Great British hi fi

Having made some new speakers with some Tannoys i had in the loft from the seventies i was surprised just how good they were even against new ones of today.

So any more manufacturers and their bits of kit that would make a stonking system? Feel free to put a system together using older or new or combo. Only British.

Jim.

 

Too Xenophobic for my taste

I thought we were maturing & accepting other nations produced quality stuff as well.

Can't play much on a TT without a cartridge anyway.

 

If you can't contribute to the thread then don't bother posting please.

 

To put together really interesting systems then it is 50's and 60's UK product.

Forget 70's UK product, BBC design speakers, objectivist amps, British sources just crap dumbed down versions of what they made in the 60's. So the 70's is about Japanese top end gear (hard to find) but cheap still.

80's is about the alternative flat earth products that easily out performed the Linn / Naim thing with virtually all of them out of business due to the way the industry was slurped and corrupted by the end of the decade, still really good value on ebay when they come up.

90's, very little worth talking about because you had little choice and were told what to buy, which meant what was available was largely naff. I would say NVA was an exception but it was almost entirely sold export so not much around.

 

Ok I'll have a go, though I'm going to cheat with the speakers and use something that was originally US but latterly made in the uk.

Rega Planar 3 with original R200 arm and a new Goldring 1022 cartridge.

A&R A60 amplifier

AR18 loudspeakers.

Now I think that you could land that lot on eBay, using a new cartridge, about £500.
That allows around £50 for new bass driver foams and perhaps a fresh set of amp caps if its an oldie.

That lot would make a stonkingly good sound and nothing remotely close to the price today would touch it.

And all british - just

 

US manufactured drivers. UK made cabinets, assembled in Houghton Regis, Beds.

When the VAT rate was put up in 197? everyone was put on the production line assembling for a couple of weeks to meet orders. I was on one of the end of line test rigs, so carefull you might buy one of mine

 

Actually I could contribute having a number of british componets to hand & which could be used in an all Brit system. But I think the premise is wrong as I have said already. Better systems can be had with a mix.

 

I'm bringing them to the London event next week

 

Townsend Rock II, RB 250 Arm, Goldring Eroica, Cyrus 2,B&W DM2s. That's what I had before I went Danish and got a Copland CSA-14 stayed british with the Castle Howards though.

 

Garrard 301 / 401 tt's. In welsh slate or Bastin wooden plinth.

SME 3012 arm. Maybe modern SME 12" arm - good for detail not so great for dynamics? Maybe Audio Origami arm?

Decca / London cartridge.

Croft amps - not sure how well they'd go with the speakers? Maybe Quad valve amps? Maybe modern Quad ss amps?

Stacked Quad ESL 57's or modern Quad ESL's.

 

Oops. Just remembered. Quad manufacture in China now. When did they move their production out there? Was that before or after they introduced the 909 and 2905?

 

Just before I think.

Last true 'Walker' family products were the 6 series electronics, so for amps that means the 66 pre, 306 and 606 power amps.

The 77 series that followed uses entirely different circuits and shares designer and topology with the Roksan amps of the day.

 

decca gold? does that ring a bell? s.m.e. garrard, leak, no i guess not,

 

p.s. TANNOY still sound better than far east crap, they are just like wine they get better with time, .

 

I was living in Germany in the late 70 early 80's.

I have great memories of this system:-

Rega Planar 3 with original R200 arm and Goldring G900IGC cartridge.

The Scottish made Electrocompaniet 25 Watt class A and preamp ( 'The 2 Channel Audio Power Amplifier' and 'The 2 Channel Audio Preamplifier'), I still have them today!

Speakers Heybrook HB2.

 

Vitavox speakers. Now that's what I call stonkingly good. Not sure if they were 100% British though? Did they make their own drivers or buy them from America?

Still a few of these kicking round old cinemas.

I bet far too many of these have been put on bonfires and not enough kept by enthusiasts - and you do have to be an enthusiast to have 8' tall speakers in your house.

 

My Monitor Golds spent a good part of a quarter of a century up in the loft with all sorts of temperatures and still sound good.

 

That doesn't matter, i was really thinking on the lines of classic British hi fi really. It's pretty hard to find many british made goods now anyway. Usually sent over to china for manufacture. A cd player i bought made by Rotel was designed in Britain but made in China and stood head and shoulders above equivalent priced models by Marantz and others. It was cheaper to ship the parts to China and back than make them here.

 

Currently listening to Tannoy SRM10b being driven by A&R A60. The source is PC into Meridian DAC. Sounds good to me. For an all British system replace the PC with an Arcam 9 CDP in my other system. Happy bunny.

 

Hi Dev,

Any clicking?

PS: try in on the main system - it might look small but I bet it plays as loud as the Rogue.