my first vintage system...

[thepogue]

I'm putting together me first "vintage" system and thought I'd share the first few steps.... Last summer (or was it the year before ) I picked up a set of Klipsch's Chorus II's and although not so "vintage" (dated '94ish) their sensitivity (101db) made them a great keeper for a tube set-up. Being the cheap SOG that I am I've been waiting for a deal I can live with in picking out me first tube amp/amps. I know little to nothing about tubes so without knowing what to look for I've been just hunting and pecking my way 'round for a year...then "BLAM"... I ran into a gent at the thrift store while going through some records. He is an vintage collector and within two weeks I am the proud owner of a Dyna SCA-35! I fired her up the other day for the first time and for the first 60 seconds or so she was a poppin' ...humming.. ground-loopin'..poopin' and then out of the blue she snapped one last time and smoothed out like hot butter on the highway! At 35 wpc she was plenty loud and sounded so different from my current set up (which of course is no surprise) very smooth but way less detail but all in all just as much fun! (maybe more!)....I'm pullin' my turntable out of the attic this week sometime and hook her up which should be a hoot! So I guess I'm off ta get some info on tubes and such but thought you guys (and gals) would enjoy seeing another audionut gettin' into a mess (and loving it). Any comments and/or advice would be great....off to the races!!

Here's a link to the amp just fer fun...

http://home.indy.net/~gregdunn/dynac...A35/index.html

[Haoleb]

Contrats, welcome to the world of tube heads! i just joined myself.

if you havent already, your gonna be hooked

[Worf101]

Now I've enough problems and holes siphoning money out of me. I DON'T need another system and have no place to put a tube only vintage system.... but now you got me thankin...... and it makes my haid hurt. Congrats... wish I lived close enough to hear it side by side with a solid state system...

Da Worfster

[92135011]

speaking of vintage, my old man still got a technics i-amp, tape deck, tuner, turntable that he bought in the early 80s. Everything works fine except terminals are kinda tarnished.

Problems!!!

the tuner is having a VERY hard time picking up signals. how come?
the volume knob for the amp crackles when changing volumes.

the crackle is especially annoying!!! ITS SO LOUD!!! its so bad that i have to turn off the thing, change the volume, then turn it back on.

[Worf101]

Problems!!!

the tuner is having a VERY hard time picking up signals. how come?
the volume knob for the amp crackles when changing volumes.

the crackle is especially annoying!!! ITS SO LOUD!!! its so bad that i have to turn off the thing, change the volume, then turn it back on.

The tuner is "old school" pre quartz lock technology... hence they tend to "wander". You can help this by either getting an on roof FM antenna, a powered indoor antenna or buying a cheap tuner with quartz lock and run it in the aux input.

The crackle comes from old "pots" they tend to get dusty and crackly. Either replace the pot or open it up and lubricate it with some silicone spray...

Da Worfster

[piece-it pete]

I recently had my 1st tube experience, too.

I came across an old "The Fisher" 30-A 20 watt monoblock amp. Even though it was mono, I had to hook it up & try it out. Since it had an input level control I used my CD player direct.

It was easily the best sounding amp I ever owned. Mated with a 1950s' University 3-way with horn tweets - sweet!! And the tube look IS very cool.

If I had two of them I'd have kept them forever. But what'ya gonna do. It helped pay for my "new" DQ-10s'.

Pulling out the old vinyl should be fun! and a heck of a flashback. How many systems do you have now?

Worf, you NEED 5 tubed amps - right now!! Haoleb's got a lead already! BTW H, what amp did you pick up?

92135011 (what's that stand for?),

Read my post:

http://forums.audioreview.com/showth...9924#post19924

It won't help the tuner but for pots & corrosion it'll be a big help, my pre had heavy corrosion on the RCAs' & it does affect the sound, and they do have a $10.00 + frt kit that should be enough for at least two units.

Pete

[92135011]

the tuner is indeed a quartz one.
When it locks on to a station it stays there. But getting a station is the tricky thing.
I'll give the pot problem a go. That way my old man will get back to using his gear. He did spend more than a 1000 on it back then, so why let it go to waste right?

my name? its just my student number in university. Wanted to use something I wouldnt forget.

[TinHere]

Sounds like a vintage Pogue aquisition.

Glad to hear it smoothed out and hope it gives you lots of hours of listening pleasure.

Enjoy my tubular brudda!

[thepogue]

it's kinda like riding in me ole ('70) chevy...just something about it...not as fast or even [purddy as some of the newer ones...but very nostalgic (sp).....I'm going to clean her up abit and put some fancy rims on here after I pull the turn table...then dust off some ole records....I am amazed at the volume I get at only 35 wpc...in fact I'm tring to figure if it's 17 wpc or 35...can anyone tell by the specs. above in the link? also i have no idea what all the numbers mean (all the wow and flutter mess) can anyone explain the number that go w/the amp...

(just having fun!!) Pogue

[Geoffcin]

I'm putting together me first "vintage" system and thought I'd share the first few steps.... Last summer (or was it the year before ) I picked up a set of Klipsch's Chorus II's and although not so "vintage" (dated '94ish) their sensitivity (101db) made them a great keeper for a tube set-up. Being the cheap SOG that I am I've been waiting for a deal I can live with in picking out me first tube amp/amps. I know little to nothing about tubes so without knowing what to look for I've been just hunting and pecking my way 'round for a year...then "BLAM"... I ran into a gent at the thrift store while going through some records. He is an vintage collector and within two weeks I am the proud owner of a Dyna SCA-35! I fired her up the other day for the first time and for the first 60 seconds or so she was a poppin' ...humming.. ground-loopin'..poopin' and then out of the blue she snapped one last time and smoothed out like hot butter on the highway! At 35 wpc she was plenty loud and sounded so different from my current set up (which of course is no surprise) very smooth but way less detail but all in all just as much fun! (maybe more!)....I'm pullin' my turntable out of the attic this week sometime and hook her up which should be a hoot! So I guess I'm off ta get some info on tubes and such but thought you guys (and gals) would enjoy seeing another audionut gettin' into a mess (and loving it). Any comments and/or advice would be great....off to the races!!

Here's a link to the amp just fer fun...

http://home.indy.net/~gregdunn/dynac...A35/index.html

All right dude! Go DYNACO go!

I'm a sucker for vintage gear, and DYNACO's stuff really gets me going.

If everything's working OK you've got yourself a nice amp there. You might want to take the tubes down and have them checked, if you can find someone near you with a tube checker.

The specs on your amp say that with both channels driven you can get about 13-14 watts out of it before you drive into clipping. That's pretty decent for a tube set of this vintage. With your high efficiency speakers that should be plenty. Another good thing is that tubes don't get nasty like SS amp when clipped so if you play it loud you shouldn't have to worry about frying your speakers. I would go easy on it just the same. Also give that amp plenty of breathing room, as overheating it the real enemy with tubes.

One thing you might want to play with is the bias adjustments. It looks like this amps bias can be configured separately for both line level, and phono input. That's pretty neat!

[Haoleb]

I built my tubed componet

I built the Bottlehead Foreplay preamp kit. Then added a few of the mods, such as a HV snubber, upgraded coupling caps and the sweet whispers stepped volume pots. It brought the tube magic into my system at a relatively low cost, and it was alot of fun building it.

check out more info on it at- http://www.bottlehead.com/et/adobesp..._stage_kit.htm


Heres a couple pics of mine...

[thepogue]

thats sooo shweet!!! cool stuff! I'm not much of a do it yourselfer....but maybe someday wiff a lil help and a bucket fulla brains I'll try!

[Sealed]

Vintage and diy go hand in hand. I can't tell you the number of people that had buyers remorse when they spend massive bucks on a system, and got thier feelings hurt by some vintage gear costing a fraction of the cash.

My recent finds this week:

Excellent condition late 70's model Klipsch Cornwalls. Sound killer with a vintage Leak tube amp and SME table. A guy beat me to them by about 10 minutes!

Excellent condition 80's Kef 104.2 in rosewood. They are mine now.
They are not only excellent, they are better IMO than the spendy new Kef reference, as well as other speakers. These cost under a grand. (original price was +/- $2700) They sound like 5-10K.

[92135011]

WOAH!~ does that do-it-yourself bottlehead tuber sound good?
How about the 499 monoblocs they have?
Im getting interested ^_^!

[Haoleb]

The foreplay i built replaced the pre-amp section of my NAD C-370. it does sound alot better. When i first built it, i didnt think i heard much of a difference but after getting some RCA blackplates in there along with the upgraded coupling caps and snubber i can hear a pretty significant difference. Many people are replacing much more expensive preamps with these foreplay kits.

The main things that i noticed as far as differences go, was first of all the soundstage, its like someone came and picked it up off the floor. i know how silly that sounds, but its true. Also the voices were much more focused, they seemed smaller but more realistic. Honestly i cant explain much of the improvements it made, but it just added much more realism, and fullness to the music along with making it more ... well.. musical.

The kit in stock form probbly wouldnt blow you out of the water. It would be just.. "good" but once you do a few of the mods you can have a pretty darn good sounding preamp.

[thepogue]

Vintage and diy go hand in hand. I can't tell you the number of people that had buyers remorse when they spend massive bucks on a system, and got thier feelings hurt by some vintage gear costing a fraction of the cash.

My recent finds this week:

Excellent condition late 70's model Klipsch Cornwalls. Sound killer with a vintage Leak tube amp and SME table. A guy beat me to them by about 10 minutes!

Excellent condition 80's Kef 104.2 in rosewood. They are mine now.
They are not only excellent, they are better IMO than the spendy new Kef reference, as well as other speakers. These cost under a grand. (original price was +/- $2700) They sound like 5-10K.

I've always had a good eye on the KEF 104.2...I'd like someday to match a set w/a Sansui 7000/8000....pruddy and beefy!!