Post by speedysteve on Oct 5, 2014 20:29:49 GMT
Due to popular demand:) well, MartinT and John at least, here is a blog about my system and it's evolution.
i like to make as much as I can myself. This varies mostly depending on what takes my fancy, what I think I can do and what is just too expensive to buy / I think I can do as well as or even better!
I'll do a bit of a retrospective first and cover Valve amp, Tonearms, Record cleaning machine and of course speakers...
It all started off pretty conventionally.
Back in 1980 I got a new Nad3020 amp at the tender age of 16, (had to cycle to train station and take the train to Southampton where there we Hifi shops were, to get it!).
it cost £86 back then! It was Popular hifi's top budget amp - I really believed in Popular Hifi back then. So many totally unobtainable separates to drool over!
I put it on my bike rack and walked it 3miles oh so carefully home. I've still got it and it works just fine. It replaced an ageing Akai 60w receiver I had that hummed. The Nad sounded much better.
I was using some large but crappy Sony Speakers at the time and a Trio something or other and then a Sansui SR-222 - not a bad deck.
Next upgrade was a new pair of Mission 700 speakers the original 1980 model, cost £119. Still have them in the garage system:)
These were in a different league to anything I had owned thus... They were not even in the budget table in Hifi Choice! Top of the whole next up category - Boy were my mates envious!
I then got a 2nd hand Ariston RD11E turntable and a Linn Basik LX arm (£139 all together). I was using Ortofon VMS20 and 30 carts back then. I also had a Shure M95E and a Grado something or other...
I won't bore you with Cassette decks and tuners but there were a few:)
And, this remained my system for the next stage of my life - meet and play with girls, cars and more cars, move to Sweden, meet the right girl and settle down buy a house, get married and have kids!
So confident was I that it was a great system!
So 20yrs later in 2000 I got a nice bonus, wife and kids were in Sweden on hols - right lets see what upgrades we can buy, while the cats away:)
It took quite a lot of cash to better the old system. The then current budget systems sounded much worse!
I won't bore you with the next couple of system iterations.
The next thing of note was an amp build in 2002. A project build led by a real amp enthusiast at work. A 6SN7 / KT88 Push Pull with a massive mains transformer and Lundahl output Transformers. It's called Son of Heffa.
Here it is all aglow
Here it is under adjustment. Note the Heffa Clump mains traffo (all the way from Sweden, as were the cases, and output transformers).
It also featured soft start, high performance dual Silicon PSU's. I later upgraded the signal and coupling caps and had much fun tube rolling with it.
It completely outclassed the very expensive solidstate brand name bi-amp set up I had been using!
I did all the soldering and case drilling, as well as make the brackets needed to retain the big traffo for the other builders. About 15 were started, some made it, some did not!
(Some 12 years later it's still going strong, and is one of the key amps in fellow horn hifi enthusiasts 5 way horn system!)
Speaker wise, it doesn't get particularly interesting until a vintage pair of Tannoy Dorsets 10" Dual Concentrics came on the scene - my first horn HF speaker!
Here are a pair
These sounded more interesting and compelling than the WAF Montior Audio or ProAC D25's, I had been er, listening too.
Then followed a pair of 15" DC Tannoy Berkeleys with 3828 drivers.
Nice, but the cabs were way too small for the big Tannoy drivers;)
That was when the DIY really started - let's build a pair of proper sized Tannoy GRF replicas in proper good sounding wood - Premium Scandinavian Birch ply.
Here's the wood
Was uploaded with Tapatalk now lost.
Note the covered up Caterham race car on the right:)
Test assembled (mitred corners you'll note
)
Bit of routing
Coming along
Up and about
Cabs this heavy need castors.
Tannoys don't need spikes ever!
Ready with the 3828 drivers installed
Cat approves
This is how John heard them, with the SoH vavle amp and a PL-71 Turntable some 5 years ago.
Pictured here with SP-10 (more on that later) and TVC volume control.
Well, that's all for this evening I think. The next exciting chapter will follow shortly:)
i like to make as much as I can myself. This varies mostly depending on what takes my fancy, what I think I can do and what is just too expensive to buy / I think I can do as well as or even better!
I'll do a bit of a retrospective first and cover Valve amp, Tonearms, Record cleaning machine and of course speakers...
It all started off pretty conventionally.
Back in 1980 I got a new Nad3020 amp at the tender age of 16, (had to cycle to train station and take the train to Southampton where there we Hifi shops were, to get it!).
it cost £86 back then! It was Popular hifi's top budget amp - I really believed in Popular Hifi back then. So many totally unobtainable separates to drool over!
I put it on my bike rack and walked it 3miles oh so carefully home. I've still got it and it works just fine. It replaced an ageing Akai 60w receiver I had that hummed. The Nad sounded much better.
I was using some large but crappy Sony Speakers at the time and a Trio something or other and then a Sansui SR-222 - not a bad deck.
Next upgrade was a new pair of Mission 700 speakers the original 1980 model, cost £119. Still have them in the garage system:)
These were in a different league to anything I had owned thus... They were not even in the budget table in Hifi Choice! Top of the whole next up category - Boy were my mates envious!
I then got a 2nd hand Ariston RD11E turntable and a Linn Basik LX arm (£139 all together). I was using Ortofon VMS20 and 30 carts back then. I also had a Shure M95E and a Grado something or other...
I won't bore you with Cassette decks and tuners but there were a few:)
And, this remained my system for the next stage of my life - meet and play with girls, cars and more cars, move to Sweden, meet the right girl and settle down buy a house, get married and have kids!
So confident was I that it was a great system!
So 20yrs later in 2000 I got a nice bonus, wife and kids were in Sweden on hols - right lets see what upgrades we can buy, while the cats away:)
It took quite a lot of cash to better the old system. The then current budget systems sounded much worse!
I won't bore you with the next couple of system iterations.
The next thing of note was an amp build in 2002. A project build led by a real amp enthusiast at work. A 6SN7 / KT88 Push Pull with a massive mains transformer and Lundahl output Transformers. It's called Son of Heffa.
Here it is all aglow
Here it is under adjustment. Note the Heffa Clump mains traffo (all the way from Sweden, as were the cases, and output transformers).
It also featured soft start, high performance dual Silicon PSU's. I later upgraded the signal and coupling caps and had much fun tube rolling with it.
It completely outclassed the very expensive solidstate brand name bi-amp set up I had been using!
I did all the soldering and case drilling, as well as make the brackets needed to retain the big traffo for the other builders. About 15 were started, some made it, some did not!
(Some 12 years later it's still going strong, and is one of the key amps in fellow horn hifi enthusiasts 5 way horn system!)
Speaker wise, it doesn't get particularly interesting until a vintage pair of Tannoy Dorsets 10" Dual Concentrics came on the scene - my first horn HF speaker!
Here are a pair
These sounded more interesting and compelling than the WAF Montior Audio or ProAC D25's, I had been er, listening too.
Then followed a pair of 15" DC Tannoy Berkeleys with 3828 drivers.
Nice, but the cabs were way too small for the big Tannoy drivers;)
That was when the DIY really started - let's build a pair of proper sized Tannoy GRF replicas in proper good sounding wood - Premium Scandinavian Birch ply.
Here's the wood
Was uploaded with Tapatalk now lost.
Note the covered up Caterham race car on the right:)
Test assembled (mitred corners you'll note
)Bit of routing
Coming along
Up and about
Cabs this heavy need castors.
Tannoys don't need spikes ever!
Ready with the 3828 drivers installed
Cat approves
This is how John heard them, with the SoH vavle amp and a PL-71 Turntable some 5 years ago.
Pictured here with SP-10 (more on that later) and TVC volume control.
Well, that's all for this evening I think. The next exciting chapter will follow shortly:)
