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Classic gear from yesteryear; vintage audio standing the test of time.

I agree with you on the electronics thing...

The thing that seems to have advanced in electronics is the quality of passive components and our knowledge of how the choice of those passive parts effect the sound. There are many more active parts available also but a well designed circuit seems to stand the test of time.

Just changing a few coupling caps on an old amp can have a dramatic effect on its sound. Older coupling caps are no where near as transparent as newer metalized film caps. I have an Adcom GFA-555II power amp that had a fairly nice Roderstein input coupling cap at the input to each channel.

These were pretty good caps for their day but times have brought about much better caps and I replaced those caps (the only coupling caps in the circuit) with a pair of Auricaps. The change in the sound of that amp was very easy to tell. An amp that was pretty good to start with became a good bit better and now sounds like an amp without any coupling caps...or pretty damm close to it.

I am somewhere in the middle of recapping all of my older gear and replacing coupling caps seems to always have the same effect. Fortunately I have yet to find a piece where the replacement of the coupling cap made the sound worse. I suppose that is possible but that would indicate the gear is malfunctioning or sounds crappy when you remove bad sounding caps out of the signal path.

I am rattling on so I'll sign off now.

Have a good day,
Ed
Life is analog...digital is just samples thereof



Edits: 04/25/12

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  • I agree with you on the electronics thing... - EdAInWestOC 06:22:39 04/25/12 (0)

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