Agreed, on all points, but especially that last bit.

I've recently been reforming my interests and hobbies (and the stuff that accompanies them) by making the move toward minimalism. Last year, I jettisoned oodles of mid to upper mid range audio gear, musical instruments, bikes, sporting goods, and a few project cars, asking myself along the way, "Does this project/activity grab me enough to hold my interests? Where does it fit into my priorities?" Such questioning has gotten me down from > 100 projects to a more manageable < 30.

I gotta say, it's liberating!

Of course, there's always room for mid to high end Pioneer, Sansui, Yamaha, Ampex, Thorens, McIntosh, Marantz, Infinity, Klipsch, Akai, Teac, Advent, Sony, Electro-Voice, Linn, Altec, Dynaco, Heathkit, Telefunken, Norelco, Philco, RCA...

Yes. It was EC's blues playing that got me, for sure. I saw him in concert, with Muddy Waters, when I was in the tenth grade in 1978. I was dumbfounded, I had never heard music like that or even knew it existed. I've been a devoted fan ever since.

Heck, why find a busted up one? Just go find a good one at a yard sale:



This pile of stuff was fifteen bucks, and the US made Sherwood reciever works great, as far as my untutored remaining partial hearing ear can tell. Sound seems much warmer than the Japanese amp I had before. On the other hand, I could always learn to fix the old Amp up.

My real problem is I keep finding albums ridiculously cheap. Yesterday I scored a beautiful copy of Ray Charles' Greatest Hits on ABC (replacing a beat copy I already had) and a minty copy of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken". And a very nice copy of Sly and the Family Stone's Greatest Hits.

In fact, I bought a total of just over fifty albums and CDs last month for right around 22$, including some weird/obscure stuff I'd actually been looking for. Most of them were LPs, about four CDs in that pile.

<groan> Audio. Durned BFers. Got me interested in another stupid hobby. *sigh* Yes, I went over to the AK site and signed up. As if I have the time to spend on that on top of BF. I should return the favor to you guys -- start a thread on vintage cross-country skis or something.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/gms/2191228612.html

Damn!! I'm committed to other activities.....

I've been over there every night this week, for hours on end. There is so much knowledge and information there, it is staggering. Makes this place look like Cliff Notes....... and their search function works.

This guy played with EC on that live album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cek5qZ76FZs

Yep, he's a great player, too. There's some serious guitar playing on that album. And I agree, "Worried Life Blues" is one of my favorites on there.

I wore that album out, literally. I bought a replacement, and then later, the CD version. I still listen to it occasionally. And I should correct my earlier post, it was recorded in December, 1979, not January 1979; I don't know why I typed January.

Nice snags. I just came home with some Hot Tuna, Taj Mahall, Youngbloods, Elvin Bishop, and Eric Clapton. Plus a near-pristine 3 volume boxed set....Fillmore - The Last Days.

They had an old Little Richard LP there, too........ but it looked like it had been through a war.

Hi Bossman: The prices for anything vintage audio have gone into the stratospheric sillyness. So you might keep in mind other options if you are anxious to get started:

* T- amps: If I were starting again, this is where I'd go. High-end mavens like the guys over at TNT Audio went bananas over the first T-amps. And you could buy the first ones for less than a good dinner! For the money nothing beats them according to the initiated — in fact, anything even logarithmically more costly may not sound as good. Relatively new chips have made this possible. With your experience, you should be able to build one, and by now there must be kits. Boards have been available for some time.

AK has a forum dedicated to chip amps. Also, DIY Audio, and DIY Paradise are involved with these. And, Audio Asylum probably has a forum for this by now. You need pretty efficient speakers. Even my Tannoys might be a challenge. You need something like the Fostex drivers that are used S.E.T. tube amp people.

* NEW renditions of the classic tube amp: there are a number of companies producing slightly updated versions of the old Dynaco tube kits. Other companies produce very modified versions. The classic rendition of the ST-70 includes a power X-former with more capacity that spares a lot of strain on the amp as a whole. The outputs are machine wound versions of the great classics of decades past. The ST-70 is one of the most famous and arguably one of the most revered amps ever produced. Check it out. When it is finished — the kit I mean — you will have a NEW amp. There is also the less powerful ST-35. Over at DIY Audio, they had a big project going on for a couple of years in which they scratch built ST-35 clones! Audio Asylum hosts the sponsored 'Dynaco Forum'. There is at least a decade of archived stuff there that should answer any sort of question that may come up. And the Dyna community is very cool.

BIKES ARE HEALTHY BUT AUDIO ....
I have a drawer full of new and NOS tubes, as well as an ST-70 that I bought from a friend in 1988. It is about 2/3rds restored and I should finish it. But recently, I've been too busy learning how to restore bikes. Which is a good thing. Before I suffered a leg injury that has had me off my machines for months, my blood pressure was down. It is now 134/90 .... it WAS 110/72 at 72 bpm — not bad for an old fart! Bikes may be healthier, but audio sure is fun!

And BTW — my Dyna is being restored as 'old school'.

Thanks for the pointer - never heard of them before.

Here's a little update - I was chatting with my brother last night on the phone. He lives about 350 miles from me, and shares a common interest - cruising thrift stores. Turns out, several years ago a local thrift had a pile of 70's receivers they were blowing out, and he bought half a dozen or so. He said that at the time, he plugged them in and they all lit up, but that's all he did with them. they've been sitting under a tarp in the garage ever since.

He's going to dig into the pile Saturday and let me know makes and models - I may have myself a new project soon. I've always wanted to try my hand at re-capping a receiver, but was reluctant to use my SX-780 (that I'm emotionally attached to) as a guinea pig. I figure I can learn on a test subject, and when mine needs it I'll have a chance at doing it right.

I have a Dyna Pas 3 Preamp, modified with a slow start circuit and koa wood face plate. The Sheldon Brown spirit applied to audio. Dyna stuff is good value for money.

Me too! I love trolling the thrift, CL, and friend's garages looking through the back panel of things for tubes. It's so awesome when you are wandering through an attic and you see the characteristic styling of the faceplate of a late fifties-early sixties receiver/radio or anything encased in bakelite, off in the corner. You turn it around to look through the back, it weighs about sixty pounds... good. You peer through a crevice in the back panel... There they are, the gleaming glass embodiment of lust, a row of 12ax7/6v6/2a3/EL34s, (use your imagination), you are home.

So, I went through the pile and the only real nice amp I found was a Sansui AU 317 II. Worth the trouble?

I'd say so. Does it work? How much you want for it?

Any Pioneer stuff at all?

If he passes, it's worth it to me.

Ha, if you do a repair thread here, I'll pass it on to my dad. It's worth it to keep him interested so he doesn't buy more mail order krud. He's been running around his care home setting up digital antenna's and converters to get people off cable. The other day he needed a screwdriver so he ordered a 200 piece set from harbor frieght, a little over-kill. The tool container fell off his lap and he twisted his wrist. Now he can't wheelchair himself down for dinner. I really don't know if it works, but that's what you are looking for, a project?

Noted...

That's what I'm looking for - a project. Send me a PM - I might be in SSF tomorrow afternoon.

That's another thing that never happens in this country — serendipitous tube finds. (It's the social differences). For a while, I was finding some in Akihabara, Tokyo. Of course, you pay for them there!

THIS HAS BEEN EDITED
I had two Alpha AU-317's, but like Rat Fink, I had to get very brutal because stuff was just piling up, so both of them went out to the recycle plant. One of them was part way into being restored — that is being recapped and replacing some transistors and so on. The Mark II model seems to be very similar to the ones that I had, so perhaps I can comment.

Yes, these are nice amps. Their fame did not glow as much as the models that produced twice the power, but that should be of no concern to anyone with relatively efficient speakers. Anyway, 50-60 Watts is lots of output. What matters is how accurate the sound is, and these amps have a good reputation. Like all the Sansui amps, these were very good sounding units — very natural and non-distorting, even at full tilt boogey. All Sansui amps have good power transformers.

There is one drawback with some old Sansui, and you will not know until you have opened it up. For awhile, Japanese manufacturers were obsessive about "pegging" or "staking" board capacitors. That is to say, they were glued to the board. This was to ensure nothing moved in shipment. And, BTW restorers generally do not reglue the new caps. The problem is/was that Sansui used a glue that decades later has caused a chemical interaction with the phenolic on the board and the aluminum base of the cap. Sansui maniacs (and there are some on AK Sansui forum) take this in stride. Getting the old caps out can be difficult, and you end up cleaning the board. Of course, the Mark II may not have used glue, or they may have used another type of glue.

Now another thing. If you replace the filter caps (a very excellent idea) ... they really do need to be reglued on this unit. Ideally they should have been clamped and/or perhaps mounted separately from the main board. Anyway, they are not, and I don't believe that they are physically stable enough without a dab of epoxy on one side just to peg them. The other caps you can just solder in the usual way.

For some years, I had a big alpha AU-717 Extra in my main rig. A great amp!!

Another vintage interest of mine is restoring and making music with analog synthesizers and other vintage keyboard instruments. In the synth world there are a lot of companies who made mistakes like that. It's relatively well known among enthusiasts that certain early eighties models by Korg and Roland (also Japanese companies) Had a similar problem, but with onboard batteries that would melt down. When buying one secondhand (for hundreds of dollars), you always take that chance that it may have had half of the oscillators physically burned up, or maybe, just a few solder traces. On Moogs, they had a 'protective' foam on some models that would disintegrate into a tar like with acidic properties substance and melt into the controls and burn through all the circuits. And in some 60's era Hammond organs (that routinely sell for upwards of $5000 unrestored, these days), they also had a 'black foam disease' that would melt the wiring and drip into the mechanical (yes, mechanical) tone generator in which, there are several hundred moving parts. A fine mess to clean up when restoring one! I think we can come to a consensus, that in terms of rubber and foam, the old ways aren't the best!

The collectors in Tokyo are incredibly persistent, I know. Anyone who deals in antiquities there really seems to know their stuff and what they can get for it.

Want to recap a Marantz 2285? I've researched it a bit and I'm afraid that I would be in over my head if I attempted it.