I couldn’t find an all-purpose thread to discuss all things vintage audio equipment. I have borrowed from the”and conversation” music threads created by our colleagues here in the forums because I like the opened-ended nature of the concept. In this thread we can discuss all types of vintage audio equipment: amps, receivers, tape decks, tuners, speakers, etc. we can trouble-shoot problems, share adventures, ask about sources of vintage equipment, favorites and anything else regarding the topic. I hope this may be of interest to old fans and the curious as well.
Let me start off by sharing my recent adventure with my Sansui SP-3000 loudspeakers. These had been in storage for awhile. I pulled them out, cleaned them up, opened up the backs and deoxited the tone control switches and worked them for a good deal of time. I visually checked the crossovers. Put it all back together and hooked them up to my Jolida TD 102b and put on some CDs to play while I did some other stuff. This morning I started some more serious listening after putting about 5 hours on them yesterday. I am presently listening to Landowski’s Piano Concerto2 with Annie D’Arco, pianist and Martinon conducting the Orchestre National de L’O.R.T.F., a recording from 1970. The internet is rife with criticism of these speakers but with this type of music they are singing. Apart from that should caps be replaced? Perhaps as they are originals, but I am in no rush to do so as the speakers sound so good at this point.
In my opinion, if the speakers sound great don't change anything! I've been known to change the hook up wire (internal speaker wire) in some of my vintage speakers as I wasn't really happy with the way they sounded. I thought they could sound better by replacing the thin hook up wire and I was right! But I'd never do that with my Tannoy speakers. Never. For example, changing capacitors will change the sound and not always for the better.
That’s what I am thinking. My Klipsch LaScala were letting me know that the cross-overs were shot when I got them and the new Crites re-builds were very welcome. I think I am very happy with these SP-3000s right now. I forgot what they do well.
Before the thread takes off…What are the parameters, can we define vintage? Any hardware before the 1990s? Dead and/or obsolete technology (DCC, audio on videotape, some may say r-t-r, etc.)? Whatever one deems as ‘old stuff’? What about Retro (think Lintons, recent KLH and JBL)?
Sure-I guess we can be looking pre-90s as a general guide, but maybe expand here and there to include 20th century discontinued gear. We will be somewhat flexible.
There is also stuff that is both new and old. I have a "new" linestage that was built not long ago by a custom builder that included the new feature of remote control of volume. However, the chassis, most of the parts and the tubes utilized in the linestage are VERY vintage. The signal tubes are Western Electric 310's and 348's (the 348's are close to unobtainable, but, they last a very long time. The last listing I saw had them for sale at $1600 each for tubes that were not in working condition). My amplifier is also a sort of recent rebuild of a Western Electric 133a amplifier--it has been built as a stereo amp, it utilizes the correct input and output transformers (618B input transformers, 171C output transformers), has a bunch of vintage resistors and paper in oil caps, runs 349 output tubes (four of them) and 348 input/driver tubes (four of them). My speakers were built in 2003 utilizing old school technology--twin 12" alnico magnet woofers with pleated paper surrounds, a horn/compression driver midrange, and a modern bullet tweeter. The midrange horn and compression driver has been replaced with Western Electric 713b drivers and 12025 sectoral horn (the open architecture of the midrange and tweeter of this speaker made the replacement extremely easy). Best guess on the 713b driver is that it is from the early 1940s.
The Dahlquist DQ-10 taught me a lot about speakers. They were just asking to be modified. For those who don't know about this revolutionary speaker, it was a 5-way design that pioneered time alignment of a speaker, so that the sound from all five drivers hit your ears at the same moment. Jon Dahlquist, along with original, scientific research by Bang & Olufsen,* showed how necessary this was. Phase alignment wasn't considered in designing speakers before that. Nowadays, you wouldn't build a high-end speaker without factoring in its phase response. The other revolutionary part of Dahlquist's design was mounting the drivers on baffle boards. Removed from a box, this opened up the speaker's sound, allowing for superior imaging. It's hard to imagine tweeters on the top of B&W speakers without the steps Jon Dahlquist took first. They were far from perfect. Structurally, they looked like a high school shop experiment. The drivers were cheap. There were too many of them, so in a small room, you could hear the sound of a saxophone jumping from driver to driver as a scale was played. The DQ-10 was big, inefficient and had no deep bass. But at $800 a pair, they were an affordable, high-end speaker. Buying my first pair in 1976, I quickly got on the modification train. The Absolute Sound and Stereophile were full of ideas to make them better. The two most common were mirror imaging the speakers and replacing the cheap capacitors with mylar ones. Both mods were soon adopted by the factory. I applied Mortite, a non-hardening clay usually used to patch leaky window frames, to the back of the baffle boards, damping their vibrations. Upgrading the wiring was an obvious mod, as was removing the tweeter fuse. The DQ-10 is one of only two speakers I ever purchased twice. We traded in a pair at the store. I had to have them. They were like running into an old girlfriend. With the help of a soldering iron and a hacksaw, we got together again for one, last, fun fling. * In the early 1970s, B&O proved we can hear a phase shift of as little as 30° at volumes as low as 70 dB SPL.
Not exactly hi-fi, my parents gave me a Panasonic RE-7430 AM-FM Radio for making it into one of the top three public high schools in NYC. It had phono and tape inputs too! Here's what it looked like: No, that's not mine; I gave my RE-7430 away some 4 years later, ready to move on to something better after putting up with an incessant low-level hiss and limited sonic range & dynamics. Looking back, I should have kept it; sure, it's not hi-fi but it does look cool! About a little over a half year later as a reward for getting great grades in the first half of my freshman HS year (and probably as an incentive to keep up the good work), my dad gifted me my first cassette deck- a JVC CD-1666: This one I still have, although it's been unused since the mid-late 1970s. I kept it after all these years as a museum piece, my first gear that could be at least remotely thought of as hi-fi. (Full disclosure: The above was first posted in the SHMF poll & thread How old were you when you first owned your own HI-Fi / Stereo?)
i run my DQ10s as my daily drivers in what once was an all vintage system i love vintage things, cars, clothing, objects, etc, there's just something i admire about things built to last i don't have the hearing abilities some describe on this forum and they sound great to me i am curious about what the benefit is of bypassing the fuse on the tweeters
I find SH forums more geared to cutting edge contemporary gear. I go to Audiokarma to get my vintage fix.
@Daedalus Great idea for a thread, I’ve got some vintage stuff, Tannoy Berkeleys 1976 , Infinity Quantum JRs 1978 Klipsch Quartets 1992 so think probably old enough? speakers, Yamaha CA1000 amp 1973, Yamaha CT800 Tuner 1974 and Stax SR-X Mark III 1975 I’ll post about them in due course but for now a BIG for starting what I hope will be a long lasting and lively thread
Very nice mix of 1970s to modern going on here @crazy eights! Ol' vintage Onkyo; I loved the looks of the A5-A7-A10, and that T-9 is darn purtee too! What's the gear behind the Super Fly LP? I see in your Profile you have a Shure M97xE, Audio Technica VM95ML, and a Pickering V15; on which TTs do you use these on? Still on the original styli, or have you changed out the diamonds & shanks? Love your rug on top of the shag carpet; where did you get it?
hi velo thanks for asking the gear behind curtis is a sony minidisc player and a dahlquist DQ LP1 that i no longer use and should sell off since i installed a REL sub the pickering is now in a drawer somewhere, the shure is on my AR XB with a JICO ML, i have the original stylus with a snapped cantilever that will get re tipped someday and the AT is on my dual 1219 i also have a pair of AR9LS that i occasionally hook up when i want to go subsonic the rug i bought off the internet - don't remember where but when i saw the price of carpet underlayment i decided to get the cool rug instead
Best vintage equipment I ever owned was made by McIntosh. A C29 preamp and MC2105 amp. Both had been refurbished by the now retired Terry DeWick. I sold them a few years ago when I downsized before an out of state move. I did keep my restored KLH Model 5 speakers and a restored Harman Kardon A500 integrated tube amp. I also kept three restored Dual turntables that I had bought from Bill Neumann at fixmydual.com. I love the vintage gear if it's been properly restored.
As with a lot of audio mods, there is the theory and what you can actually hear. The theory is that a fuse is a resistor which changes its value as it heats and cools. A component that does that is a bad thing to put in front of a tweeter. Could I hear it when I bypassed the fuse? I don't think so. As I never blew it when it was in the circuit, its removal just seemed like a good idea.
@Daedalus thank you for starting this thread. I have a collection of what I consider "vintage" Rogers speakers, as they were made by Rogers before the company ceased manufacturing in the UK (circa 1999). A Chinese (HK) company (Wo Kee Hong Holdings) bought the rights to the Rogers name and intellectual property. The company was moribund in the West from approximately 1999 to 2015. Circa 2015, one the original UK Rogers engineers, Andy Whittle, approached Wo Kee Hong Holdings about relaunching the Rogers brand for the Western market. Rogers was reborn with the world-wide re-launch of the Rogers BBC LS 3/5a and the Rogers BBC LS 5/9. I am not sure if you will agree with my thinking that pre-1999 Rogers speakers (like mine) are "vintage." By my definition vintage could include products from companies like Rogers that ceased trading (even if they, like Rogers, resumed trading again at a later date).
thanks for the reply i have the later "improved" DQ10s - mirror imaged with the yellow caps i've read from reliable sources that changing out the blue cap will improve the sound, but as you can see i haven't done the mod yet
...Would love to get one of these Jim Rodgers speakers: BBC - A History of the World - Object : Jim Rodgers JR149 LS5/3A design speakers And here's a review: Jim Rogers JR149 (Vintage) | Hi-Fi News (hifinews.com)
The Rogers JR149 are classic (Jim) Rogers speakers from the Rogers company's 1st go-round. Rogers has had a long and complicated history (documented by Rogers historian Mark Hennessy in the following pages). Hi-Fi › BBC and Rogers Loudspeakers The original (Jim) Rogers company ended in bankruptcy and was bought and re-launched by the UK Swisstone company (who already owned the Chartwell brand) circa 1979. It was Rogers Swisstone that launched all the Classic Rogers BBC monitors like the Rogers BBC LS 3/5a, the Rogers BBC LS 3/6, the Rogers BBC LS 5/9 and Rogers BBC LS 5/8 (all built under license from the BBC) as well as many other Rogers models that we have come to associate with the brand. After a 20 year run, Rogers Swisstone suffered the same fate as the original Rogers. It ceased manufacturing again, it's assets were sold at auction and Wo Kee Hong Holdings bought the Rogers trademark and name (which they sat on for 16 years). Now Rogers (phoenix like) has been re-born yet again, this time with one of Rogers Swisstone's chief engineers, Andy Whittle, at the helm.
We see Dynaudio, Wharfdale, KLH, and JBL do it, bank of their heritage...Any word on the possibility of a second coming of the JR149?
You are very welcome. I hope there is sufficient interest in all things vintage equipment. I know I enjoy it.
I would say that it's a distinct possibility. They already brought back the LS 3/5a (which uses the same drive units).
