Vintage HI Fi. Anyone else in to it?

[Profpointy]

Thats interesting, as cable length between i strument and amp, and thus capacitance, makes a noticeable difference with guitars and basses. Mind you, the voltages involved are much lower so any change would be far more significant I guess.

I'm guessing they made sure the cable wasn't coiled up too

 

[VinSumRox]

I've got 2 pairs of 80's Tannoys, one pair (Devons (12" cone) providing the TV sound driven by an Arcam FMJ amp- modern only 10 years old.
In the big lounge a pair of Tannoy Berkelys (15" cones) drive by old Arcam AR 9 as a pre amp and a pair of AR9 power amps.
My music is all digital from harsh drive or streaming though, don't use CDs very often.

 

[sungod]

Thats interesting, as cable length between i strument and amp, and thus capacitance, makes a noticeable difference with guitars and basses. Mind you, the voltages involved are much lower so any change would be far more significant I guess.

guitar pickups are passive, relatively high impedance, so high cable capacitance, poor screening, messes them up, the longer the cable, the higher the capacitance and exposure to noise, putting a pre-amp on the guitar is a simple solution

power amps are low impedance, high current, the main factor is cable resistance, needs to be low enough to not cause appreciable voltage drop or mess up the damping, for longer runs use fatter cable, but copper is an excellent conductor, it doesn't need anything crazy

there have been silly 'audiophile' cables with such high capacitance that they destabilised some amps, but people buying such snake oil get all they deserve

as for vintage, i had my 40+ year old cartridge re-tipped again a few months ago, and rebuilt my equally ancient pickup arm and deck

 

[raleighnut]

I read that article in Wireless World (a professional / trade electronics magazine) back in the 80s. Made quite an impression. The key to the test was to get the volume exactly the same, and also to do a statistical analysis of the A vs B compared to A vs A listening results. Granted Quad likely had the same approach to sound for both amps despite their very different componentry

I read of another example when Walker debunked a lot of the nonsense about speaker cable lengths. He had one speaker with a sensible length cable and the other one with a 100 yards or more: no difference

Yep once at a HiFi show Quad were using these orange speaker cables and interested journo asked what they were thinking that they were something exotic til they were told "Oh it's from B&Q"

power amps are low impedance, high current, the main factor is cable resistance, needs to be low enough to not cause appreciable voltage drop or mess up the damping, for longer runs use fatter cable, but copper is an excellent conductor, it doesn't need anything crazy

I've never been 'in to' exotic cabling, the interconnects I use are OFC with gold plated plugs at @ £15 to £20 each and speaker cabling 79 strand (QED I think) The one thing 'exotic' I have in my set-up is using 2 poweramps (303's) I initially thought about using one as a bass amp and one as a treble/tweeter amp but a quick call to QUAD disabused me of this idea so I now run them as a left speaker amp and a right speaker amp with separate cabling to each driver unit

 

[mistyoptic]

I've got 2 pairs of 80's Tannoys, one pair (Devons (12" cone) providing the TV sound driven by an Arcam FMJ amp- modern only 10 years old.
In the big lounge a pair of Tannoy Berkelys (15" cones) drive by old Arcam AR 9 as a pre amp and a pair of AR9 power amps.
My music is all digital from harsh drive or streaming though, don't use CDs very often.

Nice. I’m still using a pair of Ascots (a smaller version of the Devon iirc) driven, these days, by a Sonos Amp (2x125w class D). Bought them in 1980. still sound great

 

[VinSumRox]

Nice. I’m still using a pair of Ascots (a smaller version of the Devon iirc) driven, these days, by a Sonos Amp (2x125w class D). Bought them in 1980. still sound great

I bought the Devons new in 1980, as you say great sound, had to recone them once so far. Bought the Berkeleys 2nd hand as I fancied the 15" cones - they sound even better 😀

 

[Poacher]

Thread resurrection again. A boxed Quad 405 current dumping amplifier, a boxed Quad 34 control unit and a boxed FM4 stereo tuner
up for auction on Saturday in Nottingham. Estimate £50 - £80. Suspect it will reach at least £300.
There's also a boxed Thorens TD 160 S MK IV turntable record player which looks like it's missing a platter from the pics (likely to be in the box?), but has an SME series III arm. Estimate £100 - £150.

Attention must have been elsewhere when I skipped past these:
A pair of boxed teak KEF model 104 3-way High Fidelity loud speakers with stands in the same auction. Estimate £80 - £100.

Hammer price on the Quad pre amp/amp/tuner was £320, the Thorens was £380 and the Kefs £110.
Minimum buyer's premium is now 27% - I can remember when buyer's premium didn't exist, and the outcry when it was introduced at 4%!