A Collection Of Oddities

Greetings all,

Dunno how well this is going to fit in here but still:



Well most of my stuff is all home made except for:

A Pioneer twin-deck cassette recorder over 20 yrs old but okay, 'least able to make a good copy of a CD so far as I can tell (who's larfing at the back?)

A 2nd hand Akai GX-370D reel-2-reel recorder, the one with 5 heads and an extra flywheel and auto-reverse, built like a battle-ship and nearly as heavy (it lives permanently on the floor). I had to overhaul this a while ago for long-standing faults (after I finally managed to get a genuine service manual for it), mostly worn out microswitches and a split PCB edge connector which was very difficult to spot actually (because if you pulled the board out the gap closed up and disappeared). Most previous 'repairs' seemed to consist of smothering the board in engine oil to cure what seemed to be an intermittent contact problem. Well yes, it was actually busted... I mostly use Maxell UD tape and only found out recently it works best on the SRT (Special Recording Tape) position!

The record deck is a Thorens TD160 (Mk 1), got 2nd hand a year ago, made earlier than my first one which I got new in 1975. Curiously tho the earlier one seems better than my original one (?) ~ go figure...

The cartridge that came with it is a Nagaoka boron, yeah it's alright. Soon after treated it to a new boron stylus.

The rest is home made ~ phono pre-amp is based on Bob Danielak's design, in a WAD box.

Current project in progress is an active tone control/line driver, also in a WAD box. All valves again...

CD player is basically the guts out of a Philips CDM4 in a 19" rack sized case. Had this 15 years? At one point I was idling considering upgrading it to 20-bit oversampling, even got all the chips, but couldn't be asked in the end, seems perfectly fine as it is. I like it cos it's very close to Philips' original design.

The main amp is a 300B single-ended, based on a design by a guy called Noel Bavaria-Hunt, only recently found that out. It's a very old design probably from the 1940's; the originally cited valves have long been obsolete, hence e.g. 300B's instead of DA30's. Tho the 1st stage is the originally suggested EBC33, looks like an ancient radio valve ~ which it is ~ and very quaint. This amp has probably taken about 5 yrs to evolve...

Currently in the process of modifying it to parafeed output, tho still mono working only so far (still waiting on a 2nd o/p TX) flippin' excellent tho I must say. In the pic at top it's the big thing at the end of the shelf with the handles. Need them, it weighs 17 kilograms (and that's w/out the extra parafeed transformers, they're in a separate chassis [not shown]).

Speakers are from a photo I saw on Wilmslow Audio's web site, I thought 'yeah I like the looks of them, I'll make 'em like that'. No really. First 'thrown together' exactly 2 yrs ago, think I might've just finished 'tweaking' them (at least I think...) Main drivers are Monacor 4 inchers augmented with KEF T33A's. Most of the 'fiddling' involved tuning the crossover.



Well that's about it really...

 

Hi Mike - I think it all looks brilliant, like something from a cool bachelors flat in the 60's. It shows that some considered eclectic taste can realise some great finds. I think the main valve amp looks superb. I like 300b's. They suit my low level listening. I have a pair of Tannoy Chatsworths as the partner to them. I chased about buying monoblocks and hornings till my front room looked like the inside of the Tardis from the Pertwee Dr Who - and then ironically found that a much more satisfactory solution came from my integrated amp and diminutive speakers from 1974! Simple and elegant. So there you go.

 

Oh good, that was the kind of effect I was hoping for

No I think you're right, took me a long time to realise actually 'simplicity' has a lot going for it.

As a matter of interest the CD player gubbins was a sort of 'DIY kit' Philips were selling off in 1992. This went along with an Elektor magazine article (also Dutch)