sd5782 

Bought this for son last year.

Loose Chain

My dad's old Zenith. I rebuilt it to accept an amp/receiver and a turntable. Built new speakers complete with crossovers:



My new Custom Orbit Special turntable, yes, it is solid maple and made in the USA:



Stereo equipment including original purchase Bose speakers, again rebuilt and modified by me and my old Pioneer reciever (I have another older one, working, in the box):




I put new speakers and new crossovers in the Bose, flipped the port to the rear. The Radio Shack Minimus speakers are amazing, they too have custom crossovers. The art is from the Gutenberg Press Museum in Germany. And since they were peeking out and this is a bicycle forum, a few of my herd hanging out:

The Golden Boy 

Hey M-

Did anyone ever take you up on your offer? I know a nice young man who had a 900 series Pioneer quad unit that pooped out on him- And although my turntable looks really cool, it's not exactly the best sounding unit and there's issues that make it less than "worth it" to fix.

radroad

35 years on, after the debut of the Sony "Discman," digital STILL doesn't sound right.

Oddly enough, I find the same files, bit for bit, inferior sounding on the computer, compared to their CD counterparts.

Vinyl is still far and away the best sounding medium ever created.

Cougrrcj

Nope. We were deciding what to sell/donate/keep from my parent's house in PHX, and nobody came forward to claim the stuff - even for free.. Not sure if the stereo cabinet and components got moved to sister's house nearby or trashed/donated. Regardless, parents house in PHX is now empty, and for sale,.

bikemig 

This is a great thread but I got rid of vinyl a long time ago. I've managed to resist getting back into it. My main stereo rig is an outlaw stereo receiver (not vintage but it has lots of clean power and looks vintage, , a marantz CD player and a pair of PSB towers. That said, I do stream a lot of music to that rig via a yamaha streaming preamplifier.

audiomagnate

I have seven vintage rigs. This is the nicest. These are VMPS Super Tower III Special Ribbon Edition speakers. It takes three stereo amps and and electronic crossover to drive them. The subwoofer is an infinite baffle using 18" JBLs that uses the laundry room for a cabinet.

Kent T

My Music and my Hi-Fi is C&V. One system powered by Sansui (4000 receiver) , one powered by McIntosh (MA 5100), one powered by Kenwood KA-406 integrated. FM tuners by HH Scott (312D) and Pioneer (the newest with Digital display, and soon replaced by real C&V). Cassette deck by Technics (M 206), Turntables by Technics (SL-1500), Pioneer, and by MCS (Technics built 6603, DD). Open reel decks by Otari, MX 5050 Mini-Pro, and MX 5050 B-II. Loudspeakers by Dynaco A 25, Phase Tech Euro Monitors, and The Advent Loudspeaker. Cartridges by Shure, Pickering, Ortofon, and by Audio-Technica. Repair technician work by Kent T, with AK assistance.

Kent T

I own Advent Utility loudspeakers, driven by a Kenwood KA 406 integrated amplifier.

rootboy 

Some cool stuff shown here. Great thread.
My old Pioneer SA-9500 amp, and 5500 II tuner
A set of mahogany stands I made for my old JBL L19s, which I bought new in '77
The black ELACs on the metal stands got relegated to the shop. I prefer the old KLH Twenty Fours I refurbished.
And, at bottom, the sweet spot.

audiomagnate

bargo68 

The spot from where I read Bike Forums.

52telecaster

Bozak b 300


Control center is a mess. Adcom 535 passive preamp with a nice little phono preamp.

52telecaster

Pioneer pl115d with shure m95 cart.

The Golden Boy 

It's been a while since I've scrolled through this thread. Man, there's some inspirational looking systems here!!!

This happened a month ago- kind of forgot to post about it- here's a post from a couple different forums:

Dear Penthouse Letters, I never thought it would happen to me...

Last month, over a weekend, I'd noticed that the neighbor’s curb had a CRT TV and what looked like a little stereo with some cheap looking particle board speakers- out in front. The speakers looked like boombox speakers with the cords built in- so I assumed the stereo was a Soundesign or something similar. It sat there most of the morning and early afternoon. A little later I decided to go for a bike ride- as I rode past the neighbors' house, I looked at the receiver again and saw a silver face, then saw the name Marantz as I rode next to it...

I stopped, parked the bike and grabbed the receiver and took it to my driveway- rang the neighbor’s doorbell. They said it was the husband’s father's and that it “only got one station.” They were completely unconcerned and uninterested that it would be worth some decent money- even if not working.

It looks really nice- no wood case, a little dusty, a little corrosion on the knobs and a few smudges- otherwise all the lights work and it looks great!!

I took it downstairs and hooked it up to a set of speakers and my laptop- the volume is a little scratchy, but it pulls in stations across the dial and it sounds pretty good!

This happened a good month ago- I just forgot to post it here!

And, of course, pix or it didn't happen.


Marantz 2238 1 by Dave The Golden Boy, on Flickr


Marantz 2238 2 by Dave The Golden Boy, on Flickr

And as of this afternoon:

Stereo April 2020 by Dave The Golden Boy, on Flickr


Once this whole "quarantine" stuff is over with, I'm going to get it recapped and everything... I *might* ask to have the lights done with LEDs- everything else I have has them- as long as they don't look obtrusive.

Lenton58 

GOLDEN BOY: That Marantz find has really pushed on my envy factor. Good call! You might just replace the filter cans and have the tuner section alignment checked out! AS for me, I just like the color of the old lights through the filters.

Shrevvy 

I blame every one of you in this thread and similar. I never owned a piece of hifi equipment. I never knew I wanted to. After seeing the very cool setups in this thread, I bought this late last year. I added the Kenwood tape deck because it looks so awesome. I know nothing about the inner workings of these, but the receiver, cd player (would love a silver one now), tunrtable and speakers came from a local guy that repairs older equipment. He had gone through everything. Gave me a bag of capacitors that he replaced. It sounds good and hopefully I won't have to do anything to it for a while.

merziac

Vinyl like steel has soul, everything else, not so much.

rocks in head 

I just did a full swap of my stereo system, went from a Technics receiver and turntable with paired with my dad's old Infinity bookshelf speakers from college (late '70's) to my parents' old 1990s Denon AVR-610 5-channel receiver plus Onkyo CP-116A paired with a Bose woofer + cubes. Next time I'm at my parents' I'll bring down the matching 5-disc cd changer. They've moved all digital. The receiver isn't outputting the left speaker output currently, so we'll see about repairs. Also moved to the basement away from the TV, where my impromptu work from home setup is. I'm listening to a lot more music. Currently have on Styx, Grand Illusion, B side.

ascherer 

I'll play. All of this has been in service since new.

Thorens TD145 with a Shure V15


Nakamici RE-1 receiver, DR-8 tape deck and Sony something or other CD player.


Boston Acoustic A150 speakers, on their third set of woofers. Still sounds awesome.


There's an iPad connected to the receiver that streams audio via Plex running on a Synology NAS that's holding about about a terabyte of music - 50,000 tracks and growing. It took me some years to gradually digitize a few thousand CDs to lossless digital, so the CD and cassette players are rarely used. The turntable sees action, but not that often. We still have maybe 300 albums on vinyl.

Velo Mule

"Once this whole "quarantine" stuff is over with, I'm going to get it recapped and everything... I *might* ask to have the lights done with LEDs- everything else I have has them- as long as they don't look obtrusive."

Nice Marantz The Golden Boy My two cents on the LED's is not to. I was on YouTube a while back and I had the same thought. There is a woman that restores old hi-fi equipment and her take on it was that the incandescent bulbs have a nice glow. Ok, true enough. The problem with the looks of these older receivers is that the velum (yes, I never knew that they used velum as a diffusers) yellows. She replaces the incandescent bulbs and replaces the velum.

Her finished projects look great.

Her name is Rosie O'Kelly. I looked her up to provide a link and she is now using LED's. So, now, have to take that back!

Here is the link to one of her Maranz restorations:

IsleRide

I've been listening through tubes all my life with the occasional SS power amp thrown in. So what is your reaction to the vintage "sand" equipment?

rickrob 

Wow, lots of nice gear in this thread! Here's my vintage setup. My main unit is a Marantz 2235. The Realistic is an STA-64. I completely recapped both units and did a few mods to the STA-64. I installed LEDs for all lamps
The sources are a modded Sony DVP-S7000 DVD/CD Player and a Sony PS-5520 Turntable that I restored. Still working on the main speakers-- One cab needs to be oiled. The other pair on the floor are EPI 100s that I restored.

thinktubes 

Like it just fine. The older stuff seems to have a softer edge to it. I have a Marantz 2015 in the living room system, which I can listen to all day. Apples and oranges - they're both good!

Velo Mule

There are some beautiful equipment here. So, while my stuff is not as impressive I do like vintage audio. Here is my receiver. Most of my audio equipment has been put away. Our house is too small for all of it. Back in the late '80's I build my own speakers and sub woofer with a buddy. I actually build two pairs of speakers. My dad has the other pair.



This is not as pretty or as desirable as the older blue lit receivers, but it works great.

The interesting thing is that we went through two mini stereo systems, that impressed when new and then failed later. At least with these older component hi-fi systems, if something fails we might be able to fix it. If we can't fix it we can just get another component. The old stuff does take up more space than modern electronics, but this is what I like.

I have old Yamaha T1 tuner and an integrated amplifier, both are redundant since the Marantz receiver is in the living room, so they are not being used anymore. I used to, and still do, listen to a lot of FM broadcasts, I splurged on the tuner and didn't need a bunch of power for the integrated amplifier.

I even have an active cross-over built from a kit for my old system. And a couple of more amplifiers. We are space constrained in our almost tiny house.