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In Reply to: If I could only keep a dozen pieces of gear posted by Al Nico on April 30, 2007 at 16:06:13:
Only 12! For an Inmate here, that's deprivation. Let me try.2 pair of Advents (count as 2 items)
JBL L-110's
NAD C320BEE integrated amp
Onkyo Integra A-8190 integrated amp
Rotel RCD-971 CD player
Rotel RCD-955AX CD player
Onkyo Integra T-4087 tuner
Sony STJ75 tuner
Sony CDR-W1 CD recorder
Onkyo Integra TX-870 receiver
Onkyo TA-R240 cassette deckWith all that I can assemble three complete CD based systems or I can run Double Advents and have two systems plus spares. I can also make cassttes and CD's. No phono though. Notable by their absense are the Bose AM-5 series II speakers from the living room. (sorry, Dear!)
Follow Ups:
Hey Jerry,
I would venture to guess that you are younger than 'Al Nico' and I am. All my favorite stuff has tubes, and I've always run screaming from receivers. Interesting to see nearly Zero overlap between your list and mine. We share Advents, but you are the guru, Advent zen-master, and I don't really love mine, which I've had since new. ZERO overlap then.Back in high school (in the 60's) I used to work in a stereo shop, fixing tube stuff and lusting after Marantz & Macs & KLH-9's. That was when solid state gear was just beginning to become credible. The next decade was the golden age, but by then I had stuff, so I wasn't in the market.
How much of your gear is sourced from the late 70's early 80's? At what age did you start accumulating your lore with regard to well-made, nice-sounding Japanese gear? Inquiring minds want...
I can't speak for Al, but I just turned 69 and graduated from high school in '55, so I've got about 10 years on you.Other than the speakers and a Kenwood receiver I still hang onto, it's all 80's and later electronics.
Like you I grew up with tubes, and all my college electronics courses were about tubes. I spent the first 12 years of my engineering career managing vibration testing labs, and nearly all the instruments and the power amps (up to 140 kVA) for the shakers were tube based. My first solid state piece of gear was a Pioneer SX-990 receiver bought in the fall of 1971. I've had tube gear since then, on and off, but I seem to prefer SS. Maybe it's all those years of struggling to keep all those tube based instruments and controls working and in calibration. (in one lab, there were over 1000 tubes installed and we had two 6 foot high storage cabinets full of spare tubes) When we got in some newer SS instruments it was a Godsend. The tube gear all drifted out of calibration in a couple of months due to tube aging.
As to the Advent worship, that's almost an accident. I had two pair back in the early 70's and after a few years, sold both and moved on. Then, in 2002, I came across a used pair which were one of my two original pair. It was at that point I started working with them and learning about their innerds.
Up until two years ago, I had a nice collection of 70's receivers. I tried them all with the Advents, but the later NAD and Onkyo gear seems to work the best. Which explains why I have the present inventory. Advents, and particularly modded Advents don't do well with tube amps IMHO.
At what age did I acquire my lore about Japanese gear? I was 33 when I bought the Pioneer, and much of my earlier SS gear was USA designed and built, and some designed in the USA or the UK and only built in Japan. A lot of it came from fixing other people's electronics. I used to do that at work on my lunch hour to get away from the phones and cool out (it was theraputic).
Jerry
Jerry,
I kinda thought I'd end up eating crow with that age comment...My daughter was born in 1980, and for the next 15 years I had little interest or time for audio. I kept the system I owned in college up until 1992. At that point in time, I was told that I was losing hearing in my left ear, and maybe the right ear would follow soon.
I kinda panicked. I went right out and spent about $15,000 on a high-end music system (Vandersteen speakers, Classe solid state preamp & amp, VPI turntable, McIntosh CD player). But then over the next few years I discovered that I actually had more fun listening to my old KLH-5's driven by the McIntosh MA6100 integrated amp and Thorens turntable that I'd had in college. Money does not equal happiness -- or if you prefer -- experience is a hard school, but a fool will learn by no other.
Somewhere around 2002 I found a vintage Eico HF81 in my uncle's attic, and resurrecting my high-school electronics education, I rebuilt it. Since then, I've become very fond of tube electronics, and have rebuilt/restored many vintage pieces. A lot of it is stuff I used to see all the time when I worked in a high-end stereo shop in high school.
Lots of ways to have fun in this hobby. I've enjoyed your posts and learned a lot. One of these days I'll have to rebuild the woofers in my Advents and give them another chance!
I got a little chuckle out of your age comment, so I fired back. No problem. I was actually kind of flattered. I don't relish being thought of as old. From this side of my eyes, everything still seems the same; it's only when I look in the mirror that I realize things have changed (or when I try to do something athletic)What has been happening with your hearing? I'm thankful to still have most of mine left. At an age where I should have a very rolled off high end, I can still hear up to 13-14 kHz, enough to still enjoy the hobby. This has been my main hobby for 50 years and I'd really be in tough shape if my hearing went.
I'm actually a mechanical engineer, but we did get 4 semesters of electrical engineering courses, and since I was very interested in audio at the time, I paid more attention to my EE courses than most of my ME classmates. I had an Eico HF-20 at the time and started modifying it in college, taking it to the EE labs after classes to use the instruments. I had that old Eico up into the early 70's, by which time it had been transformed into a 48 Watt power amp with EL34's in a Dyna style common cathode output stage, but retaining the Eico voltage amplifiers and phase splitter/driver stage.
Living in a condo has cramped my style a good bit as I'm limited on room and listening levels. I really miss not having a basement to work in. I'm also allergic to sawdust, so I couldn't work on speaker cabinets anyway; but I do miss the sound treated listening room I had in the house and the work area I had. I did manage to build up a small electronics bench in the den after I retired so I can do a reasonable job on electronics and fiddle with crossovers.
Do you still have the KLH 5's? Those have long been a favorite of mine. Kind of an Advent with no cost constraints. You need to work on your Advents and upgrade the crossover and then let me know how they compare (if the 5's are still around).
How di you feel about the HF-81?
It is nice to some open mindedness concerning audio designs. It looks like you have found, and enjoy, a good mix of SS and tubes in some cases. I too like to mix year, decades, SS vs. tubes, speakers,etc... to get the sound I like. Sometimes it sound good, sometimes it sounds like crap. But that's the fun of it.
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