Speaker Taps on Fisher X-1000

Hello,

When I had my Fisher X-1000 brought back to life several years ago the original guy that worked on it made some questionable decisions. One thing he did was remove the old screw-based speaker taps and connect some modern gold plated speaker connectors to the 8 ohm taps only. For years I had them wired up to Original Large Advents. I got rid of those and added Canton Karat 940s rated at 4 ohms.

Do I have anything to gain by restoring the 4 ohm taps and connected the speakers to those?

 

You should use the 4 ohm taps for 4 ohm speakers. The transformers are designed to match the impedance for the output tubes to run safely and properly.

 

I have tried my KEF LS50's with both the 8-ohm and 4-ohm taps on my '59 X-100, and the 4-ohm taps sounded considerably better.

 

Thanks, would this be a relatively straightforward thing to do myself? I could jury rig something myself prior to taking it back for service the next time it needs it.

 

Can you post a picture of what your Fisher looks like now (with the mods to the speaker connectors). I would like to see what the connections look like.

I'm not sure if you are saying that the 4-8-16 ohm taps are gone and only an 8 ohm connection (with modern binding post) exists instead?

Scott

 

Hey Scott,

Sure, here's what it looks like:

 

Why this is displaying upside down I have no idea. The source image is not upside down.

 

The "tech" bollocked this up pretty good, requiring a new terminal plate to be fabricated now. It was totally unnecessary!

This is what an unmolested one looks like:

 

Yes, he made some other choices that make me very lucky that it's even still running. Took it to someone later who fixed the most critical issues.

I am tempted to try a temporary fix myself. Living in the city, it's difficult to move this thing around. If I open this up, will I find a way to connect a wire to the 4 ohm tap?

 

This how I dealt with the antiquated screw terminals:

 

Join AudioKarma.org and ask on the Fisher sub-forum. There are some very knowledgable people there who can advise you.

 

That is slick! Hindsight

 

It shouldn't be too hard for a skilled tech to fabricate new terminal plates with different impedance taps.

 

I was in the same boat a few years ago with a vintage Accuphase amp. Luckilly I was able to source an original Accuphase speaker terminal strip being sold "for parts" in ebay. Good luck and I hope you could restore that back to its original form.

 

I'm not overly concerned about making it original again at the moment. At the moment all I want to do is access the 4 ohm taps without taking it out of the house.

Did this tech effectively just snip off the terminals? If so I would think that I could open it up and and at least connect wires to them.

 

I would be very careful about messing around in there if you don't know what you're doing. Have a qualified pro do it.

 

Ditto. It's already been botched once.
-Bill

 

I would say that I got very lucky, this outcome could have been a lot worse. I got my question answered in about a half hour over at AK. The solution might be of interest: Speaker Taps on My X-1000 | Audiokarma Home Audio Stereo Discussion Forums »

 

Those outputs look really tired. The sockets look beat up from heat and the getter looks thin. They are making 7591 tubes again.

 

That's a real botch job. You call this guy a tech?

 

No, I called him a "tech," not a tech.

 

This guy did a lot of stupid ****. He moved the on/off switch from the volume pot to another switch that didn't support the high current, and it almost ruined it. A replacement switch was not easy to find. Now it's always switched on and I use a power strip to turn it on and off.

Lesson learned. It performs perfectly now after a bona fide expert fixed it. In general, I'm not such a purist that the unit needs to be in 100% original condition down to minor parts like speaker terminals when there are benefits to using modern parts. After all the first thing to be replaced was the power cord. But to removing original parts and not replacing them with modern equivalents is the thing that really bugs me. There are still a few stray features the guy disabled that I get fixed when it goes back in for service.

 

Hi Josh, I hope the questionable "tech" was not the gentleman in Long Island who I recommended. He had done work for me in the past but nothing along the lines of reconfiguring the schematics of gear for "sonic upgrades." If so, my apologies.

Recommendations are tricky, you know "past performance is not a gaurentee of future results." I know he used to work on tube-driven guitar amps, which have very different objectives. Maybe his reasoning got derailed somewhere along the way.

Regardless, it is my understanding that he passed away a few years ago.

I'm very glad that you were able to have your gear straightened out and restored to proper performance. If it was done locally, I'd love to know who did your work I have some HH Scott gear that needs a little TLC.

 

It could have been, but in any case don't worry! The repair was done so long ago, before I knew nothing more about tube gear than it sounds good and I want one! I am at fault for approving the work, it's not like he didn't tell me what he was going to do. Then through my own research I realized that there were problems that needed to be fixed, and what I've heard is that the X-1000 is especially challenging to work on, even for those who specialize in Fisher. I've had the critical issues fixed for several years now, and it's just once in a while when relatively minor things like this speaker terminal issue pop up.

The folks over at AK recommended an easy fix that will carry me through the next time I need major service, and I'm hearing these Canton's properly. It's all good man!