Music Stuff

[stormdog]

I keep planning to get a nice picture of myself next to all my audio gear for those who care. Instead, I shot a quick picture with my phone this morning before leaving for work. Thanks to my understanding partner, Danae, who doesn't mind having all this stuff in the living room.

Each piece of gear here was a thrift store find. I may spend too much time in them.

Realistic LAB-2000 linear tracking turntable. $20ish. Early '80s. Needed adjustment of optical sensors for arm movement and could use regreasing of transport mechanism. Works fine though.

Turtle Beach Audiotron network-attached music and internet radio player. $20ish. Early '00s. Fully functional.

Marantz 2270 Receiver in pride-of-place.$70. Early-mid '70s. Fully functional, except for burned out lamps. I have replaced the yellowed vellum-paper light diffuser behind the tuning dial, and plan to replace burned out lamps.

Kenwood fully digitally-controlled graphic equalizer. $20ish. Early '90s. Posi helped me fix a bad solder joint on the display.

JVC CD player, I think it's an XL-V161. Mid-'90s. Fully functional with missing headphone volume knob.

Sony CDP-CX355 300 disc changer model. Mid '90s. $40ish. Had CDs jammed in it; fully functional when removed. Missing one control knob.

Comments

[cmcmck]

The Marantz is a particularly nice piece of kit!

[stormdog]

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw it on the shelf. I already owned a 2220 that a friend gave me when I was in high school and he was done using it as an amp for his band. Having it set up made me really happy, and I hadn't seen a second one for many years until it turned out Danae's dad has one (a big one; I forgot the model but it's over 100 watts per channel).

My interest has spread into vintage receivers in general (I have a Sherwood S-8900A too now, also a thrift find), but Marantzes are my favorite. The blue-lit faces are so pretty!

[basefinder]

That gear sure brings back memories. :-)

[stormdog]

When a friend gave me my first Marantz in high school (my 2220 that he'd been using as an amp for his band), I had no idea it would turn into a love for vintage hi-fi. It's kind of all new to me. *grins*

[acelightning]

Wow, that's some wonderful old stuff there! I remember when that Marantz was cutting-edge state-of-the-art :-)

(My earliest knowledge of electronic gear was actually with tubes, back in the late 1950s/early 1960s. By 1967, I was doing radio, and most things were transistorized, except for transmitter output...)

[stormdog]

One of the things I like so much, historically, about hi-fi gear from the '70s is that it represents early transitions away from tubes and into solid-state. I've never actually used anything with tubes, but some day I'd like to have a tube amp to compare with transistorized ones.

I have a Sony 5.1 receiver connected up for movies and games and things. Maybe it's because the Sony is nothing special as such things go and the Marantz was/is real hi-fi gear, but the Marantz (and my other one, a 2220) just sounds better. Especially with good old two-channel music.

[acelightning]

There's a certain unavoidable amount of distortion in any audio circuit containing vacuum tubes; this takes the form of "soft clipping", which adds some harmonics and affects the volume dynamics a bit. Unless you deliberately overdrive the tube amp, this effect will be fairly subtle, creating the "warm" or "fuzzy" tone that people consider characteristic of tube circuitry.

Transistor circuits introduce a slightly different kind of distortion (different harmonics), and at much lower levels, making the music sound "sharp" (not as in "higher-pitched", but as in "the opposite of fuzzy") or "crisp". The very first time I heard it, I liked it better. (Nowadays, I recognize that both sounds have their uses.) There are even solid-state circuits that purport to mimic the old tube sound, but to my ears, it's still not quite the same.

[stormdog]

That makes sense. Thanks for the overview!

[acelightning]

You're welcome, as always!