. For comparison purposes here is the write up on a Sony CDP 302 from '85 and the very similar Sony CDP 520ES.

This player is very heavy and chock full of copper. It is also chock full o' boutique caps, mostly Elna Cerafines and a few Blackgates. There are 6 op-amps in the analog stage that have copper heatsinks mounted on top, which can be seen at the upper right of the picture below:

The transport is complex:

The drawer action was a bit slow and it skipped occasionally, so we opened the bottom:

Mike said the skipping was caused by a sticking sled, and he was correct. The 650ESD played very nicely post lube. I changed one belt, somewhat unsuccessfully. The second was trickier to remove so I blew it off. My choice of replacement belt was not very good, the drawer action was actually worse afterwards. It will have to wait until next time.

Here is the bottom of the transport. The laser is on a sled that slides front to back, right to left in the photo below. The two belts are at the left, around the white plastic pulley.

This 650ESD is noted as the first cd player with digital out and it is housed in a pod sticking out of the back. Odd. The switch says 'On', 'On (For Audio Use)', and 'Off'. I am not exactly sure the how the two 'Ons' differed. And it has 3 play modes, I am not sure how that works. I might actually have to procure a manual and suffer the resulting testosterone loss.

And a nod of appreciation to Sony, c. 1986.

This is a spectacularly designed and built player. I am not sure what is next beyond belts. There are a few caps that could use a freshen-up, but it is tough to replace Cerafines with anything other than Cerafines. Time to do some research.

Odds and Ends, Again

2009-11-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

Not much to write, but here are a few interesting photos. First up, a CM Labs 911 solid state power amp. Orion says it's from the early 70's but it looks very 60's.

The sides are cast:

According to Mike the build quality is superb, akin to McIntosh of the era.

UPDATE: Rummager has commented on the Bozak and CM Labs connection. Here is a very interesting web site by Bob Betts, several times chief engineer for Bozak. It includes a photo of Wayne Chou. The name CM (or C/M) Labs was a contraction of Chou and Morris. Here is a link to a DIYAudio wiki with information supplied by Wayne Chou. The above amp is from 1966 (!) and was named after the Porsche. CM Labs even produced a speaker, the CM-15, that was designed by Houston's own Louis Erath. (One of these days we hope to have a long write up on Mr. Erath. We have a source!) Thank you for the tip.

Next up, my very early Sansui mono pre/power combo. I assume this is from the 50's. The label on the front says this is an FM 15.

The outputs are 6V6. Note the substantial and lovely output transformer:

And last but not least is the volunteer papaya plant growing in the alley behind Austin Stereo:

In Celebration of Speaker Day

2009-10-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

Around our household we celebrate a number of unusual holidays. One of my favorites (and my wife's) is Speaker Day. On this day all adult males haul out the speakers they have been storing in closets and unused bedrooms and make them ready for the next stage in their lives. While not as festive as the International Day of the Sock, it nonetheless is a lot of fun. Speaker Day could be celebrated pretty much every week around our house.

After a two year drought and a summer of screaming heat, Austin is evidently now enjoying a fall monsoon, so Speaker Day was at risk this past Sunday. But the sun was sort of out, and the ground was sort of dry, so it was on with the celebration.

The star of the festivities was this bottle:

Yes, that is a really old bottle of Sta-Wax I found at an estate sale. (Guess how much I paid for it.) This stuff has an odd, strong smell, sort of like cherries, but it is a wonderful product. It should be used much like lemon oil, but it is much more effective. It is great on open grain wood like the JBL 4410 it sits on. The photo doesn't do it justice: the right half has been treated and the left half hasn't.

Next up, a classic marriage killer:

This is a Knight 2300C speaker in very lovely dark walnut, or maybe mahogany. If you are the sort of husband who can't bear to leave a pair of large real wood speakers to the hazards of a thrift store, be forewarned. You will be shocked to learn that the wife will not like them. Too honkin' big. But if you do save them from further insult at the hands of barbarians, you will discover they have nice Jensen drivers. The 10" woofer is one of their better finished models, with a horn mid and a very interesting looking tweeter. The crossover is nicely done and worthy of some cap rolling fun and games. Oiled up they look great.

Onward to a long sought after speaker: the Optimus 10. Long ago (as in at least 30 years ago) I read a very nice review on them and thought I would like to give them a listen. Time passed... This is the one an only pair I have ever seen and I literally pulled them out of a huge salvage box at our crazy Goodwill dumping ground. The grill was shattered and the foam surrounds were long gone. I out them back together and even put a nice cap on the tweeter. It is just amazing what a male of the human species will endure for the love of a loudspeaker. The Optimus 10 has a decent dome tweeter with an 8" woofer and a 10" passive radiator. And the tweeter control even has a nice response curve which no doubt is completely accurate. I have yet to give them a real listening, though, I guess I need to find the time after all that effort.

Last on tonight's program is a very sweet EPI 100W, the real walnut veneer variety. I have had a soft spot for these speakers since '74 when I dropped most of a paycheck on a pair with the lovely brass inlays. Peter Frampton sounded great for a week, but then I was burgled, so I have been compensating for that loss ever since.

I neglected to take picture of several other Speaker Day participants, including entries from JBL, Mirage and Heathkit. The next Speaker Day is not that far off, so I better keep that camera warmed up.

A New Sign O' the Times

2009-10-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

Austin Stereo Service got a new sign today:

First, new carpet, and now a new sign. The club house is looking pretty swank these days.

The Sounds of Failure

2009-10-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

As the title suggests this will be an attempt to document the sounds of failure in hifi gear. This will no doubt be just a start, so I will revisit this entry as I learn more. This is not a simple topic. In our discussions Mike emphasized there is even variability between manufacturers, eg. failing preamp transistors sound a bit different in Marantz vs. Pioneer receivers.

Perhaps the most common sound of failure is that scratchy noise you hear when you adjust your volume, balance, bass or treble control. You turn the knob and it sounds like gravel in there. The good news this is caused by the accumulation of oxidation on the contacts and this is easily eliminated by a product such as Caig's Deoxit. The bad news is that your controls are not always easily accessible. Many integrated amps and receivers require peeling the face of the unit, which means pulling all the knobs and removing the retaining nuts.

Oxidation is not limited to potentiometers. Switches (eg. the push button FM mute or rotary function selectors) suffer the same problem, but the characteristic sound tends to be lower volume, distortion or silence. The solution is the same: douse the switch with a product such as Deoxit.

The whole process of cleaning the controls of a typical receiver is worthy of a post of its own.

One switch that is not obvious to the typical listener is the relay. Relays are circuit protection devices and are typically buried in the heart of the amplifer and they are prone to oxidation. This can be manifested in a weak, distorted or missing channel. When working properly they make that click a few seconds after you turn on your receiver. They are essentially little copper fingers, at least one per channel, that make the final connection after the protection circuitry has determined all is well with the unit. Relays are typically plastic enclosed cubes soldered to the circuit board and are not dousable with Deoxit. They typically need to be removed from the board and the plastic cover removed, and then they are burnished with a very fine file or sand paper. Again, this process is worthy of a post of its own.

Next up: silence. Oxidation as described above can be severe enough to kill one of both channels. I have encountered several slightly corroded fuses that have silenced a my gear. Don't forget to check your fuses!

More seriously, two dead channels suggests something amiss in the power supply. This is typically capacitors, but can be any number of devices. The power supply takes AC from the wall and transforms it into the various DC outputs that drive each section of the receiver, so trouble here and take the whole unit down.

One channel of silence can still be the power supply, but can indicate a problem anywhere in the preamp or amp.

In a comment Kenny asked about 'rushing and hissing' in a vintage European integrated amp. Rushing and hissing can be caused either by faulty caps or transistors, especially in the preamp. Mike and Robert have been preemptively replacing the preamp low noise-high gain transistors in many of their restorations in addition to the usual cap replacement. Robert describes the sound as 'spitty', but Mike emphasizes the wide variation in the sound of preamp transistor failure.

A very striking sound of failure is that of the differential transistors in the power amp. Mike calls this tiny pair the keystone of the power amp. Their failure results in a very distinctive and violent spike of noise.

When I get a chance I will update this post with a discussion of hum (fascinating!), DC in the output and much, much more...

Cioppino: Yummy Fish Stew

2009-10-23T18:36:00.000-07:00

I am afraid this episode of the blog is going to be a frightful mess. No, not that scary little Marantz again (ahh, just you wait...), rather this will be whatever is hanging around, fit to be thrown into the stew pot. If I was half as good a writer as Mike is a cook, this would be a savory treat like his cioppino of a few Saturdays ago, but I fear I will fall short.

First up is an addendum to this ESR meter post. Those of you who have used a DMM to check the viability of a speaker in the box know (or should) that this is a very crude measure of health. Those caps in the crossover block the dc of the meter so all you get is the resistance of the woofer. Useful, but is there something better? Well, glad you asked, because the handy dandy ESR is that something better.

I recently found a salvageable pair of JBL 4410's at a local thrift. (Yes, the thrift gods were smiling on me that day. Perhaps I should sacrifice a Yorx boom box in their honor?) The DMM told me the woofers were there, 6.2 ohms each. Mike pulled out the ESR meter and, interestingly, one measured 9.1 ohms and the other 7.2 ohms. Hmm. Different from before and different from each other. What was up?

The ESR meter is evidently able view the entire network of crossover, pots and drivers and arrive at a more complete picture of the health of the speaker. The 4410 has a very sweet pair of mid and tweeter pots that we had verified were set the same before and after, but in general pots are a prime source of sonic grunge. The JBL pots are beefy works of art complete with holes in front large enough to squirt with Caig's Deoxit. The pots were doused generously, wiped 30 times and reassembled. On retest they both tested at 9.1. We were both perplexed that the higher number was the healthier one and can only surmise that we were now seeing more of the system.

Next up is the general issue of questions left in comments. (Yeah, I get comments. Sometimes. I swear.) Blogger lets me know they are there via email, but I am sometimes miss them in the blizzard. But the biggest problem is they do not have an address for a response. So, you will need to explicitly leave an email for me to respond. I'll try my best.

Questions left on older posts are an interesting variation of the problem. If I post a comment in response I am never sure the ask'er will even return to read it. Some time ago Kenny left a question on the Dual/Philips amp write up: he has an identical unit that makes a rushing, hissing sound when it warms up. What causes that? Good question, one worth a blog of its own. I talked to Mike about this and hope to write it up this weekend. Mike doesn't like to divulge the secrets of the Krell, but I caught him in a moment of weakness.

Now for something with a picture. Among my several obsessions is vintage CD players. Here is a quite lovely Rotel RCD 955AX. Orion's Blue Book says it was $450 in 1992:

Note the soon to be cioppino ingredients in the background. Sometimes you have to compete with dinner for a bench at Austin Stereo Service.

Here it is with its top off and Imogen Heap locked and loaded. Lots of air off to the right, but the smallish main board has some very nice bits as you can see below.

Lots of film caps, brown and blue, make the walk from left to right past the Philips chips set. The black electrolytics at the right are Black Gates, tasty, like Mike's fish stew.

That's it for now. Next up: the sounds of failure.

The Perils of Li'l Mar: Like Pulling Teeth

2009-10-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

In our last episode things were looking up, as usual, in my efforts to restore the Marantz 4220 receiver. The sliders had been clipped and the power switch bypassed, the unfortunate result of years of actual use. Mar evidently lived in a dorm room, not a closet shelf. And unfortunately, despite all my efforts, my work was not done.

On testing she seemed to work, but moving and flexing the preamp card caused all sorts of symptoms: hum, drop outs and distortion. (Just shoot me now.) I resumed chasing bad solder on the card, and eventually made a discovery. At the corner opposite the slider-snipping were 5 posts: front/rear, left/right, and ground heading back to the amp section. Several of these posts were loose, with the ground post in the middle wobbling like a loose tooth. I realized touch ups were futile so I clipped the card free and reached for the pliers.

The ground post was pulled:

The preamp card is double sided, a major source of this receiver's problems. Each side has the ground trace running along the outside, away from the front of the unit. The ground post bridges the two sides of the ground, or would if it were actually soldered. The two ground wires wrapped around the post had obscured the less than ideal solder work made worse by the several removals from the unit. This work would have been much easier if I had just bitten the bullet and removed the card at the first sign of trouble.

Anyway, I fashioned a new post out of some solid core wire and bent one end at a right angle. I scraped the traces above and below to copper and replaced the post. The bottom right angle followed the trace and provided a good anchor for the solder. After the bottom cooled I bent the upper part a bit down the trace so the top would be stable and was generous with the solder. Here is how it looks from the top:

This is before trimming... (to be continued.)

The Acme-825 ESR Meter

2009-10-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

Acme Enterprises currently has a version of the Dick Smith ESR meter designed by Bob Parker. The price is $89 with free shipping. Acme is a hard site to link to so you will have to navigate a bit via Test Equipment to see the meter. Here is a photo of the Acme-825 next to an original Dick Smith kit that Mike built years ago:

Dick Smith is an Australian electronics retailer that marketed the meter on the right as a kit for many years, but it was recently discontinued. The Acme meter on the left is made by EVB out of Portugal.

ESR stands for equivalent series resistance. The Wikipedia definition:

"Equivalent series resistance (ESR) is an effective resistance that is used to describe the resistive parts of the impedance of certain electrical components."

Basically, components such as capacitors add resistance to a circuit. Film caps should add very little, electrolytics (when young and fresh!) and tantalums should add more, but still very little. But we all know the passage of time is not a good thing for electrolytic capacitors and this often shows up as an increasing ESR. Check the little ones: they dry out quicker and make that tone control circuit or that phono section sound terrible. Or worse, they blow up those rare output transistors.

Here is the Acme-825 manual (pdf) for a good description of both the meter and ESR. Here is a very nice web site that provides a good explanation as part of a DIY ESR meter project. Here is another explanation using an original Dick Smith meter.

These ESR meters are actually small computers powered by a Z80 chip (please wait while I flash back to a software project in 1983... ah the joys of CP/M). The meter essentially pulses the cap with a very high frequency, very low voltage alternating current to measure the resistance. The low voltage prevents transistors from turning on and allows testing in circuit (but not on!)

Since the lion's share of electronic sleuthing involves the electrolytic capacitor it should come as no surprise that Mike's ESR meter ranks behind only his soldering iron and Fluke DMM in importance. He has been prodding me for years to get one. Well, I did.

My initial impression of the Acme-825 is that it works well, but is very much a lightweight compared to the original Dick Smith kit. Mike's original is cosmetically whipped, but it still works well. The plastic case is very heavy duty plastic which no doubt helped it survive in a commercial setting. Fortunately, my situation should be less demanding, but I think I will put a bit of thinking towards shock proofing the case a bit.

Whack for My Daddy-o

2009-09-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

For your listening pleasure here are several versions of Whiskey in the Jar. First up is the original rock-ified version by Thin Lizzy. Do not mistake Eric Bell's antics for a bona fide attempt at music simulation... We want to see fingers actually playing notes!

The studio version by Metallica is absolutely great, but what I believe is the official video misses the mark. The song is titled 'Whiskey in the Jar' not 'Puking in the Toilet', but maybe I am just getting old. Here is an excellent live version from Dublin.

And here is a stellar live version with two of Thin Lizzy' s guitarists: Gary Moore and Eric Bell.

I particularly enjoy Bell's performance in this video, enough to forgive his goofing in the video 35 years earlier.

Li'l Mar: Where Something Gets Snipped

2009-09-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

Li'l Mar is the Marantz 4220 Quadradial receiver that has become my life's work. When we last visited her we were making progress, of a sort. The distortion in the left channel was healed, but we had worn out sliders. The front was totally kaput and the fader and the rear were less than perfect, so the executive decision was made to remove them from the circuit.

Here is the before, courtesy of Jay's telephone. Evidently modern telephones even come with very respectable macro capability:

Jay's photo is a bit overexposed. Not much of a telephone, eh? The strip attached to the face plate at the bottom via the sliders (note the 3 visible squarish posts) is a very simple circuit board that needs to be disconnected from the dangling preamp board. The wires from the sliders to the preamp (eg. the brown one at the right) needed to be removed, and the wires coming in to the sliders needed to take their place. Above is before, below is after.

The wires above were formerly connected to the sliders and now were connected directly to the preamp: front left and right, rear left and right . Hmm, Jay, much better photo. This might actually be useful at some point in the future.

So we fired her up and it sounded... awful. Arrggh! Now what?? Well, the power switch was humming like that guy from Crash Test Dummies on about every third click.

Note the blue wire above. This power switch is essentially a two parter: the front with all the wires attached (at the right, lower corner) is a muting switch to make your ons and offs nice and quiet. The taller back portion with the two rivets is the actual power switch and it was worn out. We jumpered the connection with the blue wire so it is on all the time. If I had the stomach to be (even more of) a hero I could have Dremeled the rivets and taken apart the switch, but even I have my limits. Mike and Robert claim they actually do this. Really.

So we gave Li'l Mar another listen... and it is getting late. There is more, much more.

The Pioneer SX 1250 Receiver

2009-09-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

The Pioneer SX 1250 is one serious, high quality electronic monster. Sold from '77 to '79, it was Pioneer's top of the line receiver and boasted 160 watts per channel in a sixty pound chassis. The build quality is very high and properly restored they sound great. Not all of the late '70s monster amps and receivers sound great, but the SX 1250 truly does. I restored one about 6 months ago and neglected to write it up at the time, but it recently wandered back into my life due to a problem.

This unit's original problem was two blown main filter caps. My original thought was it was just time for the caps to go, now 30 years old, but the restoration revealed problems on the regulator card. Someone had previously done a completely inadequate repair and that card required replacement of pretty much every component, active and passive. Poor voltage control could have been a contributing factor in the death of the main filters. A 1250 deserves quality parts and someone didn't give this receiver the respect it deserved.

I replaced all 4 main filters with lovely Hitachis and recapped all 4 vertically mounted cards, the AC relay board underneath, the phono section, and the preamp cards behind the face. The two relays were burnished and all the pots and switches were squirted. The post restoration listening was a total pleasure.

Time passed and the unit ended up back at Mike's for resale. Mike set it up for a listen and proceeded to punch all its buttons. I confess I never use most of the tone controls on my receivers and I must have missed testing the two high cut filter switches towards the left side of the front panel, just above the bass and treble pots. When Mike clicked them there was a significant pop in the left channel, so it was time to peel the face again and make it right.

These two filter switches sit on their own board above the tone control board which needs to be removed for access. It had been pulled to spritz the switches with blue foam and deoxit, but no components had been replaced in the original restoration since it only had two small transistors, 4 tantalum caps and a few film and ceramic caps. These components are not typically points of failure, but 'typically' is not exactly 'ever'. Mike's estimated order of likely offenders was transistors, then tantalums and then the ceramics. Mike checked them all out in circuit and all seemed normal.

Mike swapped the transistors and the offending pop was still there.

Next up were the 4 relatively low voltage blue egg tantalums, at 4.7mfd and 10mfd, and that solved the problem.

Here is the modified board with two new transistors and 4 electrolytics replacing the tantalums:

The SX 1250 was reassembled and Patricia Barber spun on the highly tweaked Samsung DVD player with very impressive results. The SX 1250 is a head turner, one of those amps that sound good enough in the next room to drag you in for a listen. It even sounds great on Mike's beloved Infinity Quantum 2's that can get very agressive with many amplifiers. It takes an amp with considerable low end control and weight to balance out the 3 emit tweeters on the front.

It's a great looking piece of gear for those with a strong back, a very heavy duty shelf and a taste for the top of the line. It's a great representative of the very best Japanese solid state engineering in the '70s.

Props to Fed Ex and a Few Packing Suggestions

2009-09-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

I recently had one of those all too common eBay shipping catastrophes. The shipping originator was some sort of local drop off, but I assume the inadequate packing was the fault of the seller. The actual shipper was Fed Ex.

Through a communication snafu the Fed Ex driver arrived weeks before I expected him, so the package was in a closet. He returned the next day and was very patient and courteous despite the return trip, and he did a good job at explaining the claims process. I was concerned about the outcome of the claim due to the obviously inadequate packing. The claim was handled very quickly and professionally, and I was able to confirm the positive outcome very quickly. Fed Ex essentially salvaged a difficult situation this buyer, so they will get my business in the future.

I now have a much greater appreciation of what shippers have to deal with on a daily basis.

Which brings up the subject of poor packing of electronics by eBay sellers. This happens way too often. They show up at Austin Stereo and there is often little Mike can do to salvage the situation. I have even seen a pancaked Marantz 10B. I still shudder at the thought...

I would love to know how much we all pay per transaction to subsidize people who do not care enough to properly pack fragile items. Damage claims are not 'free', we subsidize them.

Amplifiers might seem ruggedly built, but ugly things happen to them when they rattle around in a box protected only by a few peanuts. This packing subject deserves a detailed post at some point in the future, but for now here are a few suggestions:

The item absolutely cannot move around in the package. Too big a box will lead to damage.

Heavy, expensive electronics deserve double boxing. I buy my boxes at Uhaul. Their 'electronics box' is big enough to hold a Pioneer Spec 4 (as in inner box) and durable enough to survive several uses. And it costs under 6 bucks. Mike at Austin Stereo is getting business from around the country restoring these and he hates it when he has to repair shipping damage as part of his service.

Forget packing peanuts. They are useless for heavy items. There oughta be a law.

Bubble wrap can be effective, but do not skimp. One layer is a joke. Air packs can be effective if used in sufficient quantity, but the light gauge ones can pop.

And here is a secret ingredient to quality shipping: swim noodles. They are cheap, flexible, and you can carve them to fit with a steak knife. Dollar tree has them for a buck in season, and they are typically 2 bucks at your pool supply retailer. They come in several sizes and they have just the right crush quality to protect your heavy equipment. Use enough of them to immobilize the item in a grid, and take care with corners. If the outer box is too large you can use swim noodles to occupy the space and immobilize the item or the inner box. They will survive the trip, and can be used for the return.

Use your noodle and Mike will thank you, and I will give you fabulous feed back.

Close, So Close.... But.... : Mar Episode #5

2009-09-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

In a prior life L'il Mar must have been loved, because she was most certainly used.

Sometimes I forget that the components that I work on are electro-mechanical devices, and often their most challenging problems are caused by old fashioned physical wear and tear. Caps dry out, contacts tarnish and transistors die in lightning strikes, but switches and pots succumb to the human touch. And sometimes just moving a component can be the difference between working and not.

In our last episode we had made some progress: the rear channel of the Marantz 4220 Quadradial receiver had come to life after replacing 8 transistors in the tone control ciruitry. But the front channels remained distorted and the balance control sliders seemed... wrong.

The next trip to the bench started with pulling the tone control card to expose the slender strip of a card that holds the 3 sliders: front, fader and rear balance control. Here is the front slider:

In my brief experience refurbishing vintage gear I have grown to dislike slide controls. While satisfying ergonomically they are harder to clean and much more fragile that the typical pot. A quick check with the meter indicated the front was completely gone. I removed it from the board and took it apart and discovered the tiny contact was missing. Evidently it broke off and eventually fell out the slit. The fader in the middle was functioning, but the rear was marginal and the sonic mid point was skewed left. I put the front slider back and left the question of 'to slide or not to slide' until another day.

Look, Ma! No tines!

While useful to discover, unfortunately the sliders were not the source of distortion in the front left channel. Something else was afoot. At this point the A Team (eg. Mike) decided I had suffered enough and pulled out the 'scope. He walked through the very dense tone control circuitry and isolated the distortion to a section of the card between the bass and treble controls. He then flexed the card and the distortion healed. Eureka! Sort of.

Above, at the lower right is the tone control circuit board, dangling. Just above it you can see the front fader attached to the face plate.

The tone control/preamp circuit board is very dense and two sided, and there was most likely a faulty solder joint between the sides causing our distortion. Less than perfect soldering is probably the second most common cause of failure in vintage gear (behind faulty caps). But it is by far the most common cause of failure in modern gear. If your home theater receiver quits working, try picking it up and shaking it. It's liable to work for a few more weeks after 'treatment'. (Try at your own risk. We are all adults here, right?) The constant thermal ebb and flow along with occasionally moving a component will eventually cause weak solder work to fail. And sometimes just another move will fix the problem, albeit temporarily. A few years ago I fixed the kids' modern Sherwood receiver by merely shipping it in for warranty work. Sherwood said it worked fine, and it did for about a month on return.

Mike spent a solid 10 minutes hitting every solder in the tone control of area and especially the rivets and the very complex pots, and finally the front left channel lost its distortion.

At this point I celebrated a bit, but as we all know that is a very dangerous thing to do. Yes, the saga of L'il Mar is not over by a long shot...

The Perils of Li'l Mar: Episodes 3 and 4

2009-08-16T05:44:00.000-07:00

In our last episode it had become clear that Li'l Mar, the cute as a button, but sonically distressed Marantz 4220 quad receiver, was trouble. Evidently she is what might be described as high maintenance as we continue with the anthropomorphization of Li'l Mar. Episode 1 saw a routine re-capping of the phono and regulator boards, and Episode 2 involved a fairly challenging but successful recapping of the power amp. At this point the ugly reality was clear: something was seriously wrong with the front end of this receiver.

Receiver preamps are a physical challenge to work on. They are typically on boards that contain pots and switches, and are therefore attached directly to the back of the face plate. So first you have to pull the knobs, remove the control retaining screws and unscrew the face plate. But since the preamp controls the operation of the rest of the unit via a web of wires, lots of tugging (and sometimes snipping) is required to actually pull the board free and get sufficient room to maneuver with a soldering iron. And amidst the pots and wires lie a bevy of tiny caps inserted long ago by people with tiny, young fingers...

Marantz gear is generally well made. Some receivers, notably the 2275, are a joy to work on. However, many Marantz boards, especially the smallish and dense ones, are soldered in a manner that is very difficult to work on. The parts were mounted in the factory with the longish leads folded over, in many places leading to a bit of a tangle. Removing a single cap can disturb the leads of 4 or 5 other components. Often the lead you are trying to free lies at the bottom of a pile of leads, folded over every which way. And often these boards do not have the stoutest of traces. Hot pulls are out of the question, this work requires solder wick in vast quantities.

So, yes, Li'l Mar's preamp board was difficult to remove, and once removed, difficult to work on.

Episode 3 in this condensed tale of woe was the recapping of the preamp. It was tough going with several tiny traces vanishing despite careful wicking. A total of 19 caps were replaced on the board, seemingly for naught. The sound was cleaner, but still weird. Sigh. Balance sliders had little or no effect, one channel was weak, and the tone controls seemed to behave like balance pots.

Time passed, hope sprung anew. Episode 4 started with pulling the preamp board again in anticipation of a high gain, low noise transistor replacement orgy. But a bit of perusing revealed a lot of wires wandering through the quad board tacked upside down underneath the switching control rods running to the back of the unit. After a bit of agonizing I determined that recapping the quad board was the path of least resistance. Here's a close up, before the re-cap:

An hour, 2 snipped wires and 14 caps later the work was complete, for semi-naught. The weak channel seemed better, but nothing else improved. So it was time to replace 8 very tiny transistors in the preamp. Very slowly. Here's a closeup of the dangling, re-capped preamp:

Preamp caps are low value, tiny, two legged beasties that are fairly easy to locate on the solder side of the board. The three legged transistors are even smaller and not so easy to locate. And they are basically impossible to grab with a finger unless you are under the age of 12. After a very challenging effort, 8 transistors were replaced. Fingers were crossed and a listen taken with boards dangling and Mar on her side.

Hmm. The front channel seemed slightly better, but the rear channels were there. Significant improvement, but not a resolution. It seems there will be (at least) an Episode 5.

The Perils of Li'l Mar: Episode Two

2009-08-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

When we last visited our intrepid hero trying to save Li'l Mar, little did we realize he was more at risk than the fair damsel! Li'l Mar is trouble, trouble! And our shouts of warning are not directed towards Li'l Mar in peril, but instead to warn our hero. Look out! Things are not what they seem!

Our first effort in restoring the Marantz 4220 replaced the caps on the regulator board and the phono board, pretty simple stuff. But the power amp board promised to be trickier to work with given the space limitations in the undersized chassis. Here's a gander from the left side of the chassis, heat sink backing the amp board. Buried down at the bottom is a metal sandwich around the 8 Toshiba 2SC790 output transistors.

The amp board put up a tussle but eventually was exposed enough to work on, although not easily. The still attached wires and the dangling outputs (don't break!) made for slow going. A total of 19 caps were replaced with Panasonic FCs:

The outputs had little black pads glued on them to seat them in the heat sink sandwich. Cute. And note the Toshiba TA7109P IC drivers, rare, but can be purchased from Acme if needed.

The driver board was re-sandwiched and replaced and we gave it a listen... and it was still weird. Weak in one channel, with odd behavior from the balance sliders. And the FM was barely there.

Ominous music swell from an unseen and properly functioning sound system (no, not Li' Mar) ... And here is nothin' but trouble:

Yes, time to mess with the preamp. Something is wrong with the tone control board. Lots of little caps in a very cramped space, with too many wires limiting your room to maneuver. Nothin' but trouble. But we will have to await the next episode of the Perils of Li'l Mar to see if our intrepid tech survives.

Wallowing in the '70s: Graham Parker

2009-08-08T21:17:00.000-07:00

Graham Parker is a seriously overlooked artist who got stuck in your humble author's brain pan back in the early '90s. For about 6 months he lived on my office cd player, from Howlin' Wind to Mona Lisa's Sister. His backing band, the Rumour, are actually the remnants of Brinsley Schwartz, who seemed to function as London's house band during my time living there in the latter half of 1972. I caught them as fill ins, featured performers and as a backing band for Frankie Miller. The Brinsleys are worthy of a post of their own some day. Nick Lowe of Rockpile and solo fame was a Brinsley and produced Parker's first album, Howlin' Wind in 1976.

First up from Graham, a bit of snarling pop from 1979's Squeezing Out Sparks:

Next up, this gem from the unfortunately obscure Real McCaw (1983) with Brinsley Schwartz (the person) backing on guitar: You Can't Take Love for Granted.

And this from Howlin' Wind: Don't Ask Me Questions. If you watch to the very end you will actually get to see Graham's eyes. Yep, he does like his shades.

And let's wrap it up with another off of Squeezing Out Sparks: Protection.

Rollin' and a Tumblin' at Ronnie Scott's

2009-07-24T20:13:00.000-07:00

Fellow blogger Bill (hmm, there's a blues lyric in there somewhere) recommended the Jeff Beck at Ronnie Scott's DVD with his highest praise just the other day. And then I stumbled on this number with Imogen Heap on vocals. Stellar guitar work from Beck and I have been a fan of Heap's since her Frou Frou days. She is not a blues shouter but the visual and vocal counterpoint works well. Beck's never been a beaten path sort of player and this collaboration with Heap is inspired.

Beck has long been a favorite. I saw the first two Beck, Bogert and Appice performances live in London in '72, and again that following spring in Syracuse. They were fronted in the 'Cuse by Wet Willie, a bit of creative scheduling that left me baffled. Jeff Beck having to follow a group named for sticking a saliva gobbed-finger in someone's ear, what was the world coming to? Keep on Smilin' I was not.

But enough. Jeff Beck:

Ok, now for a bit of wallowing in the '70s. First up, my initial encounter with Stevie Wonder's Superstition was this one:

That's Timmy Bogert and Carmine Appice backing Jeff Beck. I had been a Vanilla Fudge fan and this other band featuring Bogert and Appice:

Rusty Day was on vocals and Detroit's own Jim McCarty was on guitar. I caught Cactus in '71 at the Syracuse War Memorial, following Chase (!) and before Black Sabbath. Great seats and a great show.

I Buy My Dehydrated Boulders and Integrated Circuits From Acme

2009-07-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

The Acme Company is the source of the amusing products that Wile E. Coyote uses with less than stellar success in his pursuit of the Road Runner. While they do not sell rocket sleds, Acme Enterprises of Orlando does supply name brand integrated circuits at reasonable prices and with good service. They evidently got their start supplying large hotel chains with the quality parts they need to maintain the gazillion room tvs they own. Who knew?? Someone actually fixes tvs.

I can also recommend their Quick Braid solder wick. I am not sure it is exactly Chem-Wick quality, but it is certainly close enough that I can happily pocket the savings and not worry about it. Good wick makes for tidy work. Or something like that. It certainly makes the work go faster. Anyway, Mike approved and he uses this stuff in feet per day. The big 100' spool will last me a year.

Lil' Mar: Step #1

2009-07-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

Lil' Mar is a petite Marantz 4220 quad receiver from the mid '70s. Or, as the faceplate says: 'Stereo 2 - Quadradial 4'! Orion says it was sold from 1974 to 1978 and retail list price was $329. The more authoritative Classic-Audio.com says it debuted in '73 and listed in '74 for $299. It was the smallest and lowest powered Marantz quad receiver. Orion says it packs 15 watts per side (stereo, I assume), but Classic-Audio.com lists it at 2x20 or 4x8. It is not exactly a powerhouse, even by the standards of the mid '70s, but I imagine it would drive a dorm room 2 channel rig quite nicely. As for quad, I hope they chose their speakers carefully.

Lil' Mar is not a standard sized component. It is only 14" wide; the similarly powered stereo 2215 is 17.25" wide. Classic-Audio.com lists it at 16.875" wide, but that has to include a wood case.

My initial listen was not particularly favorable. One channel was down in volume and noisy. At the very least I wanted a stable amp that would play vinyl well, so recapping the phono, regulator, and output sections was mandatory.

Cramming 4 channel gutti-wuts into such a small space required some engineering trickery. The regulator was relatively easy to access at front right, but the amplifier was going to be a bit complicated. The heat sink occupies the center of the unit with the board on its left. This is not a pop-out like the wonderful Marantz 2275. It's more of an unscrew/tug/unscrew sort of effort so I decide to procrastinate a bit and save it for next time. In the photo below the tuners are at the left, nicely shielded as Marantz is wont to do.

Underneath you can see the preamp/tone control circuitry at the right, behind the faceplate. It's a bit daunting. The board just above the heatsink is the SQ quad circuit board. All the way at the top you can just make out the phono board, facing down.

I removed the two screws on the regulator and recapped it with Panasonic FCs and FMs while it was still tethered to the wires connecting it to the rest of the amp. They were a bit short, so it was a bit awkward soldering. If that engineer had specified just another half inch of wire I would have complimented his foresight at this time. But, no.

The phono section was much of the same: two screws and some tugging. It is mounted to the side of the chassis, under and to the left of the tuners. Marantz phono sections tend to have a significant number of film caps, but not this one. It has 8 electrolytics, 4 films and 4 ceramics. If I recall correctly, the 2275 has a single electrolytic cap in the phono section. So I could feel good about myself I replaced the two output coupling caps at the far right with Elna Silmics at 22 mfds instead of 10. The rest were replaced with Panasonic FCs. Here is the phono board 'before'.

All in all, I replaced 12 caps, fired it up and the amp was stable. So step #1 is complete and the next trip to the bench will deal with the amp itself.

Cleaning Up the Archives: The Sony ST 4950 Tuner

2009-07-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

I checked out this acquisition a few weeks ago and have been in a lazy funk due to the systemic shock of 8 to 5 employment. And you know what they say about procrastination... Anyway, the archives have now been diminished by one.

The ST-4950 is a handsome tuner, and is really a surprising cosmetic given the vintage. According to the wonderful FMTunerInfo.com it was sold in 1977 for $350, but the matching TAN-8550 power amp (coming soon!) service manual in my possession is dated 1974. I think this cosmetic is a forerunner of the early '80s look, although better executed than those that followed.

After a scrubbing the garage grime off the exterior, I popped the top prior to plugging it in. A visual inspection can save some heartache and it might have in this instance. The cap at the far left was visibly leaking so it was replaced. I squirted a few switches and the tuning capacitor with Deoxit and fired up the unit.

It worked great. This day on the bench was a short one, so just the single cap was replaced. However, I am going to have to have a Sony re-cap orgy in the near future and get the amp and tuner going with fresh parts. They deserve a very critical listening. Their build quality is very, very good and the amp is an especially desirable unit. Stereo Club member Paul, supplier of the amp service manual, is a very big fan of the Sony V-FET gear and has strongly recommended their addition to the Permanent Collection.

Oh yeah, what about that honking big hole in the chassis? I should point out that most of this line of tuners featured the now obsolete Dolby FM. This particular model did not, but I presume it shared a chassis with either the 3950SD or the big dog 5950SD that did. In this case less is more and the lack of Dolby is a good thing.

For you fans of classic hifi porn, here is the Sony ST-5950 as presented by the Vintage Knob.

The Alamo Jet Guitar Amp

2009-07-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

Time for something completely different, music creation instead of a music reproduction! Tube instead of solid state (mostly)! Here, in Fenderish garb is the 4 tube, single ended 6V6, Alamo Jet from around '65 to '67:

Alamo Electronics was based in San Antonio (natcherly) and had an interesting history from '46 through about '82. As far as I can tell Alamo was never a premium manufacturer, but their amps have acquired a following, especially here in the Lone Star state. The Jet seems to fit nicely as a harp/practice/small venue blues amp.

This amp was in very respectable and original shape, but the last time it was used by one of the boys it was a bit noisy. That was quite a while ago, and I was nervous about firing it up without at least a basic refurb. So it was time to hit the bench.

This is a very basic point to point amp with a minimum number of caps. The 3 section main filter can was a 20@450v/20@450v/20@25v that was in marginal shape. The high voltage sections were hanging in there but the 25v section read high on the ESR meter. Forty year old electrolytics make me nervous so the can had to go. I resolved to just bypass it with caps under the hood and made the mistake of asking Mike how he would approach it. Mike whipped out the big clippers and popped the 3 tabs under the hood free. I really have to quit asking questions with obvious answers.

We resolved to up the values to 47@450v/33@450v/47@63v with Panasonics EE series caps for the high voltage caps and an FC for the other. I replaced the two 10mfd@25v caps with films @100v. Three orange drops and a Panasonic FC 47@63 brought the cap count to a very modest 9. I left the bevy of ceramic caps for another day.

The amp powered up nicely on Mike's Sencore Powerite and was stable, so tomorrow we will see how it sounds.

One note: the several solder points to the chassis were extremely tough to melt. It takes a hot gun to make headway on this amp, I guess the chassis functions as a very big heat sink.

Interestingly, I could not find a Wikipedia entry on Alamo. C'mon guys. But I did find several very useful links. Here is a part 1 of a very good history of Alamo Electronics in Vintage Guitar. And here is part 2. This article indicates '65 marked the transition to the black tolex, so the would be the earliest date of origin for my amp. The part 2 model summation seems to describe my amp cosmetically as in the '65-'66 range but it definitely has two small transistors in the tone control circuit. And it is missing from '65 line up, but I would think that is an omission. Maybe. The early '70s seems to be the transitional period for solid state, so it beats me as to the vintage of my Jet.

And here is a much more thorough restoration/augmentation of what appears to be a bit later version of the Jet, model 2564. My Jet was missing the sticker on the inside so I am not sure of my model number. Evidently Alamo was a bit cavalier with their names and model numbers.

And here are some good pictures of what I also assume is a later Jet, and please scroll to the bottom to view the reverb. Funny. I assume this is an original and not a replacement.

One last digression. In about 1982 Alamo Electronics merged with Southwest Technical Products of San Antonio. In that year I did a pilot software project on a SWTP Uniflex 6809 mini/micro for the state of Texas and demo'ed it for the Governor's office. Ahh, memories. Anyway, SWTP was also a hifi manufacturer of note and deserves some attention from the Stereo Club at some point in the future.

HD Radio Self Noise Etc.

2009-07-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

I guess I should supply a warning: serious technical wonkery ahead.

Paul, a member of the Stereo Club before it even existed, sent me this marvelous link on the topic of HD radio self noise, otherwise known as digital side band hiss. The author is Brian Beezley. This is a very dense exploration of the effect and its mitigation, complete with 8 by 10 glossy photos and a list at the end of vintage tuners that might avoid the issue to some degree. Highly recommended despite the trepanation required to relieve the pressure on my brain.

Paul also included this equally informative link on the remarkable Sony XDR-F1HD tuner. Let Paul talk for a moment:

I have this tuner and the specs documented on this site are true. Reception of analog signals is unbelievable. It isn't the best sounding tuner but its front end and IF selectivity performance is without parallel. Simply put, I receive, in stereo, stations I've never heard on the dial before. It's a cheap $100 plastic box and HD radio isn't the best sounding for FM but as a signal grabber, it's truly amazing.

And lastly, here is Brian Beezley's web page. Impressive.

Yet Another Video Oddity: the JVC XL G512NBK CD Graphics Player

2009-06-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

I was vaguely aware, back in the day, of the CD graphics player, but the whole idea seemed... odd. Pumping a still picture to my tv while listening to a cd just seemed something less than a thrilling use for my entertainment dollar. Karaoke is obviously not in my bloodstream, I guess. In recent years I have seen one or two cheapish Memorex cd graphics players on the hoof, but they never seemed of a quality worth examining. Recently I found the well built JVC XL G512 (G12NBK on the back! The mind boggles...) cd player that seems to be a different animal.

Wikipedia summarizes the CD+G format nicely, and here is one of the web's magnificent obsessives who happens to specialize in the format. Where would we be without these guys? Without the web he would be an obscure crank, but with it he is transformed into a historical resource. May I offer a tip of the Hatlo hat!

JVC cd players have never been on a wish list, but I stumbled on this one and was intrigued. It was heavy and from August '89, good signs. Orion says it was 500 bucks new, a non-trivial amount. It was relatively clean and reasonably complex, so how could I say no?

I took it by Mike's and popped the top and was happy to see innards of substance:

The transport was definitely a cut above, as was the laser assembly. It worked flawlessly and sounded very good. Note the two boards on the right. The smaller board on top is the video board with video, S-video and midi out. Might I say far out. Underneath is a real main board with a significant number of film caps, always a sign someone in Japan truly cared. The front advertised 'Noise-Shaping 18 bit', '4 Times Over Sampling Digital Filter', and 'Dual DA Converter' so this was evidently a serious attempt at a quality player.

One negative: the top was among the ~~chimpiest~~ flimsiest I have ever encountered. In a way it was encouraging: all the heft was in stuff that mattered. But beware, it will bend if you look at it wrong.

Many modern dvd players function very well as cd players, the theory being the technological bump up to handle higher bit rates inherent in movies requires better digital to analog converters. Mere music is a walk in the park, so to speak. There are lots of dvd mod'ers out there taking advantage of this by souping up their analog sections for a great sonic bang for the buck. Perhaps the XL G512 enjoys a similar benefit with the addition of the cd graphics capability kicking the quality up a notch. I did not have a chance to pull the video board and check the main board out in full, but this might be a very interesting candidate for a cap upgrade.

Update: my fellow poster has pointed out my inadvertent slur of the noble bonobo. Sometime in the past 'chimpy' entered my vocabulary as some sort of amusing amalgamation of 'chintzy' and 'wimpy'. It has now been corrected. For what it is worth I straightened several significant dents with my thumb. Flimsy it is.

Amusing But Obsolete Technology #1

2009-06-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

Gearhounds tend to have a bit of a soft spot for interesting technology that was crushed by a disinterested market place. The case at hand: the RCA Selectavision Capacitance Electronic Disk (CED) video system. Released to the world at roughly the same time as the Laserdisc and its optical pick up, the CED system actually uses a needle that tracks the disk and renders the movie via modulated capacitance. Really. I am not capable of making this up. Ok, I am, but I swear I am not.

RCA Selectavision seems to have lived from 1981 until RCA was purchased by GE in 1986.

One still occasionally comes across the interestingly packaged 12" disks in thrifts, usually Butch Cassidy. The disk actually lives inside the hard plastic sleeve until loaded into player. The sleeve is removed and the disk stays. But the players are very rare these days. Until two days ago my last encounter with a player was about 10 years ago. Laserdisc players are much more common, maybe approaching 100 LDs for every Selectavision player that I have ever encountered in a thrift. Selectavision died young compared to laserdiscs.

A few days ago I found an RCA SFT 100 in very good condition for $4.20 after my my 30% senior discount at Savers. (I was shocked to see that this same player went for $305 on ebay recently. Wow.) As a resident in good standing at the Home for the Easily Amused, I made the purchase and took it by the Home, otherwise known as Austin Stereo Service.

Mike happened to have a few disks around and 'Pumping Iron', the movie that eventually led to the bankruptcy of California, was tried out.

After a few missteps akin to Gerry Ford eating the corn husk with the tamale we fired it up and it worked!

Here is Arnold's bicep attempting to devour Mike's tv. The observant among you will note that the player only draws 38 watts while pumping Arnold out to the screen. The picture quality was quite good. This format's ability to fast forward is truly astounding. You can rip to the end of the video in seconds in non-display mode, and fast forward display retains its video quality.

All in all this player was a great addition to the Stereo Club collection. Now we all need to pull those Selectavision disks we have been saving out of the closet and see how they look...

The Magnum Dynalab FT 11

2009-05-08T17:49:00.000-07:00

This FT 11 arrived working but without stereo. This very well built, compact, and stylish tuner from '88 or so had a list price of $495. It was the bottom of the Magnum Dynalab line with the FT 101 ($885) and the Etude ($1295) above it.

Popping the top revealed... not much. I discovered (according to the wonderful FMTunerInfo.com) that this was the original version of the FT 11 based on the board color. No tuning capacitor, just some chips, a few discrete components and some air. Given the vintage it was time for a cap job.

Unfortunately, the FT 11 is pan built. No bottom cover, bummer. You need to pull the main board after desoldering the antenna leads, unscrewing the rca jack plate and detaching the face. The cap count was a very modest 20 or so, replaced with Panasonic FMs, FCs and a few metallized stacked films. I replaced the 4.7 mfd output coupling caps with 22 mfd Elna Silmics. The board was easy to follow with stout traces:

I stitched the FT 11 mostly back together and fired it up. Weird. It would not tune properly, it was seemingly stuck on a crazy, out of range station. Mike took a look and said: 'Bridge.' I checked all my solder work and it looked good, but dutifully started scraping resin. Yowza! Underneath a small puddle of resin was a thin flash of solder bridging a circuit. A touch of the iron healed the bridge and the FT 11 fired up in stereo.

FMTunerInfo had suggested switching op-amps to improve the sound. I did a bit of research and discovered the installed NE5532 was a 50 cent part these days and that decent upgrades could be had for $2 to $12. Not exactly breaking the bank. I ordered a few TI bifet op-amps from Mouser: OPA2604AP ($4.27) and OPA2134PA ($2.42). And also the Analog Devices OP275GPZ from Digi-key. I should have gotten savvy and soldered in a chip caddy so I could swap them out, but that will have to wait for next time. I soldered in the OPA2604AP and fired it up. Note the brown Silmic at the lower right corner.

All was well, except now the stereo had vanished. Why, I have not a clue. I whined a bit and Mike took a twirl at the adjustments with the little plastic screw drivers and the stereo returned. I gotta get a set of those screw drivers. Whenever I ask for them Mike insists on doing it himself.

The modified FT 11 is a nice sounding tuner. It must have narrower filters than the '70s receivers I work on because KMFA, 89.5, sounded good. No hiss so Mike deemed it 'digital ready'.

I recently exchanged a few emails with an old friend and tuner guru who has been published on FMTunerInfo.com, and he has provided some excellent guidance on resolving the digital hiss issues in vintage tuners. More on that in the (hopefully) near future.

The Onkyo 2500 MK II Receiver: a Tale of Two Dohs!

2009-05-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

We have for your consideration the Onkyo TX 2500 MKII, the second of the 4 receiver Onkyo range from 1978-80. The 2500 listed for a not insignificant $360, the equivalent of about $450,000 in current dollars. For the sake of comparison the big dog, 100 watt, TX 6500 MK II listed at $650. Back in the day that was about 6 weeks take home pay for me, and was $250 more than my mortgage.

This unit was evidently last used in a barn or garage; it was filthy, but as often happens the thick pelt of dust and fur seemingly preserved it from the daily nicks and knocks. A thorough detailing left it close to pristine except for an extremely annoying bent tuning knob shaft. Not trying to straighten it is like not picking at a scab, but it worked and it's usually not worth the risk of making it worse. That last trip to the thrift or flea market is the primary source of hifi trauma.

Orion says the 2500 is capable of a tidy 40 watts RMS, no doubt a conservative rating. It has been my experience that the medium powered receivers of the '70s sound very good when just a bit of care is taken with the choice of speakers. The 30-50 watt-ers seems to occupy the sonic sweet spot, with a bit more slam than their lesser brethren, but without some of the complications that can creep into a bigger box. Simpler is often better. I also assume that much of what I hear is the result of price point design decisions unrelated to absolute wattage. It could be bigger main filters than the lesser units or outputs that hit a happier part of their thermal range. At any rate, that elusive mojo can show up almost anywhere, but the middle of the pack seems to be a good place to look.

This particular 2500 had one channel in the dumper and the usual noise in the other. I checked the amp transistors and all was well. I checked the output of the preamp and the channel that was down was extremely low, so I expected that a recapping would get us rocking. But... no. In an object lesson of 'look for the obvious, stupid' Mike pointed me towards the fuse block on the back of the unit. Yup, one was blown. Evidently there had been an event and a fuse had given its life to protect a speaker. Fuses on the back? Who knew? That was doh! #1.

The restoration replaced 54 caps with the usual suspects: Panasonic FMs and FCs with a few stray metallized stacked films. The 2500 has 4 boards: power supply, amp driver, preamp and the combo FM/AM/phono. The latter 3 were straight forward although the preamp was a bit cramped as usual due to proximity to the front panel controls. The power supply board is mounted upside down under the main filters. It had to be unscrewed, wire ties clipped, the main filters clamps unscrewed and some tugging before it succumbed to the iron. The 6800mfd @ 50 volt main filters were left as original. If I get ambitious I might double their values someday.

Here is the underside: very tidy. Note the power supply board at the lower right.

Here it is from topside:

Richard Avedon I am not. At least the photo is in focus. Sort of. Below is a close up of the tuner board in the vicinity of the leads to the lamps. Nice, eh? It is so well labeled that even a solder monkey like myself can follow it. No spatial relations brain squeeze when I try to figure out where the leg of a cap is. Many a resistor has been mistakenly desoldered from poorly marked board...

Onkyo has a reputation for quality tuners, and here is where the tale gets complicated. The fm tuner is a phase-locked loop (PLL) with nice meters for signal strength and center, and 3 lamps: locked, tuned and stereo. FM stereo worked but the other two lamps did not. The locked lamp was burned out and replaced successfully, but the tuned lamp was good, and would not light up. Drat.

Poking through the circuit revealed nothing that was obviously wrong; all the pertinent transistors seemed fine. So I took the easy way out. Sometimes it is easier to spend some money than to exercise your brain pan. I had an order pending to a new vendor, Acme Electronics, so I added a new FM chip, the BA1320 for $2.39 to my shopping cart of anvils and dehydrated boulders. Oh, and another FM chip and a big roll of solder wick. More on that later, perhaps.

Well, as you might expect, the new chip did not solve the problem. Hmm. So it was time for the 'A' team to track it down. Mike puttered for a few minutes and then determined that I must have missed testing the offending transistor: a C380 adjacent to the where the tuning knob connects to the board. Doh!

The impedance of your hand on the tuning knob alters the circuit and turns the lamp off. Below, note the white wire that connects the knob to the board. Just to the right is a pair of black transisitors. The upper was the offender. Note the light bulb on the board where the white wire connects: it's there to absorb a whack of static electricity when you grab the tuning knob.

Anyway, the 2500 is now in fine fettle. The tuner sounds very clean except for the digital side band hiss that pollutes KGSR (107.1) and KMFA (89.5). This leads inevitably to tech jokes, eg. 'this tuner is not digital ready', or 'that sure is an accurate rendering of digital hash'. Anyway, it sounds great on a stations that have not yet embraced the dark side of Ibiquity. I really need to track down tuner tweaks to avoid the hiss.

I am rolling this article out the door without significant critical listening, stuff is piling up on the bench. So, with luck, I will tack on an update on how it sounds in a week or so.

Zaph Audio: for the Speaker Obsessives Among Us

2009-04-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

ZaphAudio.com is the labor of speaker love web site of John Krutke. John is an amateur speaker designer and builder, but 'amateur' is used in the very narrow monetary sense. To date I doubt his efforts have resulted in compensation remotely commensurate with the considerable body of his work. Although, it seems that this is about to change: John has hinted on his blog that he is about to go pro.

I confess I have a very serious fascination with the loudspeaker. I own dozens of pairs. My name is Nat, and I am a speaker obsessive. They are wood and metal and magically turn signal to sound. Some even do it well.

I discovered Zaph Audio 3 or 4 years ago when puzzling over a crossover in a small two way system. I love 'em and so, evidently, does John. John's designs are primarily very small, extremely high quality, high bang for the buck two way systems. John has designed projects for both Parts Express and Madisound, the two giants of the DIY world. Here is his latest project, the ZMV5. John does a great job of walking you through its design and implementation, and he includes his usual discussion of all the necessary compromises and possible options.

John is also a significant testing resource for the DIY community. His tweeter mishmash gets a workout every time Parts Express or Madisound runs a sale. As does his Small Driver Comparison, and his 5.5" Driver Comparison, and his 6" to 7" Driver Comparison. Impressive, eh? So far he has resisted the siren song of larger drivers, but he has recently solicited drivers for one last orgy of testing and is including some 8 inchers. Thank you, John, for scratching that particular itch.

John can be a bit of a curmudgeon; for some reason he wants a private life. He answers no email (go ahead click on it...), takes no advertising, and so far has not attempted to sell anything other than leftover drivers. For now John has indicate the site will remain, but driver evaluations will end due to a conflict of interest. So I highly recommend that you get them while they are hot!

Nat King Cole Shares the Stage

2009-04-21T00:44:00.000-07:00

While snagging the YouTube of Nat King Cole performing Bobby Troup's Route 66, I stumbled on the following video. It's Nat on his tv show in 1957 sharing the stage with a very young performer:

Billy Preston!

What a charming performance. Make sure you watch Natalie Cole's comments at the end. Here are two of Billy's performances in '72 and '75 after his Get Back session work as the so-called 5th Beatle:

Billy backed a startling number of artists other than the Beatles: Little Richard, the Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash and even the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He appeared in films Let it Be and the Concert for Bangladesh. He even shared the American Idol stage in 2005 with Vonzell Solomon. No doubt 11 year old Billy would have been a sensation on that show.

He suffered the usual occupational hazards of his profession in the '80s, but rallied in the '90s. He passed away in 2006 due to complications from kidney failure. He was 59.

Billy was a scintillating performer with hair that was the envy of many an NBA power forward in the 70's and an outgoing personality capable of soothing even the squabbling Beatles. He left us way too soon.

Hi-fi Repair TV Feng Shui

2009-04-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Over the years Mike has accumulated a variety of on-the-job tics. What is with that thing he does with the 24 minute count down timer? It's a tiny, digital and counts down from 24:00 to zero and then beeps. Press the bottom button and Mike gets to do it again. All. Day. Long. All I can think of is an electronic version of this:

"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives."

Which brings us to tic #2, which is more like hi-fi repair feng shui: Mike has to watch his vintage tv shows while working. Evidently watching Ironsides is the perfect complement to re-capping a Marantz 2275. It is chronologically appropriate. One of the local Austin stations has filled the digital airwaves with vintage tv. It looks great, but for some reason the sound is way out of synch. Alias Smith and Jones with a 2 second sound lag is a bit tough to follow, but the picture sure is purty.

Which brings us to Emergency! Whenever nurse Dixie McCall (Julie London) appears on screen we all have to marvel that Jack Webb (Emergency! creator, who knew?) managed to successfully propose marriage to a knockout who could sell records on album covers alone. Here's Dixie and some guy...

One day I realized Bobby Troup played Dr. Joe Early, the guy above. Bobby Troup was a west coast jazz musician of note and actor who was Julie's husband after Jack Webb. I must say my opinion of Jack jumped a few notches on learning he gave the next hubby a very sweet gig on tv.

Here is Bobby singing his most famous composition:

I love it, but this will always be the definitive version of this song:

What an utterly graceful human being.

Tomorrow we will see NatKing Cole revealing another sort of grace...

Gary Reiser: Sounds Good To Me!

2009-04-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Nestled near the front of the Traders Village on Eldridge Rd., Houston, in space 249, is the brick and mortar incarnation of Sounds Good to Me. Click the link for the web incarnation! Gary Reiser is the proprietor of both and is a 16 year veteran of the hifi wars. I would say 'grizzled veteran', but I am in no position to cast grizzly aspersions. But Gary can be accurately described as the go-to guy in the Houston area for great deals on vintage stereo gear. He also dresses like an Austinite:

I met Gary a number of years ago via a purchase of pair of L. W. Erath speakers. I stumbled onto his very nice web site, made the purchase via Paypal and then made the trek to Houston to pick them up.

Gary's space at the Traders Village is a flea market anomaly: no heaps of scrufty, unconnected gear here. His philosophy is based on a level of attention to detail that he thought was missing from the typical flea market experience. Every piece has been cosmetically detailed and verified as electronically sound. All components are connected in working systems for instant evaluation. All the tuners dialed in to the same station for convenient comparison. (Really. No, I am not kidding.) No vague assertions that something works, or that it would look great with a little elbow grease. Everything works and looks great, and best of all, is very reasonably priced. Visiting Gary's space in north Houston is like taking a quick trip back in time to my favorite parts of 1975. If this were a just universe Gary would be outselling Best Buy.

Here is Gary’s philosophy in his own words:

When I started this audio resale business, I saw others doing similar things on a smaller (and less organized) scale. Due to the nature of the vintage (and not so vintage) electronics, I knew that it was really not feasible to offer warranties on the items that I'd be selling. After seeing how most people that are selling this type of equipment have stacks of dirty pieces of gear piled on shelves ... not hooked up to demonstrate that they are working ... no prices marked on the items, etc, I decided that I would take a different approach. All items that we sell are tested, cleaned (repaired if necessary), priced and displayed in a working environment. Since a warranty is not offered, this is the next best thing ... the customer buys a product that they can see/hear is working properly, and in the case of items that have "glitches or tics" I am always up-front about any anomalies that I am aware of with pieces of equipment . I try to treat people the way that I want to be treated ... the simple Golden Rule.

Gary tends to reserve his more meat and potatoes systems for his Traders Village store front, but meat and potatoes can be choice: on my recent visit he had a very tasty Sansui AU 717 amp for sale. I left with a very nice Amber 50B integrated amp and a Harmon Kardon Award series tube receiver, both slated for this blog now that the workbench has been reopened.

And don’t forget to flip through Gary’s bin of dollar vinyl. You know you can never have too many records.

Gary tends to sell his more esoteric, expensive items for his web site. His web presence is as tidy as the brick and mortar site, nicely organized by component type. Turnover can be quick so be warned: he who hesitates is lost. As for esoteric: currently he has a very sweet looking JBL Metregon speaker system for sale, and he recently sold a massive pair of VTL Deluxe 600 tube monoblock amps. Not too shabby, eh?

Gary also provides a number of audio related services, including:

Speaker refoaming (no reconing). Transfers from LP's, cassettes and reel tapes to CD's. I just added a 1/2" 8 track reel to reel deck to transfer 1/2" tapes to CD's. A recent search of the web indicated that this is a rare service offering, so I hope that I can find a small niche with that odd service. Pricing on our refoaming and analog/digital transfer services are well below the majority of businesses that offer these services, with quality that rivals the best.

Gary is open for business at Traders Village roughly 50 weeks of the year. He takes a bit of time off in the heat of summer and confesses to closing a bit early when the Houston monsoons hit. But even Hurricane Ike met its match last year: Gary’s space was unscathed.

So, next time you wander close to the northwest side of Houston on a weekend, check out Sounds Good to Me in the Trader’s Village, space 249. It located just west of 290 on Eldridge Rd. For those of you so inclined, Gary can also be reached at (713) 385-4933. Go early and avoid the considerable crowds and the screaming Texas sun.

So check it out!

Baby Come Back by The Equals

2009-04-18T23:25:00.000-07:00

This marvelous clip of The Equals is a favorite. Please note the middle guitar player: that's Eddy Grant of Electric Avenue fame. Eddy wrote this gem from the '60s, and supplied the great response to Derv Gordon's vocals. It was President Records only number 1 hit, reaching #1 in the UK, but only #32 in the US in 1968. And check out Eddy's guitar...

Jitterbug, a Telefunken Console and Mantovani

2009-04-08T21:14:00.000-07:00

Posting on this blog has ground to a halt because of the decline and passing of my father, John N. Weems. It is never easy to say goodbye, but it was Dad's time, and I will miss him.

Dad grew up in the Land Between the Rivers, otherwise known as the Hog Jaw, or the Jaw as the locals knew it. It is now known as the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. Dad's nickname to all his oldest friends was 'Bud', which I was surprised to learn as a teen was a corruption of 'Jitterbug'. Dad was shy, and evidently could not be persuaded to dance, something I can quite sympathize with. But one day someone convinced him to try and he was hooked. The power of dance!

Dad was a pilot in the Air Force and purchased a large mono Telefunken console in Germany in the late '50s. This was the system I played my Johnny Horton albums on. I was shocked (shocked!) to learn that Johnny was a country singer once I ventured beyond North to Alaska. Dad's musical taste was a bit syrupy and ran to Mantovani with a few stray forays into Pete Fountain and Al Hirt. A few years ago I found a stash of wonderful big band reissues at the now defunct Georgetown, Ky flea market. Dad knew all the bands well and even shared a few stories. As a young man he saw a number of them in person and even got to play cards with one that got stranded on his base for several weeks in 1943. The Telefunken was a very sweet workhorse for nearly 45 years, but it was abandoned in a move and a downsize several years ago. I regret that I was unable to get it here to Texas.

I sincerely hope that they are skipping the harps and letting Dad listen to Mantovani on his Telefunken...

We now resume our normal programming.

Photo of Telefunken console stolen from this site.

A Rarity and Something of a Mystery: the Pontus Receiver

2009-02-13T17:15:00.000-08:00

A while back this walked into Austin Stereo:

This somewhat scrufty, Korean made Pontus IC-200R receiver has all the earmarks of a house brand. Build quality seems very respectable. This could be akin to the more than respectable Concept line of receivers that were also made in Korea. There is next to nothing on the web regarding the Pontus line.

A Vintage Euro Pair

2009-02-10T16:54:00.000-08:00

European made components are rare in the US. I recently restored two small, presumably late '60s integrated amplifiers. Their construction is significantly different from Japanese components, but of high quality.

The first is a Dual CV 40:

Dual is very well known in the US for turntables, but I have never seen a Dual amplifier other than this one. I am not sure Dual actually was the manufacturer, and wonder if this is a actually a relabeled Braun. The CV 40 is presumed to be about 20 watts per side.

Here is a view of the innards:

This is a very simple amplifier, but built with very high quality components. Caps were for the most part axials of values not commonly used today. I left intact the very nice power supply cap bolted horizontally to the inner frame. I replaced each of the main filters just behind the heat sinks and strapped them with a Russian made polystyrene cap as a bit of a tweak.

Note: the Dual's potentiometers at the top of the photo above are of very high quality with cast frames.

Next is the Philips 520 amplifier, with marvelous pair of round meters at the left of the unit:

Balance, bass and treble are sliders at the middle of the unit. Here is the amp with the top off:

This amp was roughly as simple as the Dual, but with a nice helping of film capacitors, in yellow above. I replaced and beefed up the main filter capacitors at the left of the photo above. The phono section is at the right of the board. The modest number of Philips electrolytic caps replaced were kind of cute:

Both amplifers sounded great after restoration, despite, or perhaps because of, very simple contruction. Solid state gear manufactured in the 1960s typically has a poor sonic reputation, but these ended up as smoothly musical with a nice helping of slam. It is not clear to me that this early gear truly sounded bad when new, nor does this seem reasonable for all cases. It is not surprising that early designs were relatively unsophisticated. However, unsophisticated is not necessarily bad. The audiophile beloved Advent 300 is a simple design that sounds great. Proper evaluation of vintage gear needs to be done with restored units. An amplifier with 40 year old capacitors will not sound nearly as good as when new.

On the other hand, it should also be pointed out that the replacement of aging capacitors with new can never exactly reproduce the original circumstances of manufacture. Modern caps have tighter tolerances, lower ESR, and in many instances cannot be found in the same voltages as the original caps. For example, Panasonic FCs of 10 mfds or less are available in 50 volts or more where lower voltages might have been used in a vintage component. To complicate matters, I tend to use higher voltage caps in general, especially in power supplies. And beyond that I often increase the capacitance value itself in power supplies. Typically, restored power supplies have a better foundation than as manufactured. Occasionally I add a tweak as described above, sonic value unknown.

The build quality in 40 year old components tends to be much higher than that found in contemporary consumer audio gear. I am of the opinion that the conventional wisdom that early solid state components are not worth restoring is often incorrect, and that these vintage units need to be restored before rendering judgment. Both the Philips 520 and Dual CV 40 amplifiers are worthy restoration candidates.

Success!

2009-02-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

In our last episode of Soldering Iron Justice, our intrepid technician was befuddled by a capacitor that was really a thermistor. Could the part be located? Would it in fact enable the repair? Could sonic mojo be restored to the Stax Earspeaker Energizer, SRD-7?

It turns out, the answers were and are: yes.

Mouser Electronics to the rescue! They sell Murata thermistors, in this case 4.7 ohms @ 140 volts. They are a fraction of the size of the torched thermistor, but I can live with that especially since the prior examples were bent to fit and one lay across a wire wound resistor which contributed to its demise. I purchased 2 for the sake of symmetry, a buck each.

My original effort on the SRD-7 was to replace the pair of 1 mfd 160 volt electrolytic caps with fairly compact polpropylene 250 volt caps. The new thermistors were a bit tricky to install because they were nearly too small for the leads to reach, but with a bit of gentle coaxing they reached and the solder grabbed.

In the photo above, the thermistors are the brown disks above the left hand transformer. The right one is torched. A black wire wound resistor is next to each thermistor. The 1 mfd film caps are the white lozenges in the middle of the board. The small, loose caps at the top were the originals, now removed. Time passed... and the thermistors were subsequenty replaced.

I brought the SRD-7 up on the variac without any smoke so I hooked up the pair of Stax SR-X Mark 3's. The energizer was driven by the trusty Advent 300 and when it was lit I heard sweet, sweet music.
Electrostatic headphones are ear candy deluxe. If everyone on earth had a pair connected to an Advent 300 there would be no war. Tripping Daisy would be everyone's favorite band. The sound is effortless and extended. Listening to Austin's classical station, KMFA, I could clearly hear the crappy digital sideband hiss, but the music sounded so good I really didn't care. I am not sure I can give higher praise without an eargasm.

Given the age of the SRD-7 (introduced in 1971) it would seem to me that the first order of business for anyone who owns one should be to replace the two electrolytic caps. I also wonder about the location of the thermistors since the originals are large and easily bent over to touch the large resistors next to them. Not good. Only 4 screws separate one from peace of mind, so open it up and make sure the thermistors are not bent over, touching the resistors. Only 2 more screws need to be removed to actually work on the unit.

If you have a chance to acquire a pair of Stax headphones, I highly recommend that you do. You will thank me. And you're welcome.

Capacitor Codes!

2009-01-14T22:20:00.000-08:00

Learn something new every day, they say. I have been stumped by a largish Murata ceramic capacitor that does not seem to be working. It's from a Stax SRD 7 electrostatic headphone energizer, c. 1975. Its mate is a charred mess so I have not been able to test either.

Here is the legend on the cap: PTH BD 4R7M

It's apparent that this is a standard value 47 (something) but where is the decimal point and what is the voltage?

Transtronics' wiki comes to the rescue on capacitor codes.

The 'BD 4R7M' is evidently a military style code. The R substitutes for the decimal point. There is not a number following the R so there is no multiplier. So, it seems that this cap has a value of 4.7 pico farads, about as small as is measurable. The B indicates that a capacitance drift is not specified. The D is the voltage rating, 500 volts. The M indicates the cap has a temperature range of -55 to 70 °C .

UPDATE: a good question has been raised in the comments. The number 7 is evidently never used as a multiplier as indicated in Table 1. The multiplier format would be something like 474 which would indicate a value of 47 times a multiplier of 10,000, or 470,000 picofarads which is the equivalent of .47 microfarads. It seems to me that one would either have a R for a decimal point or a multiplier but not both at the same time. I guess neither would be necessary for a 10 picofarad cap which could be represented with just a 10, but that actually is a 10_ with the (blank) implying a multiplyer of 1. Whew.

Despite its rather significant size this is a pretty low spec cap.

Now, what about the 'PTH'? A bit of googling reveals that 'PTH' is a registered trademark of Murata and indicates the cap is actually a PTC Thermistor... What???

A thermistor is not a cap, it is a sort of current limiter whose resistance varies with temperature. PTC stands for 'positive temperature coefficient' which means the resistance goes up as the temperature goes up. But the codes on the item conformed to a capacitor!

So, it appears that today I have learned that I am confused. I wonder if in 1975 the PTH was used as a different indicator for Murata and it is indeed a 4.7 pico farad capacitor, or perhaps those codes do double duty and are used as indicators for the various qualities of a thermistor. The charred condition of the second 'cap' might indicate it is actually a thermistor that gave its life to protect the SRD 7. Hmmm.

Back to the Transtronics wiki page on resistor codes...

If a thermistor is coded like a resistor it would seem that this device has been coded via the BS 1852(British Standard 1852) and has a resistance of 4.7 ohms with a tolerance of 20% (M). The 'B' and the 'D' are not addressed. Therefore I would guess that it is not a coincidence that the device in question does, in fact, measure a resistance of 5 ohms.

Obviously, more research is needed.

The World's Finest 8 Track Collection

2009-01-10T21:25:00.000-08:00

Ahh, 8 Track tapes: anachronistic, clunky, low-fi and heat damaged from all those hours in cars sitting outside in the screaming Texas sun. One of the technological miracles of the '70s was an 8 track tape that would play long after the label had the color sun-blasted from it. They were serious yard sale fodder of a generation ago, but they are getting a bit rare these days.

A disproportionate number of surviving 8 tracks are by artists like Ray Conniff or the Carpenters. Not that I am sneering at Ray, Karen and that guy playing the piano. But, really. Were all those Camaro and Cutless drivers that focused on staying in the middle of the road? Didn't anyone have a really killer 8 track collection back then? This question has not exactly haunted my every waking hour for the last 20 odd years, but I have wondered. A bit.

If you think about it (and although it is pathetic and sad, I do), the 8 track question really is one of survival. It would seem to me that your average rocker with a beater of a car kept his 8 tracks on the floor or the seat. His mom kept hers in the carrying case. So Ray and Karen survived and Pink Floyd went into the trash when the label was no longer legible. So that killer 8 track collection needed to have been owned by an anal retentive rocker (has one ever existed??) for me to find it all these years later.

Eventually all things come to he who waits. Just the other day I discovered that there was at least one person who had a great collection of 8 tracks and, in fact, stored it in an industrial strength suitcase. Maybe his mom made him do it, maybe it was his own unnatural instincts, but whatever. I am thankful. Here is a smattering for your viewing pleasure:

Mott the Hoople??? Savoy Brown??? There was even a Redbone tape in the pile. Several were quad tapes, and all were in great shape. Now I need to finish the 8 track receiver project and give them all a listen.

My compliments to the collector, whoever you were.

The Sony CDP 520ES CD Player

2009-01-06T20:28:00.000-08:00

This is just too rich.

Here is a photo of the innards of this $600 list, vintage 1985 cd player:

Hmm, does this look familiar???

It is a dead ringer for the innards of the non-Esprit CDP 302 cd player documented a few days ago. The exterior is also identical, save the name. Whatever could justify the Esprit badge? Could it be... why yes it is. Here tucked in the corner are a few differences:

Yup, 4 boutique caps, the round red 'uns at the lower left and at the middle and lower right (one is just peeking through the wires. These are Elna Cerafines in the analog stage, right where I put a pair of Elna Silmic II's and a pair of Panasonic FM's in the 302.

Oh, yeah, there is one other difference. The 4 power supply caps of the 302 included 3 3300 mfd caps and 1 4700 mfd cap. Two were black Nippon Chemicon SM's and two were blue NXD's. The 520ES has 3 at 4700 and only 1 at 3300, so the power supply was slightly beefier. These are the 4 large blue caps (all Nippon Chemicon NXD's) at the top of the photo above.

Now there could be a bit more to this than meets the eye. Sony could have done some hand matching/selection of components and maybe there is something different about the chip set that I cannot see. But still.

So, in 1985 the price of 4 small boutique caps, a very slightly beefier power supply and a some Sony ES bragging rights was 50 bucks.

UPDATE: I just hate it when I miss something. There is a slight difference in the transports at the left rail. The rail is visible in the 302 but not in the 520ES, plus there is a slight difference in the back with a small board mounted differently. Now I am going to have to pop the tops again...

The Sumo Gold Power Amplifier

2009-01-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while Mike feels a need to remind me that should I ever stumble across any Sumo amp, he wants it. Sumo was the creation of audio legend James Bongiorno of SAE and GAS (Great American Sound) fame and Bongiorno is one of Mike's heroes. Since I evidently don't get out much, my exposure to Sumo had been limited to the delightfully named Charlie (the tuner) until last Saturday when a Sumo Gold walked through Mike's door.

That is a bit of an exaggeration since Sumo amps are huge and need significant help moving around. Here it is:
The Gold was in very respectable shape with just a dent on the lower right corner, the bane of many a very heavy amp. It was in for a very brief check up and put on an impressive demonstration with the Infinity Quantum 2 speakers just visible in the photo above. Mike's Quantums are not exactly favorites of mine, but they sounded good driven by the Sumo. The bass extension and control was absolutely stellar on Mike's organ demo disk.

Here is a photo of Jay, the proud owner of the Gold:

Jay, you are now officially famous, an intrinsic part of the Great Internet. For those of you not from Austin, this is how all of us look. Gimme caps, tee shirts and stubble are what make Austin great. Well, that and a local beer in hand like a Shiner or a Real Ale from Blanco, Texas.

Yesterday, Jay and his friend Tom informed me that they had each just purchased Sumo 9 amps (sort of) via eBay although eBay had messed with them quite seriously. With luck the 9s will be documented in the not so distant future. (And many of us are debating how long before eBay just crumbles under its own jerkiness. Maybe more on that sometime in the future.)

In the interest of completeness, here is a photo of the Gold, just a bit naked:

Jay was driving the Sumo with the interesting Northern tube preamp, pictured below. It drove the amp quite nicely and the build quality seemed good. I think this is Chinese made, proof yet again China can be more than just crappy DVD players sold at Walmart. See the earlier article Bill did on the Yaqin amp.

And one last photo of Mike, bopping to Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man:

All Austinites are required to wear tie dye at least one day a year. Mike takes his tie dye seriously and tries to observe at least one day a week. Mike is also wearing the mandatory magnifyer (techs only) but he is in serious violation of Austin's smoking phobia. We are still working on that aspect of Mike.

Lastly, thanks to Kevin for the photos. (And let me be the first to congratulate him on the web for his future arrival. No, not an amp: Kevin is going to be a father! The Stereo Club is thrilled at having a new junior member and vows to outbid People Magazine for the first photos.)

The Sony CDP 302 CD Player

2009-01-01T21:40:00.000-08:00

Not that one can tell from this blog, but I really do wield a soldering iron once in a while.

Lately I have had this hankering to revisit the quality CD players of yore. Back when the Ipod listeners among us were in diapers, CD players cost serious money and were actually made of metal and stuff. Inside of these vintage units were parts galore, not just air and a couple of chips. These were serious components built to last a lifetime, i.e. built to actually be repaired instead of chucked in the landfill. These were often very spartan players by modern standards because features (like a headphone jack!) cost you dearly. Over the last few months I have acquired several vintage players in working condition, something I absolutely guarantee will not be possible with the vast majority of current CD/DVD players, and I hope to restore and document a few of them.

The first up is the Sony CDP 302 which was manufactured in 1985 and listed for a non-trivial $550. It powered up and did its best to find the index, but the belts were crispy, of course, so it would not play. I begged belts from Mike, swabbed a few nasty bits, applied a few drops of oil and it worked. Interestingly, it easily played modern burned disks.

The CDP 302 has a nice bottom plate so access is easy. Therefore, I figured it was time to try a total re-cap to see how it would sound. I replaced a total of 44 caps with mostly Panasonic FCs, with a smattering of FMs. The final output coupling caps were replaced with Elna Silmic IIs. The 4 3.3k mfd power supply caps were boosted a smidgen to 4.7k at a slightly higher voltage.

Here is a topless shot:Build quality is very good. The transport is a hoot, stainless steel rails and all. Mike had never seen this mechanism before. The lubrication on the rails had turned to goo so the door barely opened at first. And it has a real transformer, not the chimpy sort of thing found in a modern player. The board at the left is lovely, with the very detailed legend actually printed on both sides. Eg. cap C 351 is identified on the trace side, a very nice touch. The output stage has a significant number of film caps, and there are a total of 6 of those cool clear copper foil caps between the DAC and the output. They obviously cared about the A in the D to A.

Here is the flip side:

The traces were fairly stout although I had several lift when doing hot pulls. Wicking was easier on the traces. Look at all the metal in that transport! Sony is currently a maddening manufacturer. They obviously have lots of very capable engineers, but many of their recent products have very serious QC issues. However, they obviously cared back in 1985 when they built this CD player.

I have been mulling over the CD source at the dawn of the medium, and why it took so long for CD sound to be competitive with that of vinyl. First, CD players were incredibly expensive, so the best of the players were very rare. The vast majority of us heard CD via down market, early generation players because that was all that was affordable. Second, the art of actually producing a CD was primitive, so much of what was available was crap compared to vinyl. Garbage in, garbage out as they say. On the other hand, designing a quality analog stage was easily attainable. Digital processing was a new art at the time, but the analog side of the equation was not. It has seemed to me that a spruced up, high quality vintage CD analog section could blow away your typical modern CD/DVD analog section. So, the sum of these theories has been that the top of the line vintage CD players are worth pursuing despite some digital conversion inadequacies, especially since they are so very cheap to acquire. With new belts and caps the game is afoot!

So, how does the re-capped and re-belted CDP 302 sound?

Very, very good it seems. In fact, it sounds so much better than my workshop Marantz CDR 630 (Professional!) that I am afraid I need to take a soldering iron to it. I hadn't realized how veiled the Marantz sounds. The first few minutes of the Sony were a bit inconclusive, but within 5 minutes the new caps settled in and the sound just opened up. This is a very smooth and detailed player. It gets a bit confused on complex passages, but it sounds great with female vocals. I need to let it burn in a bit more, but the reclamation project has already met my expectations.

UPDATE: it seems that Mike has a Sony CDP 520ES that at least superficially is a dead ringer for the CDP 302. Next week I will pop the top to see what's makes the 520ES worthy of the Esprit line.

Here is one last shot from the front, and I really need to take better photos:

Pioneer SPEC 4 Amp Repair

2008-12-27T03:22:00.000-08:00

I first saw and heard a SPEC system set up back in 1980 when I was stationed in Guam while in the Air Force. I never forgot it and 20 something years later, I finally got a chance to get my hands on a SPEC 1 pre-amp and a SPEC 4 power amp in very good condition. I had already had the other pieces of my system and was using a nice Pioneer SA-9500 II to power the restored Bose 901 Series IV's, which took me the better part of a month to bring them back from the dead. When I hooked up the SPEC 1 and 4, there was no comparsion. The depth and clarity of the music that the SPEC components produced went way beyond what the 9500 II could muster. I was in heaven...... for a while. About six months later, I got up one morning and went to turn on some tunes like I did every morning and flipped the power amp switch on and nothing. No lights, no nothing. I knew I was in trouble. I live in North Alabama and there was no repair shop anywhere around here that was capable of this kind of work, but I took a chance and carried it to a local electronic shop anyway, mostly out of desperation. Here, let me give a word of advice to anyone who needs a vintage stereo component repaired: if the place you take it to has alot of TV's sitting out, turn around and walk back out the door you came in. That guy kept it a month and was no closer to repairing it than the day I brought it in. Finally, I'd had enough and starting looking around on the net for a real repair shop to ship it to. I looked a several ads and read their sales pitch and then I saw and read the reviews for Austin Stereo Repair in Austin, Texas and knew this was the place I wanted to work on my SPEC 4. Mike, the guy who runs the shop, was very nice and kept me informed of everything and every step of the repair process that he was making. The turn around time was a bit longer but that was entirely my fault. He told me exactly how to pack the amp to ship to him and like a idiot, I didn't listen to him and tried to save a few bucks by not wrapping it in bubble wrap. The amp arrived with a busted bumper on the back. It could have been alot worse and I learned my lesson. If you ship to him and he tells you how to pack it, take my advice; do it! Finally, I got it back and let me tell you, I cannot write a good enough review for the work Mike performed. It sounds better than it did before it died! Also, this guy must be a clean freak because you can eat off the inside of this amp! Austin Stereo has my business from now on. Thanks Mike!

Encore from Gothenburg

2008-12-22T20:31:00.000-08:00

Johan Persson has kindly provided several more photos of his collection.

First up are a pair of snapshots of the diminutive component that I commented on in the earlier post. It is another marque that I have never encountered (or even heard of!): Skantic. I love the simple elegance of these northern European designs. I must say I am still a bit perplexed as to whether this is actually an integrated amp or a preamp. The bird logo is very reminiscent of Fisher. The legend above the knobs and switches just cracks me up. I would guess volume, balance, bass, treble, phono, tape, radio (duh), and power...

The single external transistor really has me puzzled. It says stereo on the front??!! I really need to know my Din connectors better to sort all this out. It also seems to have 3 fuses, generous for such a tiny package. Update: it was actually easier to see via the blog. Interesting. The speaker connectors are far right and left, above the fuses. And Mike says the single external transistor is part of the regulator...

And last, but not least, is an absolutely gorgeous Ravensbourne tuner/integrated pairing from Rogers, down Angleterre way. From the photo Johan has the original literature as well. I am incredibly jealous.

The large screen on top of the tuner case would suggest this is a tube tuner?? It would seem to have a tuning eye to the right of the scale. These are just lovely. My semi-useless Orion Blue Book lists the amp as being produced from '73 to '77. I have my doubts, these would seem to be earlier items. I recall this is Orion's default time frame for those moments when they are clueless. Time to email Johan for some more information...

The Goteborg Chapter

2008-12-17T17:36:00.000-08:00

It seems The Stereo Club has a previously unknown chapter in Goteborg, Sweden.

Goteborg, city of the Goths, and otherwise known as Gothenburg to those of us in the states, is a nicely sized city of half a million on the southwest coast of Sweden. It is home to the largest university in Scandinavia, as well as the bands Ace of Base and The Soundtrack of Our Lives. (Hmm, not so different from Austin, Texas.) I confess the former band is a guilty pleasure and the latter is a not so guilty pleasure.

I have recently had the pleasure of exchanging emails with Johan Persson, an avid collector of '70s stereo components from Gothenburg. Johan has a very substantial collection of Pioneer, Marantz, and Tandberg equipment, as you can see from the following. First up, Pioneer::

Here is a stack of Marantz gear:

And a very tasty selection of Tandberg equipment:

I really need to find out what the little amp on top is. I am a sucker for smallish Euro amps.

Johan says this is a stack of a Swedish DIY kit amps sold in the '70s under the names Sentec and Semicon:

I have never seen these before.

And some Akai gear:

All the above are normal obsessions, although in total perhaps a bit extreme. My wife sends her condolences to Johan's wife. However, the following obsession with headphones is new to me. I have the normal 7 or 8 headphones. This is truly impressive:

Johan: thanks for the photos! And welcome to The Stereo Club!

Apex Jr.: Your Source for Affordable Electronics

2008-12-02T19:42:00.000-08:00

About a year ago I was poking along down the Information Highway, doing a bit of research on the Realistic Minimus 7 loudspeaker. I stumbled into a thread on AudioKarma that suggested an interesting tweeter replacement could be found at a site called Apex Jr. ApexJr.?? Whatever is an Apex Jr.? I followed the link and answered that question.

It turns out that Apex Jr. is the nom de web of Steve Slater. Steve is pretty much a lifelong veteran of the electronic surplus business and "Apex Jr." was originally how he answered the phone as a kid at his father's surplus business, Apex Electronics. About 16 years ago Steve started his own business and those of us with gear to fix (or build) are the beneficiaries.

Apex Jr. is an online electronic surplus store that specializes in audio components. Steve has a healthy selection of subwoofer amplifiers (see this earlier post), including both the Miller and Kreisel 150 watt and 250 watt units. For the speaker builders and restorers among you he has a host of speaker parts including drivers, binding posts, capacitors, resistors, and wire. Like all good surplus stores he has his share of those uncategorizable items that make for a fun browse. Here is a sampling of some of my recent purchases from Apex Jr.:

Starting from 12 o'clock: a BMI 33mfd/450v axial capacitor; a Nichicon 12000mfd/50v capacitor; a truly huge rubber foot; rca connectors with strain relief; a pair of heavy duty speaker binding posts; a Nippon Chemi-Con 15000mfd/63v capacitor. In the center is the Sonance tweeter that can be used with the Realistic Minimus 7.

Steve's prices are extremely reasonable and the quality of the merchandise is first rate. The 15000mfd caps above are a huge bargain at $2.99. They are a no-brainer power supply upgrade for a significant number of '70s receivers. The binding posts are very heavy duty, and are much better than replacement quality.

I highly recommend the 16 piece test lead set for $9.99 pictured here. Mike's comment on seeing mine: 'That's old school.'

I have placed 3 orders with Steve and each has arrived within 2-3 business days, nicely packed. Steve takes credit cards, but has to charge a 3% upcharge to keep his overhead low.

Give Steve a call at 866-4-ApexJr. For those of us more numerically oriented that is (866) 427-3957. Oddly enough, he does not list his business hours. I know he has customers as far away as New Zealand, so I bet he gets phone calls at some very odd hours.

Steve is based in La Crescenta, California. His main warehouse (of 3) is located by the 2 and 210 freeways and vistors are welcome, although by appointment. It should be noted that Steve has many more items than those displayed on his web site. Here is just a portion of one warehouse:

Call Me Lightning: the Pioneer SA-606 Integrated Amplifier

2008-11-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

Dum Dum Dum Do Day
Dum Dum Dum Do Day

See that girl who's smiling so brightly,
Dum Dum Dum Do Day

Well I reckon she's cool and I reckon rightly,
Dum Dum Dum Do Day

She's good looking and I ain't frightened,
Dum Dum Dum Do Day

I'm gonna show you why they call me lightning.
Dum Dum Dum Do Day

This particular Pioneer integrated amp is called Lightning because that’s what blew it up.

This SA-606 was born somewhere around 1973 (Orion is clueless) and died violently in what Mike delicately terms ‘an event’. That event took out half the power supply diodes and every single transistor short of the outputs, tone control circuit included. This amp probably should not have been restored based purely on cost benefit. It ran away on the Sencore, so we pulled the nicely mounted heatsink, and tested the outputs. They were intact so we figured re-cap it and figure it out from there. After my re-cap and Mike walking through transistor carnage we found ourselves committed to a very significant cost in time and parts.

Yes, even the little 3-legged beasties in the tone cardlet at the front left were torched. All caps were replaced except for the relatively modest main filters. This was a relatively easy amp to work on, but Pioneer made the bottom cover too small and several caps were very difficult to reach.

The interesting thing about the effort is the end product was essentially an electronic clean slate up to the outputs, lots of new parts in an old box. So, how does it sound?

Very, very good it turns out. This amp is not a power house, but it is a very lively performer and well suited to a bit of Cobwebs and Strange. Now where is that Who CD? Entwhistle’s bass leads on ‘Happy Jack’ or ‘Call Me Lightning’ are running through my head now hours after crappy YouTube renditions. Ahh, the sacrifices my art demands.

Anyway, this SA-606 is a bit rough around the edges cosmetically, but it sounds great.

The JVC JR-S200 Receiver

2008-11-25T21:43:00.000-08:00

Ah, here we have yet another under appreciated Japanese receiver manufacturer. JVC's styling is, er, distinctive, and I confess not to my taste until recently. But I have a new found appreciation of this line after working on this unit and also getting a gander of the very impressive JR-S600. The S200 is 2nd in the line that extends from the S100 through the S600, and is listed at 35 watts per side. Orion says it was sold from '76 to '80 and retailed for $300.

While a bit glitzy and slider-dominated it is a handsome unit to my newly acclimated eye. The thumb wheel tuner is a bit angled and much smaller than that of the Marantz tuners and receivers of the era. The end caps are interesting, sort of plasticky, faux heat sinkish. Definitely, the JVC designers were not running with the Pioneer/Marantz/Yamaha crowd with wood cases.

Wow, my photo skilz were not exactly shining the day I took these snapshots. The chassis was not too bad to work on although there were a few difficult to change caps on the amp board at the right. The tuners are in the center; the phono section in the center, back right, just to the left of the heat sink. I replaced 57 caps with Panasonic FCs. Then Mike pointed out that there were 4 more buried in the tone control board mounted vertically in the front, behind the sliders. That board was a bit of a challenge.

The JVC is a perky sounding little receiver. It is not exactly a powerhouse, but has enough slam to sound better than 30 watts should. Pick one of these up if you find one. If you ever stumble across the big brother S600, buy it in a heartbeat. It is one seriously flashy, large receiver and at 120 watts per channel can run with any of the big dogs.

The Nikko NR 815 Receiver

2008-11-21T12:22:00.000-08:00

Nikko is one of the underrated receiver manufacturers of the vintage era. Their build quality is very good, their styling has held up well, and they are very easy on the ears. They tend to be undervalued on ebay, a shame. The Alpha/Beta/Gamma series of separates from Nikko does garner a reasonable amount of respect, however.

This NR 815 was an ebay purchase and it worked well out of the box (always a worry.) The trusty Orion Blue Book says it was manufactured between '77 and '82. I suspect that range is a bit wide, but close enough. The 815 seems to have been the middle of a very broad offering with the 315 being the entry level and the 1415 being the top of the line. When I grow up I want an NR 1415 with 175 watts per channel! The NR 815 has 55 watts and retailed at a hefty $470. This is a largish receiver:

Large usually makes it easy to work on:

The 815 is fairly well laid out with one major exception. The phono section, situated, as usual, in the back right of the chassis, sits underneath the tuning capacitor. Whatever was Nikko thinking? One of the first rules of receiver restoration is never mess with the tuning string, so the capacitor had to stay in place. I had to fish out and replace caps from underneath via what little dexterity have remaining in my left hand. I love vintage, but vintage digits really suck at that dexterity thing.

The drive card is mounted vertically in front of the heat sinks. I was able to re-cap that without removing. The relay ciruitry is just in from of the drive card and the regulator circuitry in front of that. The tuners are to the right.

I am usually obsessive about the cap replacement count, it's sort of a solder monkey's counting coup. However, I managed to misplace my coup stick, er, slip of paper with the exact total. It was something over 70, I swear.

Re-capped with the controls spritzed this a nice sounding unit. The overall presentation is a bit mellow and would fit very nicely with a digital source. At 55 watts a side a bit of care needs to be taken with speakers if you are wanting to fill a largish room with Led Zeppelin. But, all in all, the NR 815 will eat your Fry's HT black box for breakfast and lunch, and look good doing it.

Subwoofer Pas de Deux

2008-11-16T20:32:00.000-08:00

A while back Parts Express offered a deal that seemed too good to pass up: the Spherex XBox system with 5 satellites and a subwoofer carcass, minus the amp and remote for $99.00. Plus free shipping! (I see now that the price is $75, a deal!) The Spherex system was well reviewed and the satellites use technology from Mirage. The sub contained a 6 channel amp that apparently was failure prone, so the systems have been a PE close out for a while, sans amp of course.

I sprung for 2 and scattered the satellites among work room, kid's room and friends. But what to do with the subwoofer carcasses with a hole in back?

Apex Jr. came to the rescue.

I purchased the M&K 150 and the Audiofile VRS 1205 amps since they seemed to have nearly the correct dimensions for the cut out. Each is a bargain at $99.95 and nominally rated at 150 watts. These are real amps with real transformers, not digital amps. Here are the finished products:

The Spherex boxes have a downward firing 8" driver with a port. Fit and finish is good and I love the handle on top. The driver is a respectable performer, but the amps probably deserve a bit more than the Spherex carcass can provide. I shouldn't complain since I spent just a bit more than 2 hours assembling the pair. Both amps required a bit more than an inch off the width and just slight shaving off the height of the opening for installation.

Both amps are well made with the M&K having the edge in performance, but the Audiofile having the edge in gadget factor. The first photo above shows the remote sensor installed on the front of the Audiofile. Oh yeah, that is a new hole you will have to cut on the front. The remote works well and allows you to crank the volume for the good parts of Con Air and drop it back to realistic levels for music.

If you already have a home theater receiver you can have a very respectable 5.1 system for under $200, definitely a deal. This is a killer system for the kids' game room or a budget theater system. Break out the jig saw and get some sweat equity in a subwoofer!

The Signal Sucks: FM Side Band Hiss

2008-11-10T19:12:00.000-08:00

Does your FM station sound like crap these days?

Is the sonic gravel getting you down?

If so, I bet you are listening to the modern sound of side band garbage through a vintage FM tuner.

The FM frequency spectrum is increasingly being crammed with signals that were never envisioned by the designers of medium decades ago. Here in Austin, the classical FM station KMFA has broadcast a benchmark quality signal since its inception, but these days you are wasting our ears trying to listen to it with a vintage tuner. Recently KMFA sold off the edges of its frequency range to another signal, and you can hear it as hiss behind the music.

The FM signal broadcast is not just a single licensed frequency but includes 130 kilohertz of bandwidth above and below the designated frequency. According to KMFA's consultant engineer the FM broadcast system originally used the entire licensed spectrum to minimize distortion, and our vintage tuners reflect that philosophy. They tend to grab the full width available with broad filters. However, the modern broadcast signal now lives in a much narrower portion of the licensed band (15 khz) , and the edges of that band are a business opportunity.

What is that business opportunity? There are a number of possibilities, but in all likelihood the offender is HD radio. I highly recommend this Wikipedia article. Note the FM spectrum images down the page on the right. The second image is of the signal that gives your vintage tuner a hard time. According to the article only 1% of the station's power is devoted to the HD signal. A move is afoot to increase this to 10% in order to improve the quality of the HD signal at the expense of the analog signal. (Shudder.)

So what prompted this little rant? I hadn't listened to the wonderful KGSR in a week or two on my Advent 300 receiver, but tonight the hiss was just depressing. I recently restored this little Henry Kloss/Tom Holman gem using Elna Silmic II caps with a few 1 mfd films and the tuner is sounding great. I guess I need to learn something about FM filters...

The Sansui 1000 Receiver

2008-11-09T17:53:00.000-08:00

The Sansui 1000 is very different from the Sansui 1000a. Via this site it seems the relatively common 1000a was manufactured from '64 through '72 (!) and uses the formerly rare 7591 output which is now being manufactured by several vendors. The very rare 1000 apparently was manufactured in '63 only and uses the oddball 25E5 (PL36/CV10341) output with the distinctive anode on top.

The Sansui 1000 is to my eye much nicer looking than the 1000a and the 25E5 has the advantage of actually being relatively cheap for an NOS pentode. Here are some photos of a customer unit take at Austin Stereo:

Note the connectors to the tops of the outputs at the top of the second picture. Make sure you label them when removing the tubes. They need to go back to the correct tube! The build quality is top notch, as one can always expect from Sansui. You gotta love those transformers. The 1000 is a very nice sounding receiver with a fine tuner and enough power to drive full sized speakers.

For those interested, here is a close up of the 25E5/PL36/CV10341 output tube.

In Memoriam: the Automatic Radio OMX-9843 8-Track Receiver

2008-11-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

To paraphrase an old joke about motorcyclists sans helmet: what do you call an 8-track receiver? The answer, of course, is: an organ donor.

I recently found a Technics SA 303 receiver in excellent shape except for a broken bass control pot. What to do? I did not have an appropriate vintage pot to repair the unit and I doubted that I could find a new one that would suffice. Luckily, I stumbled onto an early '70s vintage 8-track receiver from a brand I assume is long gone, Automatic Radio, from Melrose, Massachusetts. Today, there is pretty much no one who is interested in such a device. But, the moral of today's blog is: do not judge a receiver by its cover.

The OMX-9843 was an entry level combo receiver marketed by an American-based company, but made in Japan. The $159.95 price sticker was still on the bottom. From its appearance this was not a mainstream, hifi retailer unit. It was probably sold at a local furniture store or a regional chain like Gibson's here in Texas. The case was the typical vinyl over Philippine mahogany (why did they do that??), and inside was essentially two units: an 8 track player on the left and a very minimalist am/fm receiver on the right with lots of small bolts and nuts holding it all together. The 8-track player scavenged power from the receiver via an internal plug in a manner that suggests that something else might fit on the left. I wonder if someday I might stumble on a cassette version of this beastie? The Matsushita amplifier outputs produced a hefty 6 watts a side, low even by the standards of the early '70s.

The point of all this? Back when manufacturers cared even the most entry level of electronic products were well made. For example:

The pots in the photo above were made by Alps. The tiny driver card has 4 small can transistors by Matsushita, the same as the two on the tone control card. Sorry, the cute Matsushita outputs were donated to Austin stereo before this picture was taken. The switches are still crisp and the hardware is very high grade and about half is non-magnetic. This is all high quality stuff, and will see service in other gear from the era.

Who woulda thunk that parts from an Automatic Radio would extend the life span of a Sansui or Technics receiver?

Orion, TeraPeak and the Audiogon Blue Book

2008-10-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

I recently was overcome with a desire to actually do a bit of research on the vintage hifi market. Not that I was exactly obsessing, but I was really curious about a few items, curious enough to spring for a few bucks. What was available?

I own a very old ('93) copy of the Orion Blue Book for audio. How I managed to buy that is a story best saved for another day, but it has been moderately useful over the years so I don't regret the pain and anguish. Much. Orion is a staple in the pawn business and anyone who buys and sells audio gear (and musical instruments, etc.) is familiar with the product. While Orion is often completely clueless about an item, it is a good place to start a valuation hunt. Over the years Orion has culled its older entries so it's best to have multiple copies that span the years. Orion is often way off in valuations, always on the low side. I imagine Orion's information sources are limited on thinly traded, more esoteric items.

So, was there anything better than Orion? eBay and Audiogon are the primary sources for audio sales, so what did they have to offer?

Audiogon.com describes itself thusly: 'The Audiogon is a membership based community of high end audio enthusiasts.' It provides a very popular auction and classified system for audio sales. Membership is free. It also provides a Blue Book valuation service for a yearly fee of $50 that is easy to use and provides some nice touches, such as a graph and transaction counts. It is fairly comprehensive but is not without some holes. I own a Fisher SA 300 tube power amp and they indicate it is worth $190. I will take a dozen at that price, please.

eBay seems to be troubled entity these days. I am strictly a buyer, so it has not been bad from my perspective, but sellers are not happy. eBay has made policy changes that expose low volume sellers to abusive buyers. Again, this discussion is best left to another time. My biggest gripe with eBay has been the limitation of viewing completed auctions to 2 weeks. Viewing completed auctions is useful to me as a buyer, but I would think it would be crucial to a seller. While wandering my eBay home page I noticed the 'Marketing Tools' link and therein lies a tale.

Long ago eBay provided access to a longer history, but they obviously determined that access to historical information was a sellable product. In the marketing tools section of the site I found a link to Market Research, and a Fast Pass service for 2 days access to 90 days of completed auctions for $2.99. When I tried to purchase this service I was 1) routed to create a seller's account and 2) routed to Paypal and 3) routed to TeraPeak.com. And then it got interesting. It turned out that the Fast Pass service did not actually exist.

I can only conclude that eBay killed their Market Research offering and sold it to TeraPeak.com without doing proper job of connecting someone interested in the service to TeraPeak. First, let me make very clear that TeraPeak is not at fault here. My several frustrated emails to their customer service staff were very promptly and professionally handled. My emails to eBay went into the bit bucket, of course, but that was expected. It turned out that TeraPeak offers (essentially) a two tiered system to access 90 days of eBay history. You can buy 1 month at $24.95 or a year at $197.95. I tried it out for a month.

TeraPeak.com offers a search engine with access to 90 days of eBay auctions. You can pick your eBay source and tweak it with some Addons, but the gist of the service is a nice query generator and aggregator for eBay's recent history.

The TeraPeak.com/eBay combo is a not exactly a Blue Book but it could ultimately be the ideal solution to the valuation issue. Nothing beats actually looking at a transaction since condition, the quality of the presentation, and the transaction form mean so much. TeraPeak does a good job of presenting the information and its searches (which I presume are actually run on eBay's servers) are quick. It's layout takes a bit of getting used to but it is reasonable.

I used the service for a month and was relatively happy with the results. However, I did not renew my subscription. TeraPeak.com is a competently run site whose primary limitation is eBay imposed: they only have a rolling 90 days of history. Much of what I look for are very thinly traded items, so it is sometimes tough to find what I am looking for in that 90 days. I also determined that the all-or-nothing approach to eBay data was not cost effective for me. I would be happiest to pay for my interest and that alone. I do not need access to 90 days of dinnerware or costume jewelry. I passed this request on the the TeraPeak staff, so maybe someday...

One last issue: TeraPeak is a subscription service and will bill your credit card on a recurring basis. I had assumed that I purchased a single month and was surprised when I was billed for a second month. I was not paying attention, I guess. If you do not want to continue the service it appears the default when you cancel is for next month, not immediately. Hence my cancellation did not exactly work as I had hoped. However, an email to customer service appears to have corrected the situation.

Oh, and while researching this write up I discovered that eBay had scrubbed the links to the Market Research service, so maybe my emails actually reached someone.

The Hurrier I go the Behinder I Get

2008-10-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

I am hopelessly behind in posting my restoration efforts. I was missing a camera for a few weeks... Waiting in the wings are write ups for the Marantz 2230, the Nikko 815, the Toshiba 330 pre/power pair, and the JVC JR-S200 receiver. Oh, and I forgot: the Marantz 115B tuner, part of a set with the 3600 preamp and the 250 power amp, both awaiting the soldering iron. Oh, and the Advent 300 restoration shoot out awaits. So, consider this next item an apertif: the Realistic Minimus 1 speaker.

Orion says the Minimus 1 was produced from '69 to '73, my college years! While the Minimus 7 is a common item, this pair of Minimus 1's is the only pair I have ever seen. Maybe I don't get out enough. But doing a bit of research on ebay shows that in the last 90 days 270 7's have been auctioned, compared to only a single pair of 1's with blown woofers. That's rare.

Yes, that is real walnut veneer. They are slightly larger than the Minimus 7, well built but with something funky going on in the back:

Note the 3 posts: you can augment the high frequency balance via strapping the middle post. Here is what is going on inside.

This is looking through the woofer hole at the crossover. The 3 posts are visible, although a bit obscured with polyester fuzz. The post at the right, missing the screw, hence the dark center, is actually the leftmost, positive terminal. (Remember, we are flipped!)

There is a 6.8mfd cap on the tweeter. This was my reason for being here, one of the pair was a bit dull sounding, so presumably one (or both) of the caps was aging. Both were replaced with film. And I managed to keep the burns to a minimum in the tight space, thanks for asking.

The crossover is a second order on the tweeter with a wire round resistor taming it a bit. The tweeter coil is actually at the far left in the picture. The woofer filter is a first order (ie. just the coil at the right) but strapping the middle post adds the wire wound resistor at the bottom to dial the woofer back a bit. 'Increased' high frequency is really diminished low frequency. So, back in the day your $60 bought you a nicely finished two way with 5 components in the crossover. In just a few years the trend would be a single cap on the tweeter and zip on the woofer (eg. the EPI 100.)

The Minimus 1's have a solid following on ebay with good reason. Working pairs seem to go for about $75, a bit more than their original cost in the early '70s. They look great, very '60s-ish with the sparkle cloth grill and very well done veneer. They are very musical performers despite limitations at either end of the spectrum. The woofer quality is such that I have wondered if it is scavenged for other projects. Buy 'em if you find them at your local thrift!

John Iverson in the House!

2008-09-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

Finally my John Iverson Electron Kinetics Eagle 2C amp is here!

Ever since reading about this amazing maverick genius American and his foray into audio design, I have wanted one of his amps. They are getting hard to find.

There is still good info about this great man and his unexplained disappearance. I will post what I know next time.

Here it is! All the way from Canada, and this man has to win the Right Proper Packing Award!

I have received a lot of gear through UPS and the Mail and it can be heartbreaking to receive a treasured item nonpacked by unconscious idiots.

Sorry, I digress.

This was not the case here. Completely bullet proof, it could have gone round the world a few times and dropped off several conveyor belts and still arrived in pristine shape. Took me 10 minutes to unpack it!

This little 30 pounder puts out 120 wpc @ 8 ohms and 320 wpc @ 2 ohms all day! 160,000 uf capacitance and a hand wound transformer.

As demo, John would cross the speaker leads till sparks and melting wire were everywhere, then hook up to the speakers and voila.... They have a reputation for fantastic bass control and often used in bottom end of bi-amping set ups. The later models were smooth and balanced throughout the frequency range. This is a later model ;-)

After a check out by our resident master at Austin Stereo Repair we'll be trying it out with those bass hungry Infinity Quantums.

Long live John Iverson, may he rest in peace.....

KEFs up and running!

2008-09-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

Finally the Kef 104.2's are done!

After getting the beautifully redone woofers back from Wes at Austin Speaker Repair I spent a couple of hours installing everything, hooking up and soldering. The original butyl rubber surrounds were too far gone for refitting/gluing so they were cut back to the cone and new foam surrounds were fitted.

I checked my work as I went but it wasn't till I was all done with the 30 something wires and 50 something bolt/screws that it occurred to me that maybe I should have fired em up before that.....oops...

As luck would have it there was sound when I gingerly turned up the volume! Not a lot of bass to speak of but full spectrum sound.

Long story short, they have been running for 3 days and the sound is still improving. They sound magnificent! The caps and the new tweeters seem to be working out really nice. Even when powered by my Sansui G-8000 I am hearing dynamics and detail on some recordings that are pretty much.. damn... ;-)

I'm a happy camper, cant wait to hear what they will sound like fully broken in with a CJ premier 10 up front. Long live Sir Raymond Cooke! May he rest in peace.

Road Trip to Florida!

2008-09-05T23:35:00.000-07:00

Had a chance for a nice road trip last month. Drove my old Subaru out to see my good friend Wes Swenson who lives right outside of Panama City FL.

Wes and I flew Chinooks together in Vietnam in 1969 so we go back a bit. It was great to see him again and hang out for about three days.

He has retired from flying but keeps busy working in his large beautiful studio as a master potter and clay worker.

I drink my morning tea out of his mugs which are as fine as anybody's anywhere. He has his own kiln and is busy working on an awesome chess set, among other things.

Beside general reminiscing and catching up on life we listened to Wes's considerable stereo rig consisting of a modified Philips CD player, a Audio Research SP-9 Mk II tube preamp, an Audio Research D-125 behemoth tube amp sporting 4 6550's per side and a tall set of Vandersteens, 3's I believe. It was great sounds.

While I was out there I picked up a set of KEF 104.2's that were delivered to Wes's house from a nearby eBay gentleman who was selling them for parts. Nice rosewood cabinets. When it was time to go, we loaded up the Kefs, filled the spare tire, said our so longs and I headed the old Subaru home.

The trip went smoothly, about 13 1/2 hours straight through. That 240K mile Sube ran like a Swiss watch. Averaged 31 mpg going about 70mph with the A/C on the whole way, without burning a drop of oil.

Those flat opposed 4 bangers are tough as nails. Made in America too!

I figured I could do the Kef rebuild myself so I took the units apart, removed the X-Overs and replaced the tweeters with some new Peerless DX-25's.

The old Kef tweeters start losing their ferro fluid after 20 years and it hardens. They were both bad.

The crossovers were in pretty good shape so I only replaced about 7 capacitors on each board. Those x-over assemblies weigh about 5 lbs each and are a little tricky to get in and out.

I quickly realized that redoing the woofers properly was past my pay grade, so, off they went to Austin Speaker Repair.

The 104.2's are considered a genuine classic from the late '80's. Highly regarded in many circles as one of the great designs, they were and still are awesome performing speakers for their size. 36"x11"x13" and about 72 lbs each, they reek of quality. Beautiful veneers, solid bracing and those great Kef components. Thank you Sir Raymond!

Some consider them pretty gawky looking as they have a externally mounted metal case holding a D’appolito MHM arrangement that is completely outside the cabinet.

Inside the cabinet are 2 - 8" woofers firing straight up and connected with a stabilizing aluminum rod. They fire through a 4" opening in the front of the cabinet and manage to put out considerable bass. We''ll see.

When it's all done I'll let you know how they sound!

Road Trip Lexington: Pops Resale and Consignment

2008-09-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

For the last 14 years my sole trips for pleasure have been to Lexington, KY, to visit my family. For many years I frequented the flea markets around town, as well as those in Georgetown, Cincinnati, and southern Indiana, but these flea markets ebbed as ebay flowed. The Gibson guitar amps, the McCoy pottery and the Griswold fry pans were being peddled to the world along with those Heathkit tube amps I lusted after, and my Sunday afternoons were not the same. The hifi gear that was so plentiful in the early '90s was gone. How was I ever going to maintain my habit!??

About 10 years ago I visited a Goodwill in the Meadowthorpe Plaza on Leestown Rd. and stumbled into a long and narrow space nearby: Pops Resale and Consignment. At the time it was just two years old and the space was not yet full. But it had a healthy stock of vinyl and gear at very reasonable prices. The lanky proprietor, presumed to be Pops, was friendly and knowledgeable, and willing to accommodate the stray visitor from Austin. I was hooked. Over the years I have always made time for a visit or two, and I usually manage to bring my 90 year old Dad to make sure he gets a bit of exercise.

Pops Resale is truly a mom and pop operation. Pops is owned by Dan Shorr and his wife Sharon, and they are in their 12th year of business. From their web site it seems that Pops was not really Dan's nickname, but it was an inevitable outcome of the business. The origin of Pops is the 'Previously Owned Products' they intended to sell instead of mass market, landfill-destined, contemporary dreck. Vinyl is still the bread and butter of the business, and vintage hifi gear is prominently featured, but the back has been opened up and now contains an extensive collection of vintage clothing and furniture.

In the early days Dan tried to host live music with limited success, but now he books Saturday afternoon shows over two months into the future. Here is the band setting up:

I am a big fan of '70s silver faced receivers. Many years ago I purchased a non functional Pioneer SX 1250 and had Pops ship it to Austin. No problem, Pops can accomodate. Some of Pops' gear is sold on consignment, most is his. Sometimes items are sold as-is in non-working (or semi-working!) condition for those of us who are game for some sweat equity. Items are always clearly described and prices are very reasonable. He has a steady supply of turntables for those who are vinyl impaired. Turntables are hard for me to get back to Austin, and I have thought about it on occasion... but I have been strong. Over the years my purchases have included an Akai M-8 tube type tape deck and a very lovely Technics SA 8100X quad receiver, both of which are in the queue to get restored and written up on this site. Here two customers are assisted by the 3 resident Drs. of Gearology:

To very briefly hop on the soap box: the quality of vintage gear is very hard to match in modern components at a corresponding price point. The build quality is just superb in '70s Sansui, Yamaha, Marantz, Pioneer and a host of other manufacturers. However, capacitors age and pots and switches get dirty. Do your ears a favor. Buy vintage gear from Pops and the other merchants around the country who protect these marvels of industrial art from the landfill. And if your vintage gear sounds a bit muzzy, support your local tech and get it restored. Your grandkids will thank you!

This year Dad told Caitlin behind the counter: 'You have everything I don't need.' That is correct, Dad, Pops Resale specializes in items that I want. Here's Caitlin at the check out:

Pops Resale and Consignment is located on 1423-B Leestown Rd. about 1/2 mile east (towards the center of town) from New Circle Rd. Give Pops a call at 859-254-7677. If you make it to Lexington and you are a fan of vintage records, gear, clothing or collectibles you just can't afford to miss it. It's a treat.

The Sherwood 7310 Receiver

2008-08-19T20:51:00.000-07:00

I have long regarded Sherwood gear as sleepers. In my young adulthood it was a brand that I could afford (via Illinois Audio: ahh, the days of discount mail order) and their receivers sounded good to my young ears. The 7310 is the middle of the line from about 1975 and boasts 38 real world, rms watts. Original list price was $380. I purchased a new 7210 in 1975, and remember it fondly.

Sherwood build quality is not as impressive as Marantz, but manages a significant sonic mojo. The receivers sound bigger than their advertised wattage and the tuners are solid all 'round performers. Cosmetically, Sherwood lags a bit behind Marantz, but a clean example represents '70s hifi style very well.
The 7310 offers the David Hafler's Dynaquad circuitry, an island of sanity in this era of quad madness:This 7310 worked well on arrival. Even the lamps worked. So, on with the restoration! The board layout is straight forward with only the treble/bass board presenting a significant challenge. Here is the bird's eye view from the top:
The power supply board is at the lower right, below the transformer. The output boards are in the upper middle and are accessible from below. The tuning capacitor is at the upper left, shielded. Immediately below it are the AM and FM boards that required removal of 4 screws and some tugging to restore. But whither phono?The phono board is located underneath the unit, at the upper left in this photo. Note the two power supply filter caps in the upper right corner. These slightly obscure the treble/bass board that hides just behind the face of the unit. Changing the caps on this board requires peeling the face and unclamping the filter caps. As luck would have it, my back order of Elna Silmic II caps had just arrived so the 8 4.7 mfd caps on this small board were replaced with silk. The tone control circuit is not defeatable, so it better sound sweet when driven by the cd player not yet imagined in 1975.

All other caps were replaced with Panasonic FCs with extra margin on the voltages. A total of 50 caps were replaced, the 6.8k main filters were left as is. Pots and switches were cleaned with Blue Foam and Deoxit Gold. The tuning capacitor was spritzed with Deoxit Gold.

The end result of my labors was a very sweet sounding unit that should last for another 20-30 years. The overall sound is lush for a string quartet with enough punch to do justice to Metallica. And it looks good. One more look with a bit of drama:

Last of the Family: the NAD 1020 Preamp

2008-08-02T22:25:00.000-07:00

The 1020 preamplifier is the last of the NAD family fest I celebrated last month. The exterior is very similar to the 3020a that I restored with the distinctive horizontal rear deck for connections. Acres of space are available under the hood and cap replacement is a breeze. It is much easier to work on than the Kenwood C2, no origami skills needed. Here it is with top popped:

Hmm. Looking at that board, you would think they took the 3020 and threw out the amplifer and called it a preamp. Hmm. And you would be correct, sir. The transformer is much smaller and two fuses at the left are skipped, but that is the very same board. The same tone control circuitry with the hard to find .68 mfd bass control caps is strung out along the front. The unshielded phono section is in the back right for the typically short signal path.

Restoration required 32 new Panasonic FC caps and the usual cleaning of controls. Not surprisingly this is a very nice sounding preamp, very neutral in presentation with a nice phono section. I think it would mate nicely with an amplifier with a bit of zip to it.

I love the rear deck feature which I first encountered in the Amber Model 17 preamp long ago. (Hmm again, the Amber family could use a write up.) And I love how pleasant it is to work on. Here it is in my feeble attempt at an artsy photo:

Thrift-O-Rama: Part Deux

2008-07-30T23:22:00.000-07:00

Bill got a chair, I got Chiapper the Dog:Admittedly this is cheating since I found Chiapper a few days before, but I planted him the day Bill and I wandered the city, so that counts for something. These things really work.

On my thrift trek with Bill I found three items of note. The first was a respectable Radio Shack STA 225 receiver. It was the top of the line in '76 and retailed for $400. It sort of works and looks quite nice:This is one of the '70s quasi-quad units with Q Vox. I imagine it is pretty much the David Hafler Dynaquad.Yeah, it set me back $24.99. I ain't proud.

Plus, I found a vintage Magnavox FD 1040SL CD player in excellent condition. This is the second generation Philips player and absolutely built like a tank. It was built in '85 and Orion says it retailed for $390:Inspired by this find I purchased this third generation Magnavox CDB-460 the next day. It had been sitting in another thrift for about a month. This is the same model as my first CD player purchase ever and is from '87. It retailed for $250. I recall awaiting a Target sale on this player. It is a featherweight compared to the 1040:And I found one more interesting item with Bill, but I will save that for a later post. Into the queue they go!

Leak in Wharfy Clothing

2008-07-29T19:48:00.000-07:00

Life is a lot like a box of chocolates the man said, you never know what you are going to get. Case in point, the stylish Wharfedale Linton integrated amplifier. The Orion Blue Book does not list this unit or any other Wharfedale amplifier. But the Linton speakers were a mid to late '70s line so that was the presumed era for this unit. However, when I popped out the nicely done, vertically mounted cards I discovered a Leak 70. The cards said so. The Leak Delta 70 was manufactured from '73 to '78, or so says Orion, so the timeframe was confirmed. Original cost was $260.

Here are the cards, the smaller at the top are the output drivers:The cards are nice to work on once you get past the axials mounted radially and the several oddball values by modern standards. The cap stash was short of 68 and 15 mfd caps so it was time for an order to Digi-Key. But getting to the point where you can pull the caps was the trick.

The case is constructed around the chassis like a wooden puzzle. Top, bottom and sides all come apart, with several screws placed in not so obvious spots. Sheesh.

A relatively modest 24 caps were replaced, with the main output coupling caps modestly beefed up from 2200 to 3300 mfd. Here is the completed chassis:Build quality is very good, but odd. The front panel is just dangling.The transformer at the upper right is mounted upside down from what one usually sees. Next to the transformer are 3 fuses, but the main fuses for each channel are just visible above the transformer. They crumbled in my hand when removed. The amp was advertised as working, but one channel was blown when a resistor went south. Mike had vintage outputs handy, thank you. Mike also swapped small transistors on each card for stability, we spritzed the controls and it was time for a listen.

The Wharfy has loads of punch, slam I guess the British would say. Despite its small size it plays big. Its ergonomics are interesting. The switches in front are a bit odd by American/Japanese standards, and 'phono' is 'disc'. There is a shortage of inputs, so tape in will get a work out for your cd player. But the bottom line is it sounds great and has a very stylish, mid-century Euro look about it. Here it is in full frontal:

Thrift-O-Rama!

2008-07-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of accompanying the king of Thrift store forays on an introductory round of the local treasure trove hide outs. As our main contributor, my host Nat said several times, you just never know....

After what started out as a pleasant jaunt about town with a chance to talk we came across some fine bargains, never know indeed.

Because you see so much stuff that is instantly dismissed one can easily overlook what turns out to be a great bargain. Case in point, office chair!

I had seen a dozen or so half broken cheaply made crap chairs not worth a sit down when a small strange looking blue office chair with a very small back is spotted with a $12.99 price tag. A quick sit down and “wow that's comfortable!” me of the back surgery multiple spinal injury type yelps...

A quick look underneath confirms this is a very quality carefully made item with the Soma Ergonomics name on it. Scarfed it up. Back home after a quick comparison I immediately got rid of my computer chair and have been in seated bliss since!

A quick search on the net informs me this chair sells for $500! This is beyond bargain, this is Christmas!

What does any of this have to do with stereo?

Well besides Nat's great score which I'm sure he'll be writing up in the future, I spotted two fabulous CD players from yesteryear.

A TEAC PD-500 from the late '80's and a DENON DCD-1100 from 1985. Both of these things had $49. price tags on them and had been sitting there for 6 months. A little friendly chit chat with the manager resulted in an 80% discount! Ten bucks apiece!

I figured they were semi functional at best but would be useful in my ongoing soldering/overhaul education with little risk of costly disaster. Well they both work, amazingly better than expected.

The TEAC was obviously a high end unit. Gold plated outs and no less than 10 Rubycon Black Gate capacitors inside. The DENON too was heavy and worked well. Neither liked burned CDs very much but this is par for units from this era. The sound is lovely, very musical across the spectrum. Not quite as many sparklies at the top but a very natural sound.

The build quality of both these units is shockingly superior to the modern mid class stuff available today. Samsung giant killer previously written up is case in point.

Future articles will detail the refurb of these beautiful relics. I plan to put them to work after rejuvenation!

Thrift-O-Rama indeed! A fine day. Thanks Nat for the edumakashun!

The KLH 51 Receiver

2008-07-22T22:55:00.001-07:00

KLH was a quality '60s company that has devolved in the last few decades to low end consumer schlock. Started by the renowned Henry Kloss, Malcolm Low, and Anton Hoffman (each contributing an initial to the name) KLH produced sonic quality with cosmetic style.

I confess I had never seen a KLH receiver in the flesh before the relatively basic 51 arrived.
This unit was clean and in working condition with a modest case of slightly damaged switches. The years tend to be unkind to exposed switches on electronics. These were repaired after this photo was taken. All the bulbs worked and the 51 is quite attractive when lit, blue on silver. Note the KLH logo on the left. Mike likens it to a sonic pressure wave. Whatever, it looks cool.

Here are the innards:
The 51 is a simple 3 board receiver with a two gang tuner section at the right. The amp/preamp board in the center (half of which is visible) had the the two large caps replaced with Sanyos after this photo was taken as a last minute precaution. They tested fine, but it seemed prudent. Not visible is the preamp section underneath the shield just in front of the output stage. The power supply board is at the left. The inputs along the back, just behind the heatsinks, are shielded. It should be noted the vinyl covered exterior case was shielded on the inside, a rare touch in this price class. KLH obviously cared about shielding.

A total of 41 capacitors were changed, mostly with Panasonic FCs.

Back in the '70s a relatively modest receiver was a sonic bargain. Despite relatively modest wattage they could drive a reasonable set of speakers to unreasonable sound levels with grace. The KLH 51 is no exception. The FM tuner sounds good. Even the AM tuner sounds good. And it looks good.

Audio Note M8 Preamp with Phono

2008-07-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

Once in a while something extraordinary walks through the door at Austin Stereo. Case in point, the Audio Note M8 preamplifier. This version has the phono stage which the Orion Blue Book says lists for a cool $35,000. Yes, that is 3 zeros after the comma. I was truly speechless for a second.

First, I would like to make clear the owner graciously consented to this blog post.

The M8 is shockingly heavy for a preamplifier, and for the best of reasons. It is chock full of high quality, hand crafted parts with enough silver wire to make a Hunt brother hyperventilate. And it sounds marvelous.

All is not perfect, however. The case is only so-so. And the reason for the visit was a very small toggle switch in the back that had been sheared off. Small exposed switches on very heavy gear seems to be sub-optimal. So much for perfection.

A pair of photos, hastily shot on the workbench:

Note the dual mono construction with 3 (count 'em: 3!) transformers per channel. Yow. It is probably not clear from the photos, but the construction is essentially double decker with extremely large (presumably) silver foil film caps hiding underneath several of the boards.

$35k is a bit much for a preamp, but this one delivers high quality sound with more than a whiff of unobtanium. It does not rate particularly high on the bang for the buck meter, but Mike and I gave it two thumbs up for uncompromising quality.

Giant Killer.....

2008-07-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

Giant killer.....

In the world of CD players there's about as much variety as the world of automobiles. You can buy a functioning unit brand new for $29. or you can lay out $10K for a Krell or other fine brands. What could possibly justify such disparity you ask? They just play CDs don't they? Reading bunches of ones and zeros that become sound? Yes, true enough, but what is the difference between a Pinto and a Lamborghini? they both have four wheels and ride around don't they?

In a word Performance. Musical performance in this case.

Being of the financially challenged quadrant momentarily, I quickly ruled out the possibility of obtaining said Krell or it's pricey brothers in arms. So what's a would be budget audiophile to do?

Enter the world of Mods! According to many knowledgeable audiophile engineers, there is more bang for the buck to be had with upgrading parts and modifying well designed sound equipment than buying more expensive models.

The subject of today's blog is our case in point. The wonderful Samsung HD841. This mild mannered consumer grade DVD player turns into a Giant Killer after extensive modification.

Why the 841 and not some other medium player? The HD841 is that great combination of high quality critical parts, low price, and roomy enough to allow for extensive modification. It was produced by Samsung for barely a year and was somewhat of a "loss leader" for them. Many features, low price. The original list price was $299. at which price it was already a bargain, but was later reduced to $179 and even lower.

This little beauty plays DVDs, SACDs, DVD-Audios, and CDs. These multiple formats required a host of high quality chipsets which included the famous Burr-Brown 24bit-192khz digital audio converters, or DACs. These high performance chips can produce stunning results when the surrounding support parts are improved, some voodoo modifications made to the stock circuitry, and a beefing up of the power supply. The replacement of anywhere from 40-80 capacitors, the by passing of certain filtering circuits, upgrading the opamp, improving the damping of the crystal oscillator and the entire unit can yield results that truly make this unit a Giant Killer.

Several of the well known modification companies will sell you one of these units with the basic upgrade from around $575. all the way to $1,000. depending on the level of parts quality and the degree of modification. Austin Stereo offers one of these units with their own special recipe of mods for anywhere from $400-450 depending on the degree of overhaul, that includes the price of the machine, not just the mods!

I've had the good fortune to own both the former and the latter and I prefer the unit from Austin Stereo. These units have a small downside if you will by giving a very small audible click when changing tracks. It is part of the bypass procedure that makes this unit so sonically superior. For me a non issue with the level of performance achieved.

A good friend who owns 2 of the Austin Stereo modified HD841s had the chance of an A/B comparison with a $7K unit made by the German hifi manufacturer T & A in one of St. Louis's high end audio showrooms. Although the T & A sounded great, the modded HD841's sound was preferred! You can imagine a very surprised and somewhat miffed salesman...No lie, no exaggeration.

Of course the build quality and materials used in the T & A are vastly superior as one would expect from a CD player that costs $7,000., but the bang for the buck in musical performance from this modded HD841 was stellar, it truly earns the title Giant Killer!

Audition one yourself at Austin Stereo and let your ears be your guide. Happy Listening!

The Kenwood BAsic C2 Preamp: What Was I Thinking???

2008-07-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

The Kenwood C2 is a well thought of late '80s preamp that retailed for $329. It is notable for better than average tone controls, and both moving coil and moving magnet cartridges with selectable impedance. It is very slim and seemingly very well built.

I was looking for an easy project and what could be easier than a preamp? My C2 had a channel out so why not? What was I thinking?

The C2 is a very nice sounding preamplifier with high quality components, but it is pan built. There is no bottom plate to remove to get access to the controls and boards, you have to disassemble the entire unit. This is not for the spatially challenged. Here is my C2, de-origamied:Yowza. This is how the C2 looked just before I started reassembly.

The main board at the right has to be lifted to replace the caps. It is beautifully made and the caps were high quality Elnas. I am not sure if they existed 20 years ago, but many of the original caps were the distinctive Silmic brown.

There are actually 3 boards at the left for the tone controls. The two larger ones are stacked on reassembly. The smallest is still attached and contains the headphone jack and control. This board has 4 caps and was very difficult to work with. (Fateful words.)

There is a very small board at the front that contains the source selector LEDs. The selector switch itself is still attached to the front panel and has the long blue ribbon that connects in the back right corner to the angled switch.

Next to the selector is the small board with the phono switch.

At the far right is the very lovely blue Alps volume pot.

Here is the C2 partially assembled:
The boards at the left have been positioned and the front and back tacked on. Now the story gets ugly. After connecting enough of the unit to test it I discovered that it had a noisy headphone level pot. Noisy to the point that it seemed damaged. This was very possible since the small knob is exposed at the far left of the unit plus it was the source of some handling when replacing some caps. When not being adjusted the unit was quiet and sounded very good, but when adjusting it was subject to hum and drop outs. I needed some consultation.

I took the preamp by Mike's and managed to lose the knob for the headphone level on the trip. Acck! Losing a knob is just awful beyond the loss of utility. Mike recommended resoldering the pot as a first step, but it might have to be replaced. So, a photo and final wrap up will have to wait a bit. Who'd a thunk a preamp would be so exasperating?

NAD 7020 Receiver

2008-07-15T20:04:00.000-07:00

The NAD 7020 receiver is pretty much a NAD 3020 with an analog tuner attached. Dropping a tuner into an integrated chassis doesn't work all that literally, especially in the analog era. Where to put all that tuner display acreage? And the tuner board or boards? The tuning capacitor? And the extra knobs and meters?

NAD solves all this by starting with the 3o20 with a spartan front panel with lots of space for a tuner display. The power LEDs are sacrificed for the tuning knob, but otherwise the family look and feel is retained. And sorry, no meters, just a pair of LEDs under the glass. Here is the NAD 7020:

I have had this unit in my possession for about 10 years. It worked well for the first several, but developed a significant amount of noise and was shelved. I finally got ambitious enough to get it back on the road. Here is the unit under the hood:

The layout has been modified to accommodate the tuning capacitor in the middle of the unit. Immediately to the right on the main board is the AM section and much of the FM section. At the far right is what looks to be a large single board which is in fact two boards. At the front is the FM finals. In back is the phono board. They are both stabilized by the metal connector in the middle that attaches to the side of the chassis.

The main amplifier section is no longer on the main board but is mounted vertically right in the middle of the unit. It is a dead ringer for its analog in the 3020.

The output transistors have been rotated 90 degree and are clearly visible just to the left of the main amplifier board.

The tone control circuitry is strung out at the front, just behind the controls and appear identical to the 3020.

It should be noted that the very convenient horizontal back deck of the 3020 has been sacrificed to accommodate the added circuitry and maintain a similarly sized box. Too bad.

All 3 boards were easily popped from their connectors and a total of 79 capacitors were replaced with new Panasonic FCs. It should be noted that I really dislike replacing the pair of small value caps around the bass control. Next time I will find some smaller fingers. As with the 3020 the main power supply capacitors were modestly upgraded to 3300 mfd.

The 7020 sounds as nice as the 3020 with the benefit of a very nice tuner. The tuner has only a centering mechanism akin to the Advent 300, but is very musical.

A final note: the front panel of the 7020 is much stouter than that of the 3020 and not nearly as prone to damage at the corners.

To Silver Solder, or Not

2008-07-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

Mike has been grumbling lately about silver solder.

Mike has been a solder-sans-silver sort of guy since he was about 12, but has recently started using solder with a 4% silver content on occasion and has suggested a discussion of the topic on this blog. It should be noted that at least one customer requested a major resoldering of a unit and even provided the boutique solder to accomplish it. On listening this customer found the previously listenable unit rendered unlistenable, so Mike has a bit of a negative bias regarding silver solder.

Here are some pros and cons of silver solder, as suggested by Mike:

Pros:

Better conduction,
A harder bead (which might be beneficial for some high stress connections),
A higher melting point (which might be beneficial for some high temp situations).

Cons:

Faster cooling/setting which can cause imperfect connections,
Higher melting point makes it more difficult to desolder,
Fouling of the soldering tip,
More expensive, sometimes ridiculously so,
A tendency to bead rather than flow into the connection,
A tendency to look like a cold solder joint even when properly completed.

Silver solder can be a pain in the ass to use, although this has to be almost completely dependent on the the percentage of silver and other metals in the mix. I reserve opinion on the percentage of voodoo alleged in some products. The only positive that would seem to truly matter is the higher degree of connectivity which in turn could affect the ultimate goal of all this madness, the sound quality of the unit being soldered.

Anectdotally, we have at least one example of a consumer of silver solder unhappy with the sonic outcome. But the circumstance was essentially a substantial resoldering of entire boards which is different from what I do. I have used the Dayton 4% silver solder with very positive results, but it is very difficult to distinguish the effect of 40-80 capacitors replaced vs. the solder used. (Not to mention cleaning pots and switches!) In my experience the very popular Radio Shack silver solder, which I believe is 2% silver, is easier to use. So, I have no answers to all this at the moment. I tolerate the slight additional difficulty of using the Dayton product and trust that it is a better product at some level.

At some future time we need to take two vintage components and refurbish them identically with the exception of the solder used. All solder joints in the unit should be redone, one with a high quality conventional solder and another with a 4% silver solder. And then call out the golden ears in the group to see what they hear, so to speak. I think two modestly sized, high quality receivers would be the best targets for this effort since they are relatively cheap to acquire, tend to occupy a sonic sweet spot, and provide a variety of areas to test (e.g. tuner, amp, preamp, tone control.)

This topic is very similar to one that has made the rounds lately at Austin Stereo, the effect of using presumably 'better' capacitors in speaker crossovers. A number of recent examples have resulted in emphasized high frequencies, the dreaded shrill speaker. Better components do not guarantee better sound, ultimately. Look for a more thorough discussion of this topic in the future.

Sansui Large!

2008-07-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

After reading Nat's fine article lauding the sonic reverie of baby Sansui I was compelled to introduce one of my favorites, the Sansui G-8000!

This 60 pound behemoth from 1978 was technically the number two receiver right behind the flagship G-9000. Practically identical innards made up for the few less whistles and bells of the big dog.

While the 9000 was rated @ 165 wpc, Sansui down rated the 8000 to 125 wpc so as not to take market share from their flagship.

In reality both of these beasts put out an honest 200 wpc, measured, before any distortion set in.

A quick look under the hood will show all that marvelous engineering and that enormous toroidal transformer dominating the landscape. It also has a switch for the option of either capacitor or direct coupling.

At 22" x 17" x 8" and a sea of glistening chrome, glass, and rosewood cover, this is truly a sight! Just those volume knobs go for $50 now!

The sound was and still is some of the finest audio I've ever heard from a receiver.

After receiving the once over from Austin Stereo which included a dozen new caps and a few additional bypass caps, this beauty is singing through a set of refurbished JBL Jubals like none of those black boxes at Circuit City ever dreamt of!

True electronic art of a very high order that we will not see again, certainly not available for the middle class for which it was designed.

In 1978 this fabulous receiver sold for $990. When you convert just for inflation since then it equals $3,800.!! Even so, when inspected inside and out by engineering experts, the opinion was that to manufacture the same item today, including machining, parts, and labor, you would be looking at $5-6000 dollars!

What middle class family today could afford such luxury?

At the ridiculous price of $4-600. for this unit on the used market, it doesn't take a geneticist to realize, DEAL!

The superb construction of these great Sansuis will allow lifetimes of use with the periodic (20-30 years) maintenance that any fine machine requires.

Long Live Sansui! A great standard bearer from that golden age of receiver art from Japan, 1967-1982.

Sansui 210 Receiver

2008-07-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

The Sansui 210 has to be the lowest powered Sansui solid state receiver ever offered. It is clearly an early '70s model and it is as stripped down in features as it is in power. No balance or mute available, just treble and bass pots along with tape monitor and loudness boost switches. This unit was in very good cosmetic condition.

It worked, sort of, on initial power up on the variac, but was very shakey with a channel imbalance and very dirty controls. The tuning capacitor was especially noisy, sounding like raking gravel. Here how it looks with the top off:
This is a two board unit with the upper being the tuner. The Toshiba outputs are mounted on the very simple heatsink mounted vertically just in front of the transformer. In the photo above it runs from the left to the middle of the unit. There is very little power supply capacitance, just 3 1000 mfd caps just in front of the heatsink. The phono section is shielded and just to the left of the internal antenna. The shield was removed when this photo was taken.

I re-capped the entire unit, a mere 36 caps, and spritzed the controls. Voila! The sound was clean as a whistle. While not exactly a power house the amp had lots of life from the positively cute Toshiba output transistors. The FM tuner was surprisingly sensitive and picked up numerous stations without benefit of an antenna. The AM section was decent with the internal ferrite antenna. No 'not a handle' warnings needed for this unit. Here is a view of the front.

The sound was surprisingly musical. The treble control was a bit heavy handed; bass and loudness were a bit bloomy in quality but serviceable. All in all this would have been a sonic bargain in 1973 from one of the finest of the era's manufacturers. Mated with efficient speakers this would be the perfect foundation for a vintage dorm room system.

NAD 3020A

2008-07-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

The NAD 3020A is the second generation of the acclaimed 3020 integrated amplifier. The Orion Blue Book indicates this model sold from '82 to '84 which agrees with the date codes on the 52 capacitors that were replaced. Here are the gutty works:

Build quality is uneven. The front panel is plastic and prone to damage. Four small screws attach it to the chassis (two are seen above) and bumps to the corners crack the very thin plastic at the screw holes. The chassis itself is a bit flimsy and is built with 3 rails, two of which are visible at the ends. The third runs underneath the middle of the unit and is secured by 4 screws, two of which are visible above between the output transistor pairs and just north of the 4 main filter caps. The middle rail must be removed to access the caps. Despite some cheesiness in the overall build quality the solder work was decent and the traces were stout enough to stay put during desoldering.

There was no indication of prior work on this unit, and the amp was functional although a bit muzzy sounding with the usual pot grunge evident. All capacitors were replaced with Panasonic FCs with the exception of a pair of small, low voltage 1000 mfd caps adjacent to the main filters. My higher voltage FCs were too large to fit so lower voltage Sanyos were used. The 4 main power supply caps were modestly upgraded from 2200 mfd to 3300 mfd. Pots and switches were cleaned with Deoxit Gold and Blue Stuff as appropriate.

The results of the refurb were very positive. This is a great sounding amplifier with excellent bang for the buck. Despite the 20 watts per side it rocked the test bench Boston A40s with 'Enter Sandman' and barely lit the 5 watt LED on the display. One last pic for posterity:

The Rotel RX 802 Receiver

2008-06-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

This is a truly unique receiver. It is 24" wide by 14.5" deep by 5" high and weighs in at a very nice 30 pounds. There is definitely a European feel to the design. It is rated for 440 watts so should produce something in the neighborhood of 100 watts output per channel. The '93 Orion Blue Book says it was a late '70s model and sold for $500.

For the detail oriented reader, the beer at the back is a Shiner Hefeweizen.

Here is a view of the unit with the top off.
Construction quality is first rate. The Toshiba output transistors are mounted on a heat sink that runs along the back and bottom of the unit. The output board is very elegantly laid out and is immediately in the front of the outputs. All caps were replaced with Panasonic FC's. The relay board, immediately in front of the output board, had a problem with one cap in failure. All caps were replaced and the relay burnished. The AM board is the small board at the back right in front of the tuning capacitor. The FM board is immediately in front of the AM board. All caps were replaced. The phono board is at the far right of the FM board, mounted vertically and shielded. Again, all caps were replaced.

The tone control board is mounted at the front, immediately behind the controls. This board is barely visible from the top, under the lamp shield for the display, and is upside down in relationship to the other boards. This board was a challenge to replace all the caps, so I had no objections when Mike was motivated to do it. Thanks, Mike.

Here is the bottom of the unit. A small shield has been removed from the FM board for clarity. The tone control board is visible at the front.

Listening has just begun and it sounds very nice despite a complete lack of burn in. I will provide an update once it has a few hours on the caps.

With the exception of the tone control board this unit was a pleasure to work on. Approximately 80 capacitors were replaced. Only the two 6800 mfd main power supply caps were not changed. All switches and potentiometers were cleaned with Deoxit Gold or Blue Stuff as appropriate.

UPDATE: I am very pleased to announce that this unit has passed the very difficult Robert listening test when matched with the very respectable Kef Coda bookshelf speakers. Robert is a very senior and skilled technician and a musician to boot, so his unsolicited praise is highly valued.

The Yaqins are coming!

2008-06-23T10:34:00.000-07:00

Yaqin makes a line of amps and integrateds that are designed in Japan. The parts are also Japanese and then they are assembled in China. I took a chance after much reading and ordered their top model (power wise) the MC100B, a 65 wpc @ 8ohms dual mono block integrated using 4 KT-88 tubes along with 4 6SN7's and a pair of 12AX7's.

As recommended by many forums, we upgraded some of the caps and the front end tubes which yielded a good improvement. It's had a couple hundred hours now and it sounds really good. A considerable step up from my very fine modified Dyna ST-70. For the money, (I hate that expression), it is a superb sounding amp. I would gladly put this up against a Conrad Johnson Premier 11 to see what all those extra thousands actually deliver.

As much as I would like to buy only American made products, the destruction of our currency has placed most of hifi out of the reach of the middle class. Even the Yaqins are steadily going up.

Very happy with the MC100B, I tried out the next smaller model, the MC-10L. This is a single power transformer 52 wpc @ 8ohm integrated using 4 EL-34s and 4 6922s for the front.

Again, an upgrade of a dozen or so French tin foil film caps, some photo flash electrolytics to beef up the power section and some NOS 6922s yielded very good results. It is still breaking in but it's amazing to hear sound this good for this little money.

Why aren't we building amps like this? The quality of the assembly and soldering does not suggest slave labor but real care. They are of course built to a price point but honest quality is offered for the money with most of the cost going into the Japanese made transformers.

I think whether we like it or not, the Asian hifi industry is making real inroads here. These units along with many others by similar manufacturers should not be dismissed as "Chinese junk". Have a look and a listen yourself.

Long live Conrad Johnson!

Sounds and Current rigs

2008-06-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

I have the great pleasure to be listening to the best system I've ever had. It's been a slow wonderful journey so far and the ears just keep growing ;-) I'm not really a gear head, for me it's real purpose is the music, although I love tinkering and soldering. (I may have to eat those words as I find my self falling in love with great equipment that has been fixed up and saved from the land fill).......
Being a serious guitar player for more than 30 years I traded in some of the gorgeous old guitar amps of the 60's that I had acquired for a serious journey into tube hifi.
From the sixties to the nineties I listened mainly to those fabulous Japanese receivers from the 1970's, the golden era. Over the years I bought new the Sansui 3000A, 5000, and the 9090. Those powered my Rectilinear IIIa's and later the stacked Advent A3's for a good twenty years. I kept my tube equipment for guitar playing and that nice clean SS sound for home hifi. That is until I ran into Mike Manulik, owner operator of Austin Stereo. I came there originally to have my Sansui repaired and over the following years came to meet a great bunch of wonderfully eccentric audiophiles. Mike is a passionate audiophile not to mention a very experienced and intuitive tech. Everything he touches sounds better when it's done. I learned a ton from Mike and the other members of our stereo club circle. I'm now happy to say that every time I spin some vinyl there are 18 tubes glowing in the dark. No SS can compare...;-)

Present main rig: Austin Stereo modified YAQIN MC-100B tube amp, Conrad Johnson Premier 10 preamp, Conrad Johnson EV-1 phono preamp, Austin Stereo modified Samsung HD-841 DVD & SACD player, Technics SL1200MKII turntable with AT 440MLa cartridge and a pair of KEF R107 speakers. Custom interconnects by Austin Stereo, plus ZU Oxyfuels. Speaker cables are ZU Julians.

Gear

2008-06-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

Gear porn is a guy thing. In fact it seems to be mostly an old guy thing. And we are legion.

You see us hanging around flea markets and thrift stores hoping to discover a vintage piece of gear. It might be something we have never seen before. Or it might be something we never could have afforded back in the day. Or it might be something we owned long ago and want to own again. It could be tube or solid state. Buyer's regret is rare, non-buyer's regret is guaranteed. And the garage is always full.

I date my addiction to 1987, and I still have my first purchase: a Mac 1900 receiver in a wooden case that I bought for 75 dollars. It sort of worked. I have had it so long it probably needs another restoration.

Gear doesn't have to work since I know the guy who can fix it. (That's you, Mike.) Cosmetics are important. I am often more interested in how a component looks and feels more than how it actually works. Back in the day I spent real money restoring my Mac. But one primary focus of this blog will be the fixing of gear. Most of the posters on this blog will be amateurs so mistakes will be made.

Sometimes we get all esoteric and excited about vacuum tubes, transformers and capacitors. I have seen people snatch tubes out of the hands of others at ham fests. I was amazed someone didn't lose teeth. Part of this blog will describe our emotional involvement with such tiny inanimate objects.

In the coming weeks several of us will begin to document our restoration projects. My first is going to be a Rotel RX-802 receiver from the late '70s. It worked ok but just got a fresh spritz of caps and a good cleaning, hopefully sufficient to give it another reliable 30 years of making music.

System #1

2008-06-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

Here's the system that gets the vast bulk of the listening in my cave. Yes, that is a Toshiba SD-3950 DVD player atop the legendary Technics SA-150 receiver. High res it is not, but good enough for my purposes. These two pieces are physically very shallow and work flawlessly. So far...

Note the smeared 'Technics' above the power switch. It is a reminder to always test whether Windex is safe to use on your gear. It obviously was not on this early '80s , bottom of the line receiver.

I use this rig to A/B small speakers on my desk. Near field listening for fun and profit. There is just an 'A' at the moment, the quite lovely Mission 750 Limited Edition. The Missions sound quite nice, although I prefer the little A/D/S 400 speakers. Bass is respectable with an overall polite presentation. I need to get them up a bit to get their best impression. That tweeter at the bottom is a bit challenged.

Note in the back left: the smallest of the Indigo speakers from the great white north, badge askew. I will write those up in the future. They were a bit lifeless on the desk top, the little Technics was not up to driving them adequately.

Also in the future: various Minimus 7 tweakings, a scrufty pair of Braun minis, and a Dana Audio revisit.

bat's current gear

2008-06-15T02:26:00.000-07:00

Source: Krell KPS 30i CD player
Preamp: Jeff Rowland Consonance (w/o phono)
Amp: Conrad Johnson MF-2250
Speakers: Axiom M60 II (stereo pair)
Interconnects: AudioQuest (mid?-level)
Speaker wires: samo
AC power source: 2 pairs of PS Audio "Power Ports", each one fed by a
separate 12awg cable back to separate breakers, and feeding nothing else. The Amp is fed by one and the rest of the system is fed by the other, via an 8 outlet Belden surge protector, which plugs into one section of the other PP, the preamp having the second section to itself.
The power cables for the Amp and Preamp are 10 & 12awg resp.
both ends terminated with hospital grade connectors.