So what is your favorite vintage stereo amp? McIntosh, Marantz, Fisher or???

Those are great. But no pictures and it never happened...

-Bill

 

sweetness

 

Are those 1569s, or 1570s?

I've got a pair of 1570Bs gathering dust.

 

They are indeed Altec 1570b units. I restored them electrically and adapted them to hi-fi use by adding a nice RCA input and 5 way binding posts to each. 165wpc of triode power!
-Bill

 

Those 811A filaments will light a room.

 

A Sansui AU710 Integrated amp. I'm a ***** with a camera, but I'll get my son-in-law take some pictures.

 

my favourites:

McIntosh Mc225


McIntosh Mc30
a pair of these:


Pilot SA-264


Pilot AA-904's


If 1979 counts as vintage, my David Berning EA2-150, the white one under the Berning EA-230.

 

I used to use and still have Quad IIs, THE classic british valve power amp,
the I heard a Radford STA 15.......and my world changed.

Impossible to find affordable, everyone I have ever met who likes valve amps agrees these are the best valve amps ever built.

Sorry Mcintosh, not even close!

 

I have an HH Scott 208 paired with a 355 preamp / tuner, so I better say HH Scott 208.

I do like Mac, Fisher and HH Scott vintage glass gear.

 

Only speaking of what I have owned, my first choice goes to my beloved and recently overhauled, by Craig at NOS VALVES, SCOTT 299b. At only 19 or so watts of power, this tube little beauty is my go to piece, for warm sounding playback!

I also have and love my brother's kindly handed down, SANSUI 500A

Also, just for fun, I pulled out of storage just for this thread, one of my very first "real" amp and speakers (pictured boxed and un-boxed), super early 10 watts of REALISTIC power.

 

They did indeed. I ran them full range for a while but they couldn't deliver bass depth and warmth into lower impedances and I didn't want to damage them. So I bi-amped them, using the Hafler in the picture initially on bass duty. I replaced the Hafler with a Bryston. Later, and you can see it in another photo, I got a big C-J tube power amp, an MV100, and used it both full range and then in a bi-amp configuration with the Bryston. Not because it wouldn't handle the lower end, just because I thought the Bryston did a better job of it. Having two stereo amps in the rack was way better utilization of space than a stack of monos.
-Bill

 

Here is my Scott 233 integrated mated with a Scott 310e tuner. The sound is absolutely sublime. Both units were restored by Craig at NOSValves, who did a phenomenal job.

 

When I first got them one of the amps was perfect and the other was a bit noisy so I just didn't bother listening to them together much. It was just a pain in the butt. I even had a friend of a friend work on it. He changed the loudness pot, he said it might be bad. He changed it but it made the levels of the amps, when used together, out of whack and the one he worked on still had some hiss. I have had them for about 4 years I guess. Then I decided to have the guy work on them again and put the old loudness pot back in. The man is an electronics expert and he really enjoys a mystery. One night he got up and fiddled around with the 'bad' amp and traced all the wires to see where each was going. He found out that the amp was wired incorrectly and he says it was wired incorrectly in the factory! He fixed it and now the amps are super silent.

 

That happens. A lot of amps were kit amps though and so they were not factory built. Those had all sorts of differences as the wiring would not only be routed differently, if correctly, but there were often different parts used as well. When done very well, it would be possible to exceed the factory specs by using better components. It's usually hard to beat factory wiring technique as they have all the experience from building many examples of the same unit. It doesn't have to be wired the same as long as it is quiet and there can be several "correct" ways to do so. It's when a wire gets too close to a particular component, wire, etc that it can cause noise and that can be hard to find.
-Bill

 

This is not my best sounding amp but for fun and no hard to find tube guilt worries I really enjoy using my Magnavox 6v6 PP. Painted her myself

 

Ha, ha - nice! How about my monos?:



-Bill

 

My Scott 222C:

 

The Altecs were really made for ball stadium horns. The amp is rated at 160-180W, but if you look at the output transformer it's not much bigger than a 60W Dynaco MkIII's. So there's not enough core or inductance to really support low frequencies if you're running it at full power.

On most of the amps there was a high-pass filter on the input, but it was easy to bypass. If I recall correctly the components were soldered to the transformer socket.

 

Those look great!!

 

Fisher 400.

 

You are correct. Boy, that bit about the high-pass filter is bringing back some memories. I had forgotten about that but bypassing it was one of the mods that I performed to use it full range or be able to select my own filter point and type. It sounded nice full-range but the speakers that I had were not a good match for it at all. With appropriately high impedance speakers and a preamp with deep reaching tone controls, it would have helped that situation and made an outstanding rig. That was a long time ago. I later came across a pair of the VOTT speakers which would have been ridiculous with those. Wayyy too much iron and wood for my room though (talk about low WAF...) and I don't think that building an auditorium for it would have been practical.

-Bill

 

Those pictures of Scotts make me pissed all over again that my tech dropped a screwdriver (or something) on my otherwise pristine faceplate, leaving a dent.

 

Here is the one that I restored for myself just a while back:




-Bill

 

That's a hazard of the trade unfortunately. I've restored lots of very valuable amps and worked on some equally valuable guitars and they both scare the crap outta me to handle tools and soldering irons around. If you scratch, dent, or burn something that is one of a kind or that isn't made any longer, there isn't much that you can do about it. You practically have to replace the whole thing to get the part needed when it's a trim or cover piece like a faceplate. Fortunately, I've not damaged anything. I need a piece of wood to knock on when I say that though. I have damaged a couple of my own "toys" not being as careful as I am with paying repair items.
-Bill

 

I have a Fisher 500c and a Pioneer SX-1280. Both have their charms. The Pioneer is a fat bottom girl that'll make your rocking world go round. It's a fun ride, but the Fisher is the one I settled down with. I seem to get more involved with the music when it's played on my fisher. I'm at work so unfortunately I can't post pictures.