I'm 73 and went through everything you discussed in this video. I have been into audio since the early 1960's and still enjoy the hobby today. I combined an electronic engineering degree with my audio knowledge and owned many makes and models of equipment over the last 6 decades. The term "audiophile" seems to have taken a turn over the years, with today's audiophiles spending 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars to impress others and themselves. You don't have to spend a fortune to put together a really decent audio system today. I really enjoyed your video, and I hit the subscribe button.
I can definitely agree to most of what you are saying, except as a Factory Service Rep intimately knowledgeable, I know that United Audio (Dual) are best for record changers, Sony and Technics, for linear trackers, and Tandberg TD20A SE exclusively for Reel to Reel. Maybe second Teac but not all. I still love to work on these. I charge a premium for all the others.
I'm 11 years behind you but was into high end audio equipment from a very young age. Having a degree in electronics and being able to service my own equipment made it so much easier for me to venture out into the 'unknown' beyond those horrible all-in-one systems mentioned here too! Had to laugh when he talked about those because my dad got me one at Sears for my birthday, I think I was 11 or 12, and after 7 (yes SEVEN!) defective ones I finally said "Dad, give me the money you spent on that & I'll go to Radio Shack to get something better" and I STILL have all of that equipment in working condition all these years later! They definitely made better stuff back then!!
Almost the same vintage, fellow EE, former broadcast engineer, and lucky enough to have caught the tail end of the vacuum tube era. Still like the old stuff (I've inherited and continue to use my Dad's tube-era equipment) and agree about these "audiophiles," who seem to equate price with performance, while apparently not realizing that, for a lot less money, they can attend live performances that don't suffer from distortion, sound-stage and other serious problems. I still like reel-to-reel, not so much for its technical performance, but because it allows the remaining siblings, relatives and friends of my youth to hear old recordings of people long gone who we used to record as a novelty back in the 60s. I'm so glad the old man made those recordings so long ago, and never got around to erasing them or tossing them out.
DAD? Hospitalized? Well where do you think vintage Audio comes from? Yeah, vintage Audio comes from estate sales and EMI speakers are some of the best tube amplifier speakers we can rightly or wrongly get for a bargain sum of money, because nobody knows where to find them on SALE, because buyers don't know the brand, an old record company in England. Essex Music International. But these give the deepest bass ever heard from a 30 watt receiver, these are for the 30 watt 1970s Pioneers, Sansui and Leak tube amplifiers, if you can afford them.
There's the customers, THEN there's the jobs! I'm stuck with a couple of these 💩s that I'm working on right now (the gear, not just the customers...🤧). There's the crew that belong to the secret society that I refer to (un)affectionately as "Time Wasters International"📉; I can even visualise their logo in my head: an interlinked chain of twiddling thumbs, diagonally straddling the globe of the planet Earth 🌎 in the background...🔩🙄🔫 Then there's the seemingly nice enough folks, & often they actually ARE nice folks, with whom you share the misfortune of servicing their 💩 with both of you undertaking the transaction in good faith. I still remember the seemingly normal older German gentleman who was so proud of his entire ReVox setup, complete with triamped speakers & their weird linear-tracking 💩table. The hookup was a mess after he moved "over here" from ze Fatherland & tried to set it all up himself, & the old geezer was both too cheap & too proud to pay for us to do a home visit & sort it out for him expeditiously. So instead, it was over a half-dozen pesky phone calls wasting about 3 hours of our time, all UNPAID FOR of course, with nothing more than a brief verbal thank you from him because he preferred, as most cheap f***ers do, to think of us a public service & himself as a charity case since he was a senior citizen. And isn't it funny (hilarious!🙄) that the cheapest cunts are the ones with the most expensive equipment, that they also think are impressing the hell out of you by boasting about it all to you when they're just boring the living 💩 out of you instead, but are too f***ing self-centred & ignorant to notice?🥱🤮 But wait! There's more! It looked like we were going to make some money off the old prick after all, since his wonky linear-tracking 💩table needed service: the needle was gone on the fancy AKG cartridge installed in it, & the cueing mechanism would hang up intermittently & refuse to lower when commanded to do so. Install a new cartridge or aftermarket needle (because AKG means you're SOL), & lubricate the cueing, & Bob's your Uncle, right? Ummmm...NO. Herr Deadbrainfuckdestruct lost the PROPRIETARY plastic guage that ReTard supplied with the 💩table for proper cartridge alignment (tangency), & the stupid thing was out of production for 30 years now & even ePay came up empty (& remember, our preening old German bigshot was a cheapskate who wasn't going to agree to ePay highway robbery prices ANYWAY). A service manual was scavenged up by us after some hassle, but the cueing mechanism, operated by a solenoid/electromagnet, stubbornly refused to resume consistent operation after much time, effort, & lubricant. So the solution appeared to be to try to "work in" the fresh lubrication applied to the solenoid, meaning raising & lowering the tonearm endlessly & watching & praying for any signs of improvement. The entire arm mechanism is activated by pushbuttons on the top of the 💩 table itself, manual operation of the arm in ANY way was impossible BY DESIGN. So that meant that the 💩 table had to be powered up at all times, whilst I alternately pressed the "raise" & "lower" pushbuttons over & over again, praying for progress. Instead, after about the 10th cycling attempt, little whisps of white smoke started curling up from underneath the top plate, getting thicker & thicker until I found the power cord & VIGOROUSLY yanked it from the wall as quickly as was humanly possible! It takes a German to put a circuit board the size of a large pizza inside of a turntable (of all things!), & then stuff it full of dozens of little tantalum crap-ass-itators whose main virtue is that when they get old, they blow up REAL GOOD!🤠🤗 The repair attempt ended right there, with the old German guy informed of the catastrophe & told to come over & grab his 💩 table if he didn't want us to throw it in the garbage for him, where all modern (transistorised) ReVox products belong! OF COURSE, he still wanted it back. AND we had neither the heart nor the nerve to charge him anything for OUR time & trouble (grief!🤬🤬🤬🤦). Result: another 5 hours of wasted time with this old Square head, for a grand total of 8, for which I made exactly 0 dollars. Lessons learned: - No f***ing ReVox products in the store, EVER! I can understand the reluctance of other techs to avoid automatic turntables, but I never met a Dual or a Bang! & Orgasm turntable that I couldn't fix, conversely, nor was I ever faced with anything by the horror that's a Garrard... Heck, I even fixed a Rabco linear tracking tonearm installed onto a Thorens TD-125; the one that operated off a single 'C' battery!🤪 And I even found Bang & Olufsen Linear-tracking tables to be relatively straightforward to repair. But there's just some jobs that catch you with your pants (& guard) down; those repairs that seem innocent & straightforward enough, but just start to fall apart in your hands the more you touch them. These are the jobs that I call "Black 🕳️ Holes 🕳️". Right now this includes a Dual 1229 that a good customer thought he got a good deal on & brought it to me with the hope that it just needed the cartridge & tonearm to be set up. Instead, it's a parts unit that some orangutan has been into with too much oil, too much grease, & too much glue (both rubber cement 🤧 AND the "Crazy" 🤪 stuff!). I put 3 drops of oil into a clicking motor, only to have ALL HELL BREAK LOSE & now the motor makes so much racket that you think it might explode if I let it run 5 more seconds! Time for a TOTAL dismantling & cleaning; THEN a light re-lubing job! Somehow, I don't think that the customer is going to want to pay the MINIMUM $300 this job is going to cost. Heck, I can find him a mint 1229 for that kind of money!😬🤦 Job #2 is a 1972 pair of custom triamped omnidirectional speakers made in Germany by a specialty HiFi shop that produced MAYBE a few dozen pairs of! Using drivers that, for love or money (preferably both!🤗😉), I have NO IDEA who made them. Also, because OF COURSE there's NOTHING printed on the magnets, or any other part of the baskets!🤦🙄 Yep! Another one of those "sentimental" jobs. His sentimentality is costing him $1200, but at least this German isn't a stuffy old arrogant cheapskate Crank like Mr. ReVox was. Even still, $1200 isn't enough for me to take on a custom rebuild & redesign job of ALL the amplification in these things or anything remotely like them, ever again!🧐 4 big boxes, strewn around the shop eating up precious space, for YEARS on end!!! We've closed the store, thank you Kung Flu, & I'm happily winding down my repair business that I've carried on at my own home for the benefit of servicing those old former store customers. I think I can make more money, & spend less time doing it, if I switch over to walking down the streets in my little town instead, picking up empty pop & beer bottles & returning them for the deposit fee...😐
I’m 60 and dad assembled a system consisting of a Marantz 2325, Dual Automatic turntable, CrO2 Pioneer cassette deck and JBL L166 speakers. I sold the Dual at a yard sale and kept an Akai semi-automatic for which I’ve kicked myself for years, but now feel relieved. I still have the Akai and the Marantz but the best part of this review is you and your dad! What a cool guy, your dad is! Blessings!
I loved those L166 speakers. I had them for around 10 years in my basement on my 2nd stereo unit. The only work on them I did was a new 066 tweeter and replace the old caps with film ones. For the price, phenomenal value. Glad you still have them.
I am one of the lucky ones. I service antique and vintage gear from all the way back into the 1920s up to the late '60s. I agree with everything you've said. All of the equipment that you highlighted takes a ton of time to service and if you don't do your own work, you're paying a someone like me a whole bunch of cash to do it for you. I still get a lot of work ((for a one man operation), but nearly every piece that I restore is someone's sentimental heirloom. Thank you for this video. I really enjoyed it.
I bought a Quadraflex reference series receiver/amp in the seventies that I loved, it lasted twenty years without a problem. I never saw those any where but the store I bought it from. I still have my Akai reel to reel from the same era but haven’t fired it up in fifteen years, at least. Thanks for the info!
I’ve been repairing vintage stereo equipment for 20 years and your list of items to NOT screw with is spot on! In fact, as I was watching this episode, i was saying to myself,,, ‘what about automatic turntables, what about reel to reels, etc’ and you each time addressed it. Good job!
It was found 25 to 30 years ago that no item worth less than $1000 should be worked on, and that especially applied to electronics. All digital formats sound better than analogue. All. There is no special magical thing that happens as a result of something being in a non-digital format. Same with manual cameras versus digital. When they stop working for any reason, it will always be cheaper to toss it out and get the latest and greatest...always......
Wow, I’m so glad I found your channel. I grew up in the 80s and was a huge stereo head. I used to subscribe to stereo review and read everything. Seeing all these vintage stereos made me think about that time in my life. And yeah, I had the cheapest stereo system because we couldn’t afford anything. It was a realistic cheap amplifier with two cheap speakers. And I saved my money from my paper route to buy a technics stereo when I was a teenager. It was the greatest day of my life when I brought that home and had this killer stereo system. God bless.
Finally, A content creator that loves old school technology like me. I have a functional system from the 1990's. I have vinyl, cassettes, and CD's. Man, I missed the days when actual record stores where common place to purchase music. Now, I have to purchased good music on Ebay.
My receivers, well..2 of them have Knobs. Still play cassettes recorded 40 yrs ago and still use turntable I purchased at Fort Wayne Electronics in 1978.
Wow...we had a Sears Quad with a joystick to bounce between the speakers! Never noticed a unique sound...but loved to "spin" around between the speakers. Until dad yelled "cut it out!!!" Miss him....
When Quad came out I was a kid. What I hoped would come of the technology was what you and your siblings did: Have the sound rhythmically, melodically move between the channels. Like Beethoven's 5th with the 1st 3 notes on one channel, then the downbeat 4th note on a different channel. For variation have the sound cycle around 'the block' or bounce between the sides. I never heard such a Quad produced record. I understand Pink Floyd set up some concerts doing that with a whole set of speakers around the auditorium.
I lost a Pioneer RT-707 open reel deck in 2006 after being under water for a week because of a flood. It went to the curb. Just last week someone gave me one, as I was checking it out I realized from the serial number that this was mine!
@@RobertWGreaves I own several of these machines, and as far as the mechanical part, they are direct drive. The only belt is the one that drives the counter with a little numbers. You can go to Walmart and pick up some lubrication CRC White Lithium Grease Lubricant Spray, 10 oz. and spray on the parts that need to move back-and-forth. On the electronic switches, use some of that brake cleaner, CRC 05089 Brakleen Non-Flammable Brake Parts Cleaner - 19 oz., and if you're worried that there might be some moisture, spray some WD-40. The WD-40 is a moisture chaser and it will not affect the performance of a switch or potentiometer. Actually it'll probably help its performance. Do the CRC brake cleaner on every switch and every potentiometer. If you were able to reach all the movable parts with the lubrication, your machine should function quite well.
I envy you. My father left us when I was very young and I often wondered what it would have been like to have such a great relationship with my father as you do. Especially to have him work you. That’s a true blessing!
I'm 77. I've not seen your channel berore and I thought you'd like to know I enjoyed it, in particular seeing your dad and your lovely relationship with him which made me smile. Tony in the UK
Your list was spot on, the reasons you stated are why I don't do that level of gear anymore. I had a great setup, buying overseas while in the Navy. I donated my reel to reel/amp to my church, the amp was driven by a Wurlitzer, and Mics went through the tape input with powered mics. The reel to reel part still worked fine to play long, well edited, muzak... today it would be called a playlist. The best part about those machines was if you took care of them with normal preventative maintenance, they would soldier on. My passion for the whole deal, playing LP's and many 45's to record, or off the FM radio, to the dusting off when shutting things down, and working with tapes, became my nightmare. I remember the time it was finally made clear that reel to reel tape was the price of a cheap car. I still have a pair of Sansui speakers from the 70's.
Not a Tandberg TD20A SE. Most come from the factory 20 per cent less than their capabilities. Mine and my friends are tweaked to a knat’s eyebrow, and there is no other better.
Tandberg is JUNK. Get over it! There's PLENTY better, even a Nakamichi cassette deck will run sonic circles around it, as will any Luxman. And DON'T compare your open-reel to even the cheapest HiFi VCR; whose frequency response will be better than+0,-1db 20-20kHz (you'd be lucky if your "tweaked to within a gnat's ass" TD20SE is even +/-3db over the same frequency range...& you won't get 8 hours of playing time from a single tape, or programmable track search & timer record either!🧐And hey! Does the Tandberg do Video ALSO???🤧😉), the signal-to-noise ratio is 90db WITHOUT noise reduction (your precious Tandberg MIGHT get 60db, IF it can record at 15ips, which I bet it doesn't🤨), & the wow & flutter of a HiFi VCR is ZERO(🤯), whereas if your Tandberg could keep its wow & flutter to within 0.2% it would be having a really, REALLY, good day. Oh, I know. The Tandberg specs out at under 0.05% W&F, doesn't it? But that's just a quoted spec, weighted RMS (WRMS), & OF COURSE that spec ISN'T for BOTH record AND playback; just either/or.🤨 A brand new machine wouldn't meet it's 🐂💩 rated specs, never mind your 45 year old machine, no matter how good care you take/took of it, & no matter how low the mileage is on its transport. And as a Tech who has owned & serviced my share of Tandberg JUNK, I positively DARE YOU to open up your precious "baby" to see what a total 🧩 of 💩 it is inside, especially the crummy transport (always a weakness on the Euro-peon Tape Drecks vs. the Japanese competition; any Fry-An-Ear, Dork-Odor, Atari, T-Yuck, or ESPECIALLY Drecknics is LIGHT YEARS better engineered & built than any Tandberg; & if it makes you feel any better, ReVox is almost as bad, too🤨). We all like to play "but MY toy is better than YOUR toy, because I'M so smart AND sophisticated!"🙄 Well, I can, too.🤗
@@joerosen5464what are you doing ? Your completely toxic ! Your angry and you have this smart ass attitude and an air about you that your opinion counts more = no one cares bud . Your opinion like your attitude sucks and therefore means less than the rest of our opinions do. Your knowledge your experience, your wisdom , don’t mean much now that you’ve shown everyone here that you are most definitely Not a Nice Individual ! So see ya . Go somewhere else and show everyone there how smart you are ………..smart Assed that is , but hey - I’m sure they’ll love you !
Open reel tape collector here, I own 13 decks and have over 1,000 factory pre recorded tapes. I'm very lucky that I have a technician in San Jose, CA and one in Modesto, that specialize in repairing open reel decks. They have fixed every one of my units that needed repair. I feel it's worth every penny I have spent in keeping the units in tip top shape. If you love this format, then you'll agree it's worth having them fixed.
@@daviddrake7003 That I don't know. I only know that he checks the pitch to make sure it's running at the right speed. I'm sure he does whatever is necessary. I've never asked.
I was able to get my 1/2" deck repaired in 2021, but the tech ghosted me with my 1/4" deck... I still have my family tapes and a different broken 1/4" I hope to tear into at some point, and still hoping my tech will reappear. I do have to say the pro stuff is a lot easier to maintain, since it was designed to be done on a regular basis. Calibration tapes are still available from MRL, and last I checked, JRF still laps heads.
As for console stereos, a few years ago, I bought an early - to mid 1960's General Electric A-501A ... it is in pretty good condition, and I don't know about the phonograph, but the stereo receiver portion is in fine working condition, even after all this time (October, 2024) everything seems to work well ... and this console stereo is also cool ... It is an upright console stereo, and this one looks like a small hutch ... and on a hutch, where the top pull open doors are?, ok, those are the removable box speakers ... this is a pretty cool console stereo, and although I live in Stockton (California) now, I am a bay area transplant, I use to live in San Jose, with my mom and dad on Baggins Court, I understand that area has really gone down hill, but when we lived there, and I worked at Great America in Santa Clara, it was an alright area, thanks & take care
❤ I am now an empty nester and I have been retrofitting old stereo consoles for myself and friends. The woodwork is still pretty and the sound quality from the hardwood cabinet is awesome. Obviously they are not for everyone, but if you want full range of sound, they can't be beat. Car audio systems work great to make room in the cavernous storage cabinet. 😂
This brought back some memories. My dad was an avionics tech in the USAF. He also used to go around with my grandfather who was a county wiring inspector, so he knew a lot about anything electrical. He had an electronics repair shop set up in one corner of our basement when I was little. He worked on stereos, TV sets, etc. I used to roller skate down there while he worked, and we'd listen to his Buddy Holly 78 records. Good times! He made us one of those stereos from Heathkit once. He had that for a long time. My grandparents had a console stereo. Very nice!
I was mowing someone's lawn in the early 80s when I was probably around 13 and the house across the street had a garage sale going on. I picked up a LaFayette Quadraphonic integrated amplifier, the matching tuner and a pair of Automatic Radio bookshelf speakers for $20 bucks. My parents weren't home so I had to ask the neighbor across the street (I mowed her lawn too LOL) to take me back to bring it all home as it was 1/2 a mile away and too much to carry on a bicycle. To my young ears it was the best sounding thing I had owned and I kept it until sometime in the early 90s. The amplifier had one channel that started playing lower so it was starting to go. I eventually refoamed the speakers and had to repair a lead in wire on one. I thought it was blown until I was playing it one night with the lights off and noticed a tiny arc flashing behind the grille, the wire had pulled loose from the coil and was arcing. Easy fix! A friend who was a true audiophile was really impressed with my tuner. I recall it had very clear highs especially with the MPX filter off. It probably wouldn't impress me much today but it was pretty nice stuff for a kid. My next system was all Soundcraftsmen from a friend's store who sold it. I still have it all and it still works, although I stopped using it until I can get around to recapping the amps as I don't want to blow anything up from 40 year old caps shorting out. I have a fancy Denon AV receiver for the home theatre and it's not impressive to me at all. It's good for movies but not so much for music.
I am in my 60s now and have fond memories of going to my Grandparents house. They had a huge console with a color TV built-in. I can still feel the vinyl covered furniture and taste the slightly stale snacks from giant ceramic candy dishes......ah, the nostalgia and the overall feels......
Yes, Im a little younger but those consoles were considered old fashioned by the 1970's. We had one when I was a kid in the 70's with turntable and radio only, but you could stack records and when the record finished it would drop another and start playing. We also had a reel to reel us kids would record ourselves singing. The 1970's is when the component stereos were taking off. Pioneer, Marantz, Sansui, Yanaha, Onkyo, Denon and the high end European brands. There were highend stereo shops in every suburb, as teens we would hang out and listen to different systems and speakers. The shop owners knew we were broke kids but they let us hang around and debate over which system or speakers had the best sound. Those were the days. I still have a working analog Yamaha receiver
Im in my 20s and have managed to amass a small collection of vintage speakers, reel to reels, receivers, pre amps, vinyl, cassette, tube radios, record consoles, cd player, and various random audio stuff. Some is tube some is SS. I was lucky enough to be able to find nice stuff at thrift stores lol. I’m also lucky enough to know an older gentleman who can actually work on this stuff in case I want to eventually learn. He seemed enthusiastic that someone my age had an interest in his hobby. I never thought about whether it was common or not since I’ve been collecting records as a teen when my mother bought me a record player when that kind of stuff was cheap. If humanity doesn’t face a reset I’m hoping to pass this stuff down to eventually kids and hopefully the knowledge to fix this stuff lol. Unfortunately my original record collection was stolen along with my much loved 1978 fender jazz bass had rosewood fingerboard which wasn’t common for the 70s jazz bass. Still hoping to find my bass out there at some pawn shop.
I put together a HeathKit AR-1500A back in the 70's. What a great sounding receiver with an outstanding FM tuner. That kit would cost around $2,200 today! It took me 42 hours to assemble and worked wonderfully for decades, with occasional spray cleaning of pots and switches. Around about 1980 I put FM antennas on the roof. I used two Finco FM-4G antennas, a bit over 6' apart with a stacking harness, all on a guy-wired tripod with a Channel Master rotor, an FM-only amplifier and Belkin shielded 300 ohm wire. The antennas measured 11.5' long by 6' wide. Monster setup allowing me to DX, weather permitting. That was back when radio stations each had their own programmer and weren't all owned by the same 3 companies. I used to record cassettes and pass them out. Everyone I knew was jamming to better radio in my small town . . . I also had two pairs of (Tenna) MindBlowers mounted in the rear deck of my Plymouth Fury playing those cassettes. Loudest stereo around!
I just stumbled across your channel while browsing UA-cam... And... You saved the best for last LOL. I bought a Teac reel to reel (A4070G) when I was stationed in Thailand in 1974-75. I haven't used it since a move in 1984 and it no longer functions properly. It's still in the original box with the manual and I also have the sales receipt. Anyway, I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. After listening to you I am finally a few steps closer to throwing or giving it away. Thank You.
Stumbled across this video. Wow, what a trip down memory lane and 100%, reel-to-reel, which I used quite a bit is an audio experience unlike any other.
Longtime subscriber, first-time caller. I was touched to see you welcome your dad back to work. My dad was a tinkerer who would way rather fix something than discard and replace it. When he passed, we found 9in his little workshop a disassembled and about half re-assembled 8-track player! (A story in itself.) Anyway, I used to work in commercial radio production and got to use really good reel-to-reel equipment, mono, stereo (Studer Revox) and Ampex four- and eight-track multitrack machines. At home, I also had an Akai open-reel I bought used. We used to get r2r of some current albums at the station (some 30 ips!), and the music guy let me dub them. Those were the days!
Ahhhh “All in Ones”. My best friend is an incredibly talented elderly radio & tv repair technician who used to be a still young, optimistic man when I was 14-15 yrs old in 1981 and had my first, prized all in one I had bought. Shortly after buying it a design flaw showed up where any time you walked across the carpet and touched the volume knob and a static shock would spark, the amp chips would blow. I’d take it up to his shop (his son was a good buddy of mine who owned an identical one that didn’t do this). He used to curse that thing out because he said it was so difficult to get at those amp chips to replace them (he said you had to suspend the thing upside down and everything was too packed together in layers to get to; it basically was not meant to be serviced). After the second time he replaced those chips for me he said he never wanted to see that thing again, so I tossed it out when it happened the next time shortly after. Decades later I’ve asked him how come he didn’t just tell me to put a rubber volume knob on it and call it good after that first repair, but I think he’s always been too much of a purist to send me away with a non-original volume knob on the outside of a unit. The man has never failed to amaze me with his internal design improvements and modifications. When we bought a house with a non functioning 1971 whole-house intercom/radio system, he not only fully restored that wall unit (and several rooms’ speakers), but he modified the dial light to an identical color & brightness LED and added a line level in for a Bluetooth receiver. The man has the patience of a saint, and I seriously don’t know what I’m going to do when the day comes that he’s not available to maintain all the beautiful stuff that has survived the decades solely because of him. Loved your video - and the gear you maintain. Please don’t ever give it up!
My dad and my grandparents called those consoles a hifi. I’m a fan of the receivers of the 70s and 80s. They just give me a visceral reaction seeing them. Unfortunately I lost my right hearing due to a brain tumor. Everything sounds like car AM radio now.
As far as I remember hifi was a norm for any frequency response above 12.500 Hz, easy for any developers now, but more difficult to reach for those coming out of the '40.
It's so awesome to see your Dad back. I can tell his happy to be back at the shop working on equipment and having his son with him. Cherish the father & Son connection. I truly miss my Dad doing things together. Sending love & respect and happy tunes to you.👍😊🍁🤝🇺🇸👍😊
We have repaired reel-to-reei for many years. Now there is reel tape production back, so they can be successfully used. We assemble and group them together so they can be worked on effectively. You need a lot of special tools and test eq. for this.
In 1971 I was apprenticing with an Electronic Technician's Guild member. Cambridge MA had a customer base that you would expect and is comprised of many walk up older buildings with limited parking. I grimace, even now, thinking of the number of Consoles we loaded/unloaded into the International Harvester and many included 25 inch CRT color sets along with different audio quality levels built in. Glad to see the voice of experience has returned!
I found it interesting how people spent huge $$$ on these devices back in the 60's but then Kevin mentions how 10 years later parents didn't have the money to buy anything except those all in one units for the kids. 😂
Great news about your Dad! I own two of the no go items. I have a Magnovox Console for nostalgic reasons. It reminds me of my Dad's Maggie. It sounds and works fine. If it bellys up, I won't repair it. That beast weighs a ton. I also own a Teac Reel to Reel that I bought recently. It wasn't expensive and after a little cleaning and fiddling, it's working good for a machine from 1972. If it craps out, I'm fine with ditching it. It was a curiosity that has been satisfied. It's fun to use and sounds really good hooked up to my system.
I'm working on locating a good open real deck. Just hope I can find one at a reasonable price. Might even try to fix it myself. I have some skills, but a service manual would be a valuable asset. :) Sometimes the classics are still good enough. Have fun!
great information and as I've had some stereo equipment from late 70's and early 80's, Sansui AU/TU 717's Power Amp & Tuner with Technics turntable and Cassette Deck these are still working well but have had to replace speakers. Thank You for the video
Well, not quite all, there was also CD4. So yeah, that's why it never caught on, you never knew what format a quadraphonic record was going to use. And they all sounded like crap in stereo, so you just bought the stereo version. After the formats all died, there was a surplus of quad records being dumped on the market for really low prices. You had to be careful, or you'd get home, take a closer look and find out that "Dammit! it's a piece a $%^& quad! No wonder is was so #*^!@ cheap!"
Having worked in audio repair this is a wonderful video to show customers. Consoles are tough because the other side is when they were new department stores had crews to repair in home or take back. I can’t deal with them or lift them. It’s easier to gut them and redo the electronics.
Just came across your site today. I started at Ampex in NJ back in 1968 and from there have worked on most everything you talked about in this episode. Brought back a lot of good memories. I most liked Electro mechanical work. I just subscribed and will be streaming.
We had a reel-to-reel when I was growing up. Huge, black AKAI unit. My dad recorded records to Maxell reels. A few years back he wanted to give it to me, but I don't even have a component stereo anymore. It did sound amazing. We also had 4 rack-mount dbx equipment that went with it. So crazy when I think about it.
Most stereos in this day and age have an "aux in" jack, so you can just get an RCA to TRS (tip, ring sleeve, stereo) "patch" cord (whatever the word is now), and you should at least be able to play the tapes back on whatever system you own.
2nd Time Watching This One. Loved it as much as the first time - and the news of your Dad at the shop - with a smile on his face - 2nd Time Arround - Priceless!
Good video, with good points. Growing up as a child, we listened to records and the radio on a large console stereo. As I grew up into my teens and got more "into" audio, my curiosity got to me and I pried back the perforated back panel to see the speakers inside, and I saw a pair of 4" speakers and one large woofer stamped "Jensen". (all on one end of the console, the same would be on the other). The turntable was BSR. I don't know what the radio section, nor the furniture manufacturer was. Looking back, it sounded horrible, but it was nice furniture and it served its purpose for our non-discerning family for many years! 🔉🔉
I have a Teac X-1000r. Totally flawless, not a single scratch. Starts to play the tape then stops. Needs service. I like just looking at it. Someday I will see about getting it serviced. If that does not work out I will keep it as part of my equipment regardless. The sound of Reel-to-Reel is awesome.
While I'm not familiar with all of those decks, several use a "tape is still moving sensor" of various types including magnets and lights. If the sensor stops turning, the magnet comes loose, or the reed switch fails, it won't see the pulses and the autostop will operate. If so, it's an easy fix.
@@jefferysmith5921 we love our TEAC A-4300. It requires some attention at times but the sound is amazing. Goes well with our Dual 1209 automatic turntable
Glad to see your Pops back. I don’t know why this video touched me so … I loved my parents’ console, I have a quadraphonic 8 track that I never installed in my 1973 Nova in 1974 ( I still have both from brand new ). I currently own 2 reel to reels, but I can’t find a cover for my Teac . I can’t find knobs for my Pioneer sx434… and yes, nostalgia reigns😂😂❤️✊🏾👍🏾😍
I have 4 Pioneer RT 707 Reel to Reel Deck's and I've had no problem getting them repaired as according to my tech's they are more simple and straight forward to repair. A lot of AKAI reel to reel tape decks are more complex. The earlier reel to reels can be monsters that break easily and are crazy hard to repair. Reel to Reels are money pits in general. However some exotic Pioneer CT-XXX blue flouro-meter cassette decks are breasts to repair. Sansui's oval capacitor cases or Marantz 2330B odd ball cap's aren't tech friendly if replacing main filter cap's. Kevin, I love seeing your Dad's back. ❤🩹Enjoy every moment with him. Make as many special memories as you both can! You're both TOTALLY Worth It!❤ May God be with you!
you are walking me thru my history of tech for sound, at 66 i still put together some nice music units.......................i like using alot of bookcase speakers to make a nice tonal noise. i still love equilizers
THANK-YOU!!! I'm 70+ and you just validated my decisions to get rid of every component in my 70s quad stereo. I bought it in 1973-74 while I was in the Navy and it consisted of a TEAC 4-ch reel-to-reel, Dual Turntable, Sansui QRX-5500 receiver, and four Pioneer R-700 speakers. The reel-to-reel was the first to go in the 90s because after 20+ years it was showing wear on the heads, pinch roller and guides. And with CDs I was no longer using it as a music source. I gave it to a thrift store. The receiver was humming and running hot all the time when I used it so I just gave it away in 2019. The speakers and the turntable I was able to sell for a few bucks last year. If I had it to do over I would not have bought a quad system. But I got my money's worth out of it. A friend lived in a farm house and we used to take my system to his house for parties and hook up eight speakers to it. The reel-to-reel gave us 3 hours of uninterrupted music. From 1976 to 1980 my system was used as a party stereo 3-4 times a year. It got so hot the heat sinks would burn your fingers and we had to put a fan on it. But it was sure great for parties. Now I listen to music either at my computer or in my car. Everything is on my iphone. How times change and how we ourselves change.
Wow....this brought back memories of a friend that bought this almost exact system when we were stationed in San Francisco! That would have been in 1974 I think....//
Exactly right, junkyard it all. It was found 25 to 30 years ago that no item worth less than $1000 should be worked on, and that especially applied to electronics. All digital formats sound better than analogue. All. There is no special magical thing that happens as a result of something being in a non-digital format. Same with manual cameras versus digital. When they stop working for any reason, it will always be cheaper to toss it out and get the latest and greatest...always.
@@ASDasdSDsadASD-nc7lf I'm 74, and have been listening to music since I was 3 years old. Yes, Virginia, there IS a difference. Analog is better. I use digital for convenience, but it is cold sounding. Same for my Fender guitar amps. Tube or nothing.
Glad your Dad is back. Put a smile on MY face. I miss my dad. My biggest bummer on this list is the same as yours; I long for a reliable R2R and a solid supply of tape. Biggest surprise was the automatic TTs, but your logic is understandable.
illinois_Steve, pls think TWICE before spending a Fortune on R2Rs. Basic problem is : The TAPES are NOT produced anymore. Scotch 3M, BASF and Sony would produce both "Home-Quality" and "Professional Studio Quality" tapes. Home Quality Tapes can be found at Garage Sales, Ebay, etc. The Professional Tapes have become Unobtainable. These Prof. Tapes allow record and Playback Speeds up to 38 cm/s, without wearing off. Nowadays some small factories try to sell you FeO Tapes (VERY POOR QUALITY => Tape-Stretching, plenty disposal of FeO on the Tape Heads and Capstan-Rollers) at ridiculous High prices. Absolute max. tapespeed would be 19 cm/s, but these tapes will wear out very quickly. It's a good idea to forget about R2R. Instead, you may want to find a good quality Windows XP (preferably max. Update 2 !) computer (HP, etc) and install CLEAN on it. This allows you to Burn CD's with YOU in FULL Control of everything. You can even REMASTER if you'd like to do so.
No Reel to Reel more dependable in operation than a Tandberg 64 as a deck and 74 as a portable with amps and speakers built in and for external speakers. For high high high end A Tandberg 7.5/15. two track TD20A SE ( tweaked). But again, get a spare just in case.
I could not afford a Tandberg in the 70's, but after 3 inferior units, bought a Pioneer solenoid-controlled (no belts) and kept it for many years. The Pioneer is shown @18:17 in the video. Good luck!
I just found your channel! Yippee 🥳 I am surprised about the reel to real, they are awesome especially for us that grew up in the 50s and 60s (1957) I wish I still had my old system!
I love my Marantz 2285B that I've had since 1978 , my Pioneer HR100 8 Track, Teac Reel To Reel deck, Kenwood Cassette player and Sony Mini Disc. Great to see your Dad back and well.
Amazing how durable they are - I have one from 74 I think and it works perfectly as my garage stereo. Not exactly a friendly environment for electronics but it keeps on going. I’m about to refurbish my TEAC - found a drive belt kit on eBay for it as the one inside has rotted in two. Cheers!
@@refuztosay9454 I replaced my Teach drive belt a few years ago. At least the belts are easy to get after all these decades. I have to get mine looked at. It plays great but the record function stopped working. Stay well & happy!
My Technics SL-7 from a dumpster is a little beast that thing is nearly as heavy as my SL-1200 mkII with it's foot print the same as an album jacket. I believe the. tone arm and cartridge is about 9 grams. The Stanton L747S cartridge is 6 grams it self. It's been the daily driver now and my Philips 212 electric that I used for decades as a daily driver. Is 😢. That 1200 also trash picked has the lower bearing in the tone arm missing when I found it...hopefully something from the vast world of cartridge bearings will fit . Yep the full manual and semi auto are waiting for time at the bench. While the full automatic linear tracking close"n"play that automatically cleans the record it the daily driver. Fortunately the tone arm slide bearing hasn't been greased and is in good shape..It will need the belt for the servo motor for the tone arm drive eventually . That is simple and minimal disassembly to do so. Hopefully the platter bearing is a bronze oil bushings and the cup for the ball is like wise. It's was made in 82 . The late seventies to the mid eighties the higher end stuff was very well made with high quality longer lasting durable prarts were well engineered without being over engineered. My JVC DD-7 is a beast of a cassette deck. Nothing extravagant but every thing to get the job done well.
@@stevengagnon4777 I like the cost of your TT. I caught a transport hop on a C 141 and bought mine at PX in Germany. Still the cost was substantial. I've built my speakers and electronics since 1980. From Class A, MOSFET output, multiered power supplies, where the output transistors operate at 90 C. To what I'm listening through now. I'm done chasing after hardware.(2) valve OTL amps from kits, one a monobloc Class AB (american designation) Soviet military avionics, voltage regulator, the 6C19PI. Bought extra valves from the factory at Ulyanovsk, pre war. 2 bucks a piece for 320. The monoblocs run 16/channel. The other amp an SET OTL employing JJ Electronics EL 509, (3)/channel. The cost of these since the war, has only gone up.I've built two different speakers systems. One based on the Speakerlab Auricle, planar magnetic, push pull, line source, dipole, the RD 57. Xovered to (2) Morel 6 inch woofers/channel. Each loaded into schedule 40 PVC pipe and (4) 90 degree elbows/channel, so that the 12 ft long lines', physical terminus aligns with each woofer. Stack them one line on top of another, place them next to a side wall in the listening room with the planar magnetic off to the side, into the room. Meets my requirements that my speakers sound like my Stax MK III's. I'm hopelessly addicted to the gear, also into the notes, play a left handed strat, since '76.
@@daviddrake7003 I used it to transcribe about 250 of my favorite albums onto Ampex Grandmaster 456 via a B 77. When the tape self destructed I sold the B 77 and B 750. I'm looking at U Turn's Theory TT if they'll mount a 2M Black. Finishing up Transcendent Sound's Slider pre amp kit with a built in phono stage. There is a company in Germany that restores Revox gear to spec. But as a TT its bettered by many of Today's TT's.
Enjoyed that Pacific Stereo commercial on Quads, which I love, terrified to own. Pink Floyd was the masters, all there concerts were Quad and sound was perfect.
Good morning 🌅, great to see you making a living, on restoring vintage HiFi , I have a mid 1975/8 Linn Sondek LP12 the motor as stop working, in France it will cost me over €1000 to get it repaired, they going for a lot money, I only paid £350 , back in 1983/4 , next time I go back to uk I will take it back and have it repaired, I have Nakamichi DR2, from new, I put new belts in it about 4 years, it is still a great peace of kit, , my power source, is NAD , I am hoping to pick up a C375 Bee at some point, as I need more some more grunt, as I listen to my music through transmission line now speaker cabinets, that I built over 40 odd years ago, just recently put new drivers in, SEAS , BIG GAME CHANGERS, very old dude living in France,
I too am owned by a Boston Terrier and can relate to the high level of maintenance they require. Appreciate that you are helping to keep analog going. All that equipment still looks so cool.
Opening with the story about doggie meds was an instant subscribe from me, my man. Loved the video. I'm a massive vintage audio fan myself and love how you presented this.
I have all the cool stuff from the late 70s & early 80s. When young guys stop by and see my stereo setup they are in shock. When I play 70s music that takes advantage of the 4-way system they hit a booster on beibg shocked. Its a Blast !!
Excellent to see dad! So valuable, I took my dad to work once, turns out this was short before his passing and I have such fond memories of that. I wish you many great years with yours, cherish every moment! I appreciate your take on the don'ts in vintage hiifi. Have said this I do like the more private repair guys that "keep them running", be it consols, be it r2r, quad stuff, turntables etc. It's all such a nice heritage to conserve where possible. Nowadays you can get many quad recordings in 4-channel digital format and just play them out via a multichannel DAC, perhaps using 2 amps and 4 speakers, just to enjoy those great (usually Pink Floyd) recordings
A really nicely and rationally explained ... video of let's say the ups n downs of vintage hifi. The Bose 901s were a surprise, just that they look so great, but then you've got 9 speakers, cones, voice coils per side! We are in an odd time, that very few of these things were expected let alone designed to be working or fixable in 2024.
A problem that I've seen with vintage gear is degraded phenolic PCB substrates. The damage ranges from copper delamination or cracks at land rings to carbonization under components that dissipate heat. In some ways a tube amp with sockets and point to point wiring makes more sense for long term survival. You can rebuild them to better than new if you can get the tubes.
Phenolic PCBs in anything post 1960 always scream "the manufacturer disrespected their customers" to me. And grunged up phenolic PCBs are just disgusting.
When I was in 8 th grade I worked under the table delivering Console TV’s. Those things were super heavy! Not as bad as a fold out couch/bed, but they were heavy!
One of the worst moves I ever got suckered into was an older washer/dryer one-piece stack unit with a solid cinder block 'ballast' on the bottom. Up from the basement, through two doors with an L in between then downstairs to the driveway...BRUTAL!!
Your videos bring back warm memories of music in the home, and inspire future improvement and development of vintage audio equipment. I enjoy them thoroughly. Keep them up.
Brother man, I just discovered your channel, and already, I think I'm in love. Thank you for this and I look forward to all the future videos you may make... For now, I guess I'll beat binging on your content that you already have posted! I was beginning to think that nobody genuinely restored anything anymore... I love the old equipment, I hate the plastic crap we have today... Few things have brought me as much joy in life as my good old Ohm C2 speakers at home.. I love my music, and there's nothing quite as awesome as experiencing it on truly great equipment
Brings back many memories, I worked for United Audio Centers for almost 25 years, repaired Dual Turntables, Revox, AR, Garrard, Benjamin, Grundig, Teac, Pioneer, Magnavox and many more. I remember when Sony sent out bulletins stating when internal pullies and belts were no longer available. I became an expert on Dual Turntables. Panasonic seemed to become the standard for high-end TT . Pioneer did the best job of making a tuner that was as good as the McIntosh Line. Enough great video.
@@p.stephenbowermaster7397 I was Factory Service for all those brands Dokorder Wollensak, Marantz NAD National/Panasonic Harmon Kardon Akai Pioneer made a great tuner but Marantz 2270 I had with a Jerrold log/periodic antenna with Channel master rotator. 30 foot high. Picked out a 1,000 watt college FM with no noise and stereo lock next to a 50 Kw station on the back side of the antenna. I worked for Vectra Corp in Vista CA for gear bought from overseas to Camp Pendleton.
Not sure how this video came up on my feed, since it's not at all related to what I normally watch, but I'm 68 and having always been a bit of an audiophile I really enjoyed this. I grew up with one of those consoles in our living room, they may be unprofitable now, but it certainly brings back an era that we all miss. PS - seeing your dad at the end definitely earned a sub. Reminds me very much of my dad who passed away in 2017. I consider myself very lucky to have lived through the era that I did.
Outstanding review; clear, concise, understandable and helpful for those of us who are on a journey to repopulate our 1970's era stereo equipment so we can enjoy all of our vinyl.
As in life, so in repairing old gear: it's an inevitably losing battle against entropy, the principle that governs the universe. Your old receiver is trying to return to the state of chaos from which all its parts began.
I used incandescent light bulbs to gradually warm up solid state circuitry that sat cold for a decade or more. Started off with a 25 watt bulb then went to 40, 60, 75 then 100.
Especially since, let's face it, even expensive hifi gear was rarely made from the kind of relatively entropy proof parts and materials you would find in lab grad test equipment or military electronics (which is often a few parts terminally shot, the rest good as new). Usually, as somebody who enjoys restoring professional electronics like these, whenever I look into mid level stereo gear I think "it sold at what price - omg, people were had so hard back then!"
1) I was... very briefly... a Magnavox sales rep in the early 1980's. By that time we were obviously getting killed by component audio in the marketplace. The only thing we could promote was the quality of our all-wood cabinetry, worth far more than the crappy components inside it. There's a problem when you're trying to sell furniture to audio stores. Nowadays they make excellent home cocktail bars 2) Like you I'm sad to see reel-to-reels on this list. I owned premiere models by Teac, Akai and Pioneer. Back then few people bought commercially recorded tapes; most people copied music from borrowed records or FM broadcasts-- radio DJ's (KSHE95 Real Rock Radio) would announce what was coming up and cue the listener with "Start your machines NOW." 3) The only time I ever seriously considered quadrophonic as a viable format was in a hazy college dorm room listening to Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein" at maximum volume from a Sansui QRX9001. But then I sobered up. 4) Welcome back Dad!
Quadraphonic kept going though. They added a sub and a few tweeters. 5.1 surround is just quadraphonic with bad mixing unless you've got oversized center speakers.
Great video. My dad started me repairing things too and I find myself taking on lots of things these days. So I appreciate the advice. I did however just repair a 1965 Westinghouse console stereo. I was able to find two germanium power transistors I needed, but for $21 each. Phono motor was seized so I put a Bluetooth receiver in at that place on the function switch. The college kids I repaired it for love it, and appreciate the Bluetooth function even more.
Loved this video. Thanks. Just ordered that Marantz t-shirt in XL. Get more XL of the other styles and you'll sell some. Bummer on some of your realizations. Have been thinking about a Reel to Reel lately. Still may, but now realize it'll cost me. Hmmm. Anyway, the bit about your dog meds was funny, relatable, and instantly made me a fan. Talking to your dad at the end was brilliant. Clearly you're just being you. LOL I typed that in unison to you saying dad just being dad. Ha now I'm a follower!!! Thanks
I still use, to this day a set of Fisher ST-828s I bought in 1986. They are a bit bass heavy due to the 15" woofers, and god forbid you put them on the floor... but when a kick drum thumps, with these, so does the whole house.
I'm 73 and went through everything you discussed in this video. I have been into audio since the early 1960's and still enjoy the hobby today. I combined an electronic engineering degree with my audio knowledge and owned many makes and models of equipment over the last 6 decades. The term "audiophile" seems to have taken a turn over the years, with today's audiophiles spending 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars to impress others and themselves. You don't have to spend a fortune to put together a really decent audio system today. I really enjoyed your video, and I hit the subscribe button.
I can definitely agree to most of what you are saying, except as a Factory Service Rep intimately knowledgeable, I know that United Audio (Dual) are best for record changers, Sony and Technics, for linear trackers, and Tandberg TD20A SE exclusively for Reel to Reel. Maybe second Teac but not all. I still love to work on these. I charge a premium for all the others.
Also at that age and much earlier your hearing of high frequencies is so much diminished that you dont hear any of those details.
Same here, 73, and in the military back in 1970, PACEX got me great prices on my Sansui receiver, speakers and turntable.
I'm 11 years behind you but was into high end audio equipment from a very young age. Having a degree in electronics and being able to service my own equipment made it so much easier for me to venture out into the 'unknown' beyond those horrible all-in-one systems mentioned here too! Had to laugh when he talked about those because my dad got me one at Sears for my birthday, I think I was 11 or 12, and after 7 (yes SEVEN!) defective ones I finally said "Dad, give me the money you spent on that & I'll go to Radio Shack to get something better" and I STILL have all of that equipment in working condition all these years later! They definitely made better stuff back then!!
Almost the same vintage, fellow EE, former broadcast engineer, and lucky enough to have caught the tail end of the vacuum tube era. Still like the old stuff (I've inherited and continue to use my Dad's tube-era equipment) and agree about these "audiophiles," who seem to equate price with performance, while apparently not realizing that, for a lot less money, they can attend live performances that don't suffer from distortion, sound-stage and other serious problems.
I still like reel-to-reel, not so much for its technical performance, but because it allows the remaining siblings, relatives and friends of my youth to hear old recordings of people long gone who we used to record as a novelty back in the 60s. I'm so glad the old man made those recordings so long ago, and never got around to erasing them or tossing them out.
Put a smile to my face seeing DAD walk in and look at the familiar surroundings. Its no fun being hospitalized 🙏🏼
DAD? Hospitalized? Well where do you think vintage Audio comes from? Yeah, vintage Audio comes from estate sales and EMI speakers are some of the best tube amplifier speakers we can rightly or wrongly get for a bargain sum of money, because nobody knows where to find them on SALE, because buyers don't know the brand, an old record company in England. Essex Music International. But these give the deepest bass ever heard from a 30 watt receiver, these are for the 30 watt 1970s Pioneers, Sansui and Leak tube amplifiers, if you can afford them.
No more quality music why pay thousands to play trashy tunes that glorify violence 😮
@@Gargoyle77777you’re the guy who shouts at kids to get off the lawn lol
@@keplermission Yes. Dad. 18:30.
@@keplermission Mistake?
When I owned a small business I learned that there were some customers that I could not afford. I learned it the hard way.
There's the customers, THEN there's the jobs! I'm stuck with a couple of these
💩s that I'm working on right now (the gear, not just the customers...🤧). There's the crew that belong to the secret society that I refer to
(un)affectionately as "Time Wasters International"📉; I can even visualise their logo in my head: an interlinked chain of twiddling thumbs, diagonally straddling the globe of the planet Earth 🌎 in the background...🔩🙄🔫
Then there's the seemingly nice enough folks, & often they actually ARE nice folks, with whom you share the misfortune of servicing their 💩 with both of you undertaking the transaction in good faith. I still remember the seemingly normal older German gentleman who was so proud of his entire ReVox setup, complete with triamped speakers & their weird linear-tracking 💩table. The hookup was a mess after he moved "over here" from ze Fatherland & tried to set it all up himself, & the old geezer was both too cheap & too proud to pay for us to do a home visit & sort it out for him expeditiously. So instead, it was over a half-dozen pesky phone calls wasting about 3 hours of our time, all UNPAID FOR of course, with nothing more than a brief verbal thank you from him because he preferred, as most cheap f***ers do, to think of us a public service & himself as a charity case since he was a senior citizen. And isn't it funny (hilarious!🙄) that the cheapest cunts are the ones with the most expensive equipment, that they also think are impressing the hell out of you by boasting about it all to you when they're just boring the living 💩 out of you instead, but are too f***ing self-centred & ignorant to notice?🥱🤮
But wait! There's more! It looked like we were going to make some money off the old prick after all, since his wonky linear-tracking 💩table needed service: the needle was gone on the fancy AKG cartridge installed in it, & the cueing mechanism would hang up intermittently & refuse to lower when commanded to do so. Install a new cartridge or aftermarket needle (because AKG means you're SOL), & lubricate the cueing, & Bob's your Uncle, right?
Ummmm...NO.
Herr Deadbrainfuckdestruct lost the PROPRIETARY plastic guage that ReTard supplied with the 💩table for proper cartridge alignment (tangency), & the stupid thing was out of production for 30 years now & even ePay came up empty (& remember, our preening old German bigshot was a cheapskate who wasn't going to agree to ePay highway robbery prices ANYWAY). A service manual was scavenged up by us after some hassle, but the cueing mechanism, operated by a solenoid/electromagnet, stubbornly refused to resume consistent operation after much time, effort, & lubricant. So the solution appeared to be to try to "work in" the fresh lubrication applied to the solenoid, meaning raising & lowering the tonearm endlessly & watching & praying for any signs of improvement. The entire arm mechanism is activated by pushbuttons on the top of the 💩 table itself, manual operation of the arm in ANY way was impossible BY DESIGN. So that meant that the 💩 table had to be powered up at all times, whilst I alternately pressed the "raise" & "lower" pushbuttons over & over again, praying for progress. Instead, after about the 10th cycling attempt, little whisps of white smoke started curling up from underneath the top plate, getting thicker & thicker until I found the power cord & VIGOROUSLY yanked it from the wall as quickly as was humanly possible!
It takes a German to put a circuit board the size of a large pizza inside of a turntable (of all things!), & then stuff it full of dozens of little tantalum crap-ass-itators whose main virtue is that when they get old, they blow up REAL GOOD!🤠🤗
The repair attempt ended right there, with the old German guy informed of the catastrophe & told to come over & grab his 💩 table if he didn't want us to throw it in the garbage for him, where all modern (transistorised) ReVox products belong! OF COURSE, he still wanted it back. AND we had neither the heart nor the nerve to charge him anything for OUR time & trouble (grief!🤬🤬🤬🤦).
Result: another 5 hours of wasted time with this old Square head, for a grand total of 8, for which I made exactly 0 dollars.
Lessons learned:
- No f***ing ReVox products in the store, EVER!
I can understand the reluctance of other techs to avoid automatic turntables, but I never met a Dual or a Bang! & Orgasm turntable that I couldn't fix, conversely, nor was I ever faced with anything by the horror that's a Garrard...
Heck, I even fixed a Rabco linear tracking tonearm installed onto a Thorens TD-125; the one that operated off a single 'C' battery!🤪 And I even found Bang & Olufsen Linear-tracking tables to be relatively straightforward to repair.
But there's just some jobs that catch you with your pants (& guard) down; those repairs that seem innocent & straightforward enough, but just start to fall apart in your hands the more you touch them. These are the jobs that I call "Black 🕳️ Holes 🕳️".
Right now this includes a Dual 1229 that a good customer thought he got a good deal on & brought it to me with the hope that it just needed the cartridge & tonearm to be set up. Instead, it's a parts unit that some orangutan has been into with too much oil, too much grease, & too much glue (both rubber cement 🤧 AND the "Crazy" 🤪 stuff!). I put 3 drops of oil into a clicking motor, only to have ALL HELL BREAK LOSE & now the motor makes so much racket that you think it might explode if I let it run 5 more seconds! Time for a TOTAL dismantling & cleaning; THEN a light re-lubing job!
Somehow, I don't think that the customer is going to want to pay the MINIMUM $300 this job is going to cost.
Heck, I can find him a mint 1229 for that kind of money!😬🤦
Job #2 is a 1972 pair of custom triamped omnidirectional speakers made in Germany by a specialty HiFi shop that produced MAYBE a few dozen pairs of! Using drivers that, for love or money (preferably both!🤗😉), I have NO IDEA who made them. Also, because OF COURSE there's NOTHING printed on the magnets, or any other part of the baskets!🤦🙄
Yep! Another one of those "sentimental" jobs. His sentimentality is costing him $1200, but at least this German isn't a stuffy old arrogant cheapskate Crank like Mr. ReVox was. Even still, $1200 isn't enough for me to take on a custom rebuild & redesign job of ALL the amplification in these things or anything remotely like them, ever again!🧐
4 big boxes, strewn around the shop eating up precious space, for YEARS on end!!!
We've closed the store, thank you Kung Flu, & I'm happily winding down my repair business that I've carried on at my own home for the benefit of servicing those old former store customers.
I think I can make more money, & spend less time doing it, if I switch over to walking down the streets in my little town instead, picking up empty pop & beer bottles & returning them for the deposit fee...😐
That's a great saying! I'll remember that one, thanks for sharing!
TRUE
Weird way to say that you had bad planning
We all learn that the hard way
I’m 60 and dad assembled a system consisting of a Marantz 2325, Dual Automatic turntable, CrO2 Pioneer cassette deck and JBL L166 speakers. I sold the Dual at a yard sale and kept an Akai semi-automatic for which I’ve kicked myself for years, but now feel relieved.
I still have the Akai and the Marantz but the best part of this review is you and your dad! What a cool guy, your dad is! Blessings!
I loved those L166 speakers. I had them for around 10 years in my basement on my 2nd stereo unit. The only work on them I did was a new 066 tweeter and replace the old caps with film ones. For the price, phenomenal value. Glad you still have them.
I am one of the lucky ones. I service antique and vintage gear from all the way back into the 1920s up to the late '60s. I agree with everything you've said. All of the equipment that you highlighted takes a ton of time to service and if you don't do your own work, you're paying a someone like me a whole bunch of cash to do it for you. I still get a lot of work ((for a one man operation), but nearly every piece that I restore is someone's sentimental heirloom. Thank you for this video. I really enjoyed it.
Thanks!
I bought a Quadraflex reference series receiver/amp in the seventies that I loved, it lasted twenty years without a problem. I never saw those any where but the store I bought it from. I still have my Akai reel to reel from the same era but haven’t fired it up in fifteen years, at least. Thanks for the info!
Glad to see DAD is back !!!
Thank you!
I’ve been repairing vintage stereo equipment for 20 years and your list of items to NOT screw with is spot on! In fact, as I was watching this episode, i was saying to myself,,, ‘what about automatic turntables, what about reel to reels, etc’ and you each time addressed it. Good job!
Thanks :) we are all in the same boat
It was found 25 to 30 years ago that no item worth less than $1000 should be worked on, and that especially applied to electronics. All digital formats sound better than analogue. All. There is no special magical thing that happens as a result of something being in a non-digital format. Same with manual cameras versus digital. When they stop working for any reason, it will always be cheaper to toss it out and get the latest and greatest...always......
Wow, I’m so glad I found your channel. I grew up in the 80s and was a huge stereo head. I used to subscribe to stereo review and read everything. Seeing all these vintage stereos made me think about that time in my life. And yeah, I had the cheapest stereo system because we couldn’t afford anything. It was a realistic cheap amplifier with two cheap speakers. And I saved my money from my paper route to buy a technics stereo when I was a teenager. It was the greatest day of my life when I brought that home and had this killer stereo system. God bless.
Thanks
Finally, A content creator that loves old school technology like me. I have a functional system from the 1990's. I have vinyl, cassettes, and CD's. Man, I missed the days when actual record stores where common place to purchase music. Now, I have to purchased good music on Ebay.
My receivers, well..2 of them have Knobs. Still play cassettes recorded 40 yrs ago and still use turntable I purchased at Fort Wayne Electronics in 1978.
We had 5 record stores in my area in NC. We're down to 1. It's a 2nd and Charles. Thank goodness for Ebay
So lucky to have your Dad with you daily. And, he seems like such a wonderful man and a friend. I’m so glad he’s well.
We lost our dad in 2016 and it still isn’t the same. Awesome to see you dad is healthy and back to doing what he likes! ❤️🤗🙏
Wow...we had a Sears Quad with a joystick to bounce between the speakers! Never noticed a unique sound...but loved to "spin" around between the speakers. Until dad yelled "cut it out!!!" Miss him....
When Quad came out I was a kid. What I hoped would come of the technology was what you and your siblings did: Have the sound rhythmically, melodically move between the channels. Like Beethoven's 5th with the 1st 3 notes on one channel, then the downbeat 4th note on a different channel. For variation have the sound cycle around 'the block' or bounce between the sides. I never heard such a Quad produced record. I understand Pink Floyd set up some concerts doing that with a whole set of speakers around the auditorium.
I lost a Pioneer RT-707 open reel deck in 2006 after being under water for a week because of a flood. It went to the curb. Just last week someone gave me one, as I was checking it out I realized from the serial number that this was mine!
Haha.. great story!
Did it work now
How surprising!?
@@punkrocktv8229 I am currently cleaning it. I do not want to plug it in until it is cleaned and dried.
@@RobertWGreaves I own several of these machines, and as far as the mechanical part, they are direct drive. The only belt is the one that drives the counter with a little numbers. You can go to Walmart and pick up some lubrication CRC White Lithium Grease Lubricant Spray, 10 oz. and spray on the parts that need to move back-and-forth. On the electronic switches, use some of that brake cleaner, CRC 05089 Brakleen Non-Flammable Brake Parts Cleaner - 19 oz., and if you're worried that there might be some moisture, spray some WD-40. The WD-40 is a moisture chaser and it will not affect the performance of a switch or potentiometer. Actually it'll probably help its performance. Do the CRC brake cleaner on every switch and every potentiometer. If you were able to reach all the movable parts with the lubrication, your machine should function quite well.
I envy you. My father left us when I was very young and I often wondered what it would have been like to have such a great relationship with my father as you do. Especially to have him work you. That’s a true blessing!
First time watching and I'm not an emotional guy, but the last two minutes just nailed me…. God bless you both.
I'm 77. I've not seen your channel berore and I thought you'd like to know I enjoyed it, in particular seeing your dad and your lovely relationship with him which made me smile. Tony in the UK
Cool, thanks!
Your list was spot on, the reasons you stated are why I don't do that level of gear anymore. I had a great setup, buying overseas while in the Navy. I donated my reel to reel/amp to my church, the amp was driven by a Wurlitzer, and Mics went through the tape input with powered mics. The reel to reel part still worked fine to play long, well edited, muzak... today it would be called a playlist. The best part about those machines was if you took care of them with normal preventative maintenance, they would soldier on. My passion for the whole deal, playing LP's and many 45's to record, or off the FM radio, to the dusting off when shutting things down, and working with tapes, became my nightmare. I remember the time it was finally made clear that reel to reel tape was the price of a cheap car. I still have a pair of Sansui speakers from the 70's.
Not a Tandberg TD20A SE. Most come from the factory 20 per cent less than their capabilities. Mine and my friends are tweaked to a knat’s eyebrow, and there is no other better.
Every G.I. I ever knew had a pair of Sansui speakers in the 70s. Including me!
Tandberg is JUNK. Get over it! There's PLENTY better, even a Nakamichi cassette deck will run sonic circles around it, as will any Luxman. And DON'T compare your open-reel to even the cheapest HiFi VCR; whose frequency response will be better than+0,-1db 20-20kHz (you'd be lucky if your "tweaked to within a gnat's ass" TD20SE is even +/-3db over the same frequency range...& you won't get 8 hours of playing time from a single tape, or programmable track search & timer record either!🧐And hey! Does the Tandberg do Video ALSO???🤧😉), the signal-to-noise ratio is 90db WITHOUT noise reduction (your precious Tandberg MIGHT get 60db, IF it can record at 15ips, which I bet it doesn't🤨), & the wow & flutter of a HiFi VCR is ZERO(🤯), whereas if your Tandberg could keep its wow & flutter to within 0.2% it would be having a really, REALLY, good day. Oh, I know. The Tandberg specs out at under 0.05% W&F, doesn't it? But that's just a quoted spec, weighted RMS (WRMS), & OF COURSE that spec ISN'T for BOTH record AND playback; just either/or.🤨
A brand new machine wouldn't meet it's 🐂💩 rated specs, never mind your 45 year old machine, no matter how good care you take/took of it, & no matter how low the mileage is on its transport.
And as a Tech who has owned & serviced my share of Tandberg JUNK, I positively DARE YOU to open up your precious "baby" to see what a total 🧩 of 💩 it is inside, especially the crummy transport (always a weakness on the Euro-peon Tape Drecks vs. the Japanese competition; any Fry-An-Ear, Dork-Odor, Atari, T-Yuck, or ESPECIALLY Drecknics is LIGHT YEARS better engineered & built than any Tandberg; & if it makes you feel any better, ReVox is almost as bad, too🤨).
We all like to play "but MY toy is better than YOUR toy, because I'M so smart AND sophisticated!"🙄
Well, I can, too.🤗
As a technician, I saw a lot of reel-to-reel decks come in from the Vietnam war.
@@joerosen5464what are you doing ? Your completely toxic ! Your angry and you have this smart ass attitude and an air about you that your opinion counts more = no one cares bud . Your opinion like your attitude sucks and therefore means less than the rest of our opinions do. Your knowledge your experience, your wisdom , don’t mean much now that you’ve shown everyone here that you are most definitely Not a Nice Individual ! So see ya . Go somewhere else and show everyone there how smart you are ………..smart Assed that is , but hey - I’m sure they’ll love you !
Open reel tape collector here, I own 13 decks and have over 1,000 factory pre recorded tapes. I'm very lucky that I have a technician in San Jose, CA and one in Modesto, that specialize in repairing open reel decks. They have fixed every one of my units that needed repair. I feel it's worth every penny I have spent in keeping the units in tip top shape. If you love this format, then you'll agree it's worth having them fixed.
@@brianwilliams9408 Do they use a 20Khz test tape at all speeds? That brings out the full capability of each Tape Machine.
@@brianwilliams9408 Do they use a 20Khz test tape at all speeds? That brings out the full capability of each Tape Machine.
@@daviddrake7003 That I don't know. I only know that he checks the pitch to make sure it's running at the right speed. I'm sure he does whatever is necessary. I've never asked.
I was able to get my 1/2" deck repaired in 2021, but the tech ghosted me with my 1/4" deck... I still have my family tapes and a different broken 1/4" I hope to tear into at some point, and still hoping my tech will reappear.
I do have to say the pro stuff is a lot easier to maintain, since it was designed to be done on a regular basis. Calibration tapes are still available from MRL, and last I checked, JRF still laps heads.
As for console stereos, a few years ago, I bought an early - to mid 1960's General Electric A-501A ... it is in pretty good condition, and I don't know about the phonograph, but the stereo receiver portion is in fine working condition, even after all this time (October, 2024) everything seems to work well ... and this console stereo is also cool ... It is an upright console stereo, and this one looks like a small hutch ... and on a hutch, where the top pull open doors are?, ok, those are the removable box speakers ... this is a pretty cool console stereo, and although I live in Stockton (California) now, I am a bay area transplant, I use to live in San Jose, with my mom and dad on Baggins Court, I understand that area has really gone down hill, but when we lived there, and I worked at Great America in Santa Clara, it was an alright area, thanks & take care
❤ I am now an empty nester and I have been retrofitting old stereo consoles for myself and friends. The woodwork is still pretty and the sound quality from the hardwood cabinet is awesome. Obviously they are not for everyone, but if you want full range of sound, they can't be beat. Car audio systems work great to make room in the cavernous storage cabinet. 😂
This brought back some memories. My dad was an avionics tech in the USAF. He also used to go around with my grandfather who was a county wiring inspector, so he knew a lot about anything electrical. He had an electronics repair shop set up in one corner of our basement when I was little. He worked on stereos, TV sets, etc. I used to roller skate down there while he worked, and we'd listen to his Buddy Holly 78 records. Good times! He made us one of those stereos from Heathkit once. He had that for a long time. My grandparents had a console stereo. Very nice!
I was mowing someone's lawn in the early 80s when I was probably around 13 and the house across the street had a garage sale going on. I picked up a LaFayette Quadraphonic integrated amplifier, the matching tuner and a pair of Automatic Radio bookshelf speakers for $20 bucks. My parents weren't home so I had to ask the neighbor across the street (I mowed her lawn too LOL) to take me back to bring it all home as it was 1/2 a mile away and too much to carry on a bicycle. To my young ears it was the best sounding thing I had owned and I kept it until sometime in the early 90s. The amplifier had one channel that started playing lower so it was starting to go. I eventually refoamed the speakers and had to repair a lead in wire on one. I thought it was blown until I was playing it one night with the lights off and noticed a tiny arc flashing behind the grille, the wire had pulled loose from the coil and was arcing. Easy fix! A friend who was a true audiophile was really impressed with my tuner. I recall it had very clear highs especially with the MPX filter off.
It probably wouldn't impress me much today but it was pretty nice stuff for a kid. My next system was all Soundcraftsmen from a friend's store who sold it. I still have it all and it still works, although I stopped using it until I can get around to recapping the amps as I don't want to blow anything up from 40 year old caps shorting out. I have a fancy Denon AV receiver for the home theatre and it's not impressive to me at all. It's good for movies but not so much for music.
As a kid I loved Lafayette. My dad bought me my first cassette recorder, a Norelco with an am. Radio
I am in my 60s now and have fond memories of going to my Grandparents house. They had a huge console with a color TV built-in. I can still feel the vinyl covered furniture and taste the slightly stale snacks from giant ceramic candy dishes......ah, the nostalgia and the overall feels......
Yes, Im a little younger but those consoles were considered old fashioned by the 1970's. We had one when I was a kid in the 70's with turntable and radio only, but you could stack records and when the record finished it would drop another and start playing. We also had a reel to reel us kids would record ourselves singing. The 1970's is when the component stereos were taking off. Pioneer, Marantz, Sansui, Yanaha, Onkyo, Denon and the high end European brands.
There were highend stereo shops in every suburb, as teens we would hang out and listen to different systems and speakers. The shop owners knew we were broke kids but they let us hang around and debate over which system or speakers had the best sound. Those were the days. I still have a working analog Yamaha receiver
Great walk down memory lane. The many new generations will never fully understand what they missed..
High cost of repairs.
Yes from source production to the speakers. Damn good. Healthy sounds
Im in my 20s and have managed to amass a small collection of vintage speakers, reel to reels, receivers, pre amps, vinyl, cassette, tube radios, record consoles, cd player, and various random audio stuff. Some is tube some is SS. I was lucky enough to be able to find nice stuff at thrift stores lol.
I’m also lucky enough to know an older gentleman who can actually work on this stuff in case I want to eventually learn. He seemed enthusiastic that someone my age had an interest in his hobby. I never thought about whether it was common or not since I’ve been collecting records as a teen when my mother bought me a record player when that kind of stuff was cheap.
If humanity doesn’t face a reset I’m hoping to pass this stuff down to eventually kids and hopefully the knowledge to fix this stuff lol. Unfortunately my original record collection was stolen along with my much loved 1978 fender jazz bass had rosewood fingerboard which wasn’t common for the 70s jazz bass. Still hoping to find my bass out there at some pawn shop.
Because of the receiver wars in the 1970s that was the best time to purchase audio equipment.
I put together a HeathKit AR-1500A back in the 70's. What a great sounding receiver with an outstanding FM tuner. That kit would cost around $2,200 today! It took me 42 hours to assemble and worked wonderfully for decades, with occasional spray cleaning of pots and switches.
Around about 1980 I put FM antennas on the roof. I used two Finco FM-4G antennas, a bit over 6' apart with a stacking harness, all on a guy-wired tripod with a Channel Master rotor, an FM-only amplifier and Belkin shielded 300 ohm wire. The antennas measured 11.5' long by 6' wide.
Monster setup allowing me to DX, weather permitting. That was back when radio stations each had their own programmer and weren't all owned by the same 3 companies. I used to record cassettes and pass them out. Everyone I knew was jamming to better radio in my small town . . .
I also had two pairs of (Tenna) MindBlowers mounted in the rear deck of my Plymouth Fury playing those cassettes. Loudest stereo around!
Your Dad is an inspiration. Futzing with these old pieces of history just gets in you blood and I'm glad to see he's back at the bench!
Thank you, me too!
I just stumbled across your channel while browsing UA-cam... And... You saved the best for last LOL. I bought a Teac reel to reel (A4070G) when I was stationed in Thailand in 1974-75. I haven't used it since a move in 1984 and it no longer functions properly. It's still in the original box with the manual and I also have the sales receipt. Anyway, I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. After listening to you I am finally a few steps closer to throwing or giving it away. Thank You.
@@George_Lewis Hello George I never saw that. How are you doing now? Next time I am in EC would like to drop by.
Stumbled across this video. Wow, what a trip down memory lane and 100%, reel-to-reel, which I used quite a bit is an audio experience unlike any other.
Longtime subscriber, first-time caller. I was touched to see you welcome your dad back to work. My dad was a tinkerer who would way rather fix something than discard and replace it. When he passed, we found 9in his little workshop a disassembled and about half re-assembled 8-track player! (A story in itself.) Anyway, I used to work in commercial radio production and got to use really good reel-to-reel equipment, mono, stereo (Studer Revox) and Ampex four- and eight-track multitrack machines. At home, I also had an Akai open-reel I bought used. We used to get r2r of some current albums at the station (some 30 ips!), and the music guy let me dub them. Those were the days!
Ahhhh “All in Ones”. My best friend is an incredibly talented elderly radio & tv repair technician who used to be a still young, optimistic man when I was 14-15 yrs old in 1981 and had my first, prized all in one I had bought. Shortly after buying it a design flaw showed up where any time you walked across the carpet and touched the volume knob and a static shock would spark, the amp chips would blow. I’d take it up to his shop (his son was a good buddy of mine who owned an identical one that didn’t do this). He used to curse that thing out because he said it was so difficult to get at those amp chips to replace them (he said you had to suspend the thing upside down and everything was too packed together in layers to get to; it basically was not meant to be serviced). After the second time he replaced those chips for me he said he never wanted to see that thing again, so I tossed it out when it happened the next time shortly after. Decades later I’ve asked him how come he didn’t just tell me to put a rubber volume knob on it and call it good after that first repair, but I think he’s always been too much of a purist to send me away with a non-original volume knob on the outside of a unit. The man has never failed to amaze me with his internal design improvements and modifications. When we bought a house with a non functioning 1971 whole-house intercom/radio system, he not only fully restored that wall unit (and several rooms’ speakers), but he modified the dial light to an identical color & brightness LED and added a line level in for a Bluetooth receiver. The man has the patience of a saint, and I seriously don’t know what I’m going to do when the day comes that he’s not available to maintain all the beautiful stuff that has survived the decades solely because of him. Loved your video - and the gear you maintain. Please don’t ever give it up!
My dad and my grandparents called those consoles a hifi. I’m a fan of the receivers of the 70s and 80s. They just give me a visceral reaction seeing them. Unfortunately I lost my right hearing due to a brain tumor. Everything sounds like car AM radio now.
As far as I remember hifi was a norm for any frequency response above 12.500 Hz, easy for any developers now, but more difficult to reach for those coming out of the '40.
It's so awesome to see your Dad back. I can tell his happy to be back at the shop working on equipment and having his son with him. Cherish the father & Son connection. I truly miss my Dad doing things together. Sending love & respect and happy tunes to you.👍😊🍁🤝🇺🇸👍😊
Thank you so much
I love this channel. Thank you for keeping it real and helping keep vintage audio alive for future generations.
We have repaired reel-to-reei for many years. Now there is reel tape production back, so they can be successfully used. We assemble and group them together so they can be worked on effectively. You need a lot of special tools and test eq. for this.
In 1971 I was apprenticing with an Electronic Technician's Guild member. Cambridge MA had a customer base that you would expect and is comprised of many walk up older buildings with limited parking. I grimace, even now, thinking of the number of Consoles we loaded/unloaded into the International Harvester and many included 25 inch CRT color sets along with different audio quality levels built in. Glad to see the voice of experience has returned!
I found it interesting how people spent huge $$$ on these devices back in the 60's but then Kevin mentions how 10 years later parents didn't have the money to buy anything except those all in one units for the kids. 😂
@@bertroost1675I think because people had lots of kids back then. It was not unusual for people to have four to nine children.
@@mtadams2009 In the 70's? Nine kids? Uh no, that wasn't common at all. Generally it was 2 to 3.
Great news about your Dad! I own two of the no go items. I have a Magnovox Console for nostalgic reasons. It reminds me of my Dad's Maggie. It sounds and works fine. If it bellys up, I won't repair it. That beast weighs a ton. I also own a Teac Reel to Reel that I bought recently. It wasn't expensive and after a little cleaning and fiddling, it's working good for a machine from 1972. If it craps out, I'm fine with ditching it. It was a curiosity that has been satisfied. It's fun to use and sounds really good hooked up to my system.
I'm working on locating a good open real deck. Just hope I can find one at a reasonable price. Might even try to fix it myself.
I have some skills, but a service manual would be a valuable asset. :)
Sometimes the classics are still good enough. Have fun!
Woohoo! Go dad! Still helping his boy : ) Continued prayers for growing strength in all areas!
Thank you!
Enjoyed this video and the end was a pleasant surprise. Enjoy your dad. Reminds me of mine (I miss him every day).
great information and as I've had some stereo equipment from late 70's and early 80's, Sansui AU/TU 717's Power Amp & Tuner with Technics turntable and Cassette Deck these are still working well but have had to replace speakers. Thank You for the video
I had a Sansui Quad receiver that cost $800 in 1972 that had ALL the quad systems: Discrete, SQ, QS and Surround
Same machine ❤
Well, not quite all, there was also CD4. So yeah, that's why it never caught on, you never knew what format a quadraphonic record was going to use. And they all sounded like crap in stereo, so you just bought the stereo version. After the formats all died, there was a surplus of quad records being dumped on the market for really low prices. You had to be careful, or you'd get home, take a closer look and find out that "Dammit! it's a piece a $%^& quad! No wonder is was so #*^!@ cheap!"
My brother owned a Sansui receiver about then, it claimed to have 235 watts per channel !
Dad looks happy to be back! So glad he is doing well :) Thanks for the video!
Thank you!
Don't really know either of you, but I'm glad your dad is back, too ! :)
Having worked in audio repair this is a wonderful video to show customers. Consoles are tough because the other side is when they were new department stores had crews to repair in home or take back. I can’t deal with them or lift them. It’s easier to gut them and redo the electronics.
I think you'd want to do that anyway. They didn't really sound all that good but they looked cool as hell.
@@jimlambrick3248Magnavoxes were not that bad. The tube ones were great!
@@jimlambrick3248 I think our standards of "good" has gone way up as well.
Just came across your site today. I started at Ampex in NJ back in 1968 and from there have worked on most everything you talked about in this episode. Brought back a lot of good memories. I most liked Electro mechanical work. I just subscribed and will be streaming.
That was an excellent overview! Thanks for sharing your experience.
And being aroud his age, great to see your dad doing well!
Expected all that were on your list. Congrats on your Dad being back and healthy.
Thank you!
We had a reel-to-reel when I was growing up. Huge, black AKAI unit. My dad recorded records to Maxell reels. A few years back he wanted to give it to me, but I don't even have a component stereo anymore. It did sound amazing. We also had 4 rack-mount dbx equipment that went with it. So crazy when I think about it.
I still play my Akai at least twice a week, it is the oldest thing I own.
Most stereos in this day and age have an "aux in" jack, so you can just get an RCA to TRS (tip, ring sleeve, stereo) "patch" cord (whatever the word is now), and you should at least be able to play the tapes back on whatever system you own.
For a change, a great YT recommendation. First time viewer and subscribed! I have great memories of my first Marantz in the early 80s.
2nd Time Watching This One. Loved it as much as the first time - and the news of your Dad at the shop - with a smile on his face - 2nd Time Arround - Priceless!
Thanks!
Good video, with good points. Growing up as a child, we listened to records and the radio on a large console stereo. As I grew up into my teens and got more "into" audio, my curiosity got to me and I pried back the perforated back panel to see the speakers inside, and I saw a pair of 4" speakers and one large woofer stamped "Jensen". (all on one end of the console, the same would be on the other). The turntable was BSR. I don't know what the radio section, nor the furniture manufacturer was. Looking back, it sounded horrible, but it was nice furniture and it served its purpose for our non-discerning family for many years! 🔉🔉
Hey, don't feel bad. I inadvertently ate my cat's medicine. Don't ask meow.
Nice one!🙀😹🐈
dont call us....we'll call you
Lol
I have a Teac X-1000r. Totally flawless, not a single scratch. Starts to play the tape then stops. Needs service. I like just looking at it. Someday I will see about getting it serviced. If that does not work out I will keep it as part of my equipment regardless. The sound of Reel-to-Reel is awesome.
While I'm not familiar with all of those decks, several use a "tape is still moving sensor" of various types including magnets and lights. If the sensor stops turning, the magnet comes loose, or the reed switch fails, it won't see the pulses and the autostop will operate. If so, it's an easy fix.
@@johnrehwinkel7241 Thanks for the info on that... Will check into that.
@@jefferysmith5921 we love our TEAC A-4300. It requires some attention at times but the sound is amazing. Goes well with our Dual 1209 automatic turntable
get in there! my student 807 crapped out on me, I tracked it down to the power supply , recapped in , and it's flawless now!
You may have a baldy spot on the tape. That will trigger the auto stop function.
Found you channel and enjoyed a great deal. Lots of memories in this kind of audio. Subscribed. Thank you sir.
Glad to see your Pops back. I don’t know why this video touched me so … I loved my parents’ console, I have a quadraphonic 8 track that I never installed in my 1973 Nova in 1974 ( I still have both from brand new ). I currently own 2 reel to reels, but I can’t find a cover for my Teac . I can’t find knobs for my Pioneer sx434… and yes, nostalgia reigns😂😂❤️✊🏾👍🏾😍
Kevin, I'm so happy to your dad back. Enjoy every moment! WELCOME BACK DAD 😊
Thank you!!
I feel better about passing on a Marantz Quad i saw at the second hand store for 30$ after seeing this, thanks.
I have 4 Pioneer RT 707 Reel to Reel Deck's and I've had no problem getting them repaired as according to my tech's they are more simple and straight forward to repair. A lot of AKAI reel to reel tape decks are more complex. The earlier reel to reels can be monsters that break easily and are crazy hard to repair. Reel to Reels are money pits in general. However some exotic Pioneer CT-XXX blue flouro-meter cassette decks are breasts to repair. Sansui's oval capacitor cases or Marantz 2330B odd ball cap's aren't tech friendly if replacing main filter cap's. Kevin, I love seeing your Dad's back. ❤🩹Enjoy every moment with him. Make as many special memories as you both can! You're both TOTALLY Worth It!❤ May God be with you!
Thank you!
I used to have that 707 as part of my Pioneer system. I sold it about 20 years ago and still miss it.
@@adphotoman8440 My Pioneer RT 707, She is a straight up TANK!
DAD'S BACK! THAT MADE ME HAPPY.
Thank you, me too!
First time seeing your channel, and it was great! I love not only old analog stereos, but amps for guitars, etc. Nice!
you are walking me thru my history of tech for sound, at 66 i still put together some nice music units.......................i like using alot of bookcase speakers to make a nice tonal noise. i still love equilizers
Having lost my Dad last year it makes me so happy to see you and your Dad together again, working side by side. Treasure every day you get together.
Thank you and very sorry for the loss of yours.
THANK-YOU!!! I'm 70+ and you just validated my decisions to get rid of every component in my 70s quad stereo. I bought it in 1973-74 while I was in the Navy and it consisted of a TEAC 4-ch reel-to-reel, Dual Turntable, Sansui QRX-5500 receiver, and four Pioneer R-700 speakers. The reel-to-reel was the first to go in the 90s because after 20+ years it was showing wear on the heads, pinch roller and guides. And with CDs I was no longer using it as a music source. I gave it to a thrift store. The receiver was humming and running hot all the time when I used it so I just gave it away in 2019. The speakers and the turntable I was able to sell for a few bucks last year. If I had it to do over I would not have bought a quad system. But I got my money's worth out of it. A friend lived in a farm house and we used to take my system to his house for parties and hook up eight speakers to it. The reel-to-reel gave us 3 hours of uninterrupted music. From 1976 to 1980 my system was used as a party stereo 3-4 times a year. It got so hot the heat sinks would burn your fingers and we had to put a fan on it. But it was sure great for parties. Now I listen to music either at my computer or in my car. Everything is on my iphone. How times change and how we ourselves change.
Wow....this brought back memories of a friend that bought this almost exact system when we were stationed in San Francisco! That would have been in 1974 I think....//
Exactly right, junkyard it all. It was found 25 to 30 years ago that no item worth less than $1000 should be worked on, and that especially applied to electronics. All digital formats sound better than analogue. All. There is no special magical thing that happens as a result of something being in a non-digital format. Same with manual cameras versus digital. When they stop working for any reason, it will always be cheaper to toss it out and get the latest and greatest...always.
A lot of the classic guitar tube amps are easy to repair and still used today. Those units are simple in design
@@ASDasdSDsadASD-nc7lf I'm 74, and have been listening to music since I was 3 years old. Yes, Virginia, there IS a difference. Analog is better. I use digital for convenience, but it is cold sounding. Same for my Fender guitar amps. Tube or nothing.
Glad your Dad is back. Put a smile on MY face. I miss my dad.
My biggest bummer on this list is the same as yours; I long for a reliable R2R and a solid supply of tape.
Biggest surprise was the automatic TTs, but your logic is understandable.
illinois_Steve, pls think TWICE before spending a Fortune on R2Rs.
Basic problem is : The TAPES are NOT produced anymore. Scotch 3M, BASF and Sony would produce both "Home-Quality" and "Professional Studio Quality" tapes. Home Quality Tapes can be found at Garage Sales, Ebay, etc. The Professional Tapes have become Unobtainable. These Prof. Tapes allow record and Playback Speeds up to 38 cm/s, without wearing off.
Nowadays some small factories try to sell you FeO Tapes (VERY POOR QUALITY => Tape-Stretching, plenty disposal of FeO on the Tape Heads and Capstan-Rollers) at ridiculous High prices. Absolute max. tapespeed would be 19 cm/s, but these tapes will wear out very quickly. It's a good idea to forget about R2R.
Instead, you may want to find a good quality Windows XP (preferably max. Update 2 !) computer (HP, etc) and install CLEAN on it. This allows you to Burn CD's with YOU in FULL Control of everything. You can even REMASTER if you'd like to do so.
No Reel to Reel more dependable in operation than a Tandberg 64 as a deck and 74 as a portable with amps and speakers built in and for external speakers. For high high high end A Tandberg 7.5/15. two track TD20A SE ( tweaked). But again, get a spare just in case.
I could not afford a Tandberg in the 70's, but after 3 inferior units, bought a Pioneer solenoid-controlled (no belts) and kept it for many years. The Pioneer is shown @18:17 in the video. Good luck!
@@joshm3342 Pioneer was pretty good for servicing.
I just found your channel! Yippee 🥳 I am surprised about the reel to real, they are awesome especially for us that grew up in the 50s and 60s (1957) I wish I still had my old system!
Great vid! My son works at a record and audio resale shop in MN. Sent this to him. Thanks again!
Yay!! Dad is back!!🎉 Been praying for him!! This is awesome news!! And hope you don't get any ill affects from taking Moo's meds!! 🤭 Have a great day!
You too! Thanks!
I love my Marantz 2285B that I've had since 1978 , my Pioneer HR100 8 Track, Teac Reel To Reel deck, Kenwood Cassette player and Sony Mini Disc. Great to see your Dad back and well.
Thanks!
Amazing how durable they are - I have one from 74 I think and it works perfectly as my garage stereo. Not exactly a friendly environment for electronics but it keeps on going. I’m about to refurbish my TEAC - found a drive belt kit on eBay for it as the one inside has rotted in two. Cheers!
@@refuztosay9454 I replaced my Teach drive belt a few years ago. At least the belts are easy to get after all these decades. I have to get mine looked at. It plays great but the record function stopped working. Stay well & happy!
I own a linear tracking TT. The Revox B-790 I purchased in the summer of 1978. "Tone arm", is 1.75 inches long and the beast still works.
My Technics SL-7 from a dumpster is a little beast that thing is nearly as heavy as my SL-1200 mkII with it's foot print the same as an album jacket. I believe the. tone arm and cartridge is about 9 grams. The Stanton L747S cartridge is 6 grams it self. It's been the daily driver now and my Philips 212 electric that I used for decades as a daily driver. Is 😢. That 1200 also trash picked has the lower bearing in the tone arm missing when I found it...hopefully something from the vast world of cartridge bearings will fit . Yep the full manual and semi auto are waiting for time at the bench. While the full automatic linear tracking close"n"play that automatically cleans the record it the daily driver. Fortunately the tone arm slide bearing hasn't been greased and is in good shape..It will need the belt for the servo motor for the tone arm drive eventually . That is simple and minimal disassembly to do so. Hopefully the platter bearing is a bronze oil bushings and the cup for the ball is like wise. It's was made in 82 . The late seventies to the mid eighties the higher end stuff was very well made with high quality longer lasting durable prarts were well engineered without being over engineered. My JVC DD-7 is a beast of a cassette deck. Nothing extravagant but every thing to get the job done well.
@@stevengagnon4777 I like the cost of your TT. I caught a transport hop on a C 141 and bought mine at PX in Germany. Still the cost was substantial. I've built my speakers and electronics since 1980. From Class A, MOSFET output, multiered power supplies, where the output transistors operate at 90 C. To what I'm listening through now. I'm done chasing after hardware.(2) valve OTL amps from kits, one a monobloc Class AB (american designation) Soviet military avionics, voltage regulator, the 6C19PI. Bought extra valves from the factory at Ulyanovsk, pre war. 2 bucks a piece for 320. The monoblocs run 16/channel. The other amp an SET OTL employing JJ Electronics EL 509, (3)/channel. The cost of these since the war, has only gone up.I've built two different speakers systems. One based on the Speakerlab Auricle, planar magnetic, push pull, line source, dipole, the RD 57. Xovered to (2) Morel 6 inch woofers/channel. Each loaded into schedule 40 PVC pipe and (4) 90 degree elbows/channel, so that the 12 ft long lines', physical terminus aligns with each woofer. Stack them one line on top of another, place them next to a side wall in the listening room with the planar magnetic off to the side, into the room. Meets my requirements that my speakers sound like my Stax MK III's. I'm hopelessly addicted to the gear, also into the notes, play a left handed strat, since '76.
Get another one for spare parts immediately the longer you wait parts go unobtanium.
@@daviddrake7003 I used it to transcribe about 250 of my favorite albums onto Ampex Grandmaster 456 via a B 77. When the tape self destructed I sold the B 77 and B 750. I'm looking at U Turn's Theory TT if they'll mount a 2M Black. Finishing up Transcendent Sound's Slider pre amp kit with a built in phono stage. There is a company in Germany that restores Revox gear to spec. But as a TT its bettered by many of Today's TT's.
This is the first time I've seen one of your videos. I really enjoyed it. I really appreciate your honesty and straight-forward attitude.
I get it reel to reel is awesome till it BREAKS!
So Happy to see your Dad back on his feet that's Wonderful News!❤
Enjoyed that Pacific Stereo commercial on Quads, which I love, terrified to own. Pink Floyd was the masters, all there concerts were Quad and sound was perfect.
Good morning 🌅, great to see you making a living, on restoring vintage HiFi , I have a mid 1975/8 Linn Sondek LP12 the motor as stop working, in France it will cost me over €1000 to get it repaired, they going for a lot money, I only paid £350 , back in 1983/4 , next time I go back to uk I will take it back and have it repaired, I have Nakamichi DR2, from new, I put new belts in it about 4 years, it is still a great peace of kit, , my power source, is NAD , I am hoping to pick up a C375 Bee at some point, as I need more some more grunt, as I listen to my music through transmission line now speaker cabinets, that I built over 40 odd years ago, just recently put new drivers in, SEAS , BIG GAME CHANGERS, very old dude living in France,
You can probably find a youtube video that shows how to repair the motor.
I too am owned by a Boston Terrier and can relate to the high level of maintenance they require. Appreciate that you are helping to keep analog going. All that equipment still looks so cool.
Opening with the story about doggie meds was an instant subscribe from me, my man. Loved the video. I'm a massive vintage audio fan myself and love how you presented this.
Add to that list any 8-track deck and Akai anything with the un-obtainium weird little pre-amp IC's that were discontinued
I have all the cool stuff from the late 70s & early 80s. When young guys stop by and see my stereo setup they are in shock. When I play 70s music that takes advantage of the 4-way system they hit a booster on beibg shocked. Its a Blast !!
Excellent to see dad! So valuable, I took my dad to work once, turns out this was short before his passing and I have such fond memories of that. I wish you many great years with yours, cherish every moment!
I appreciate your take on the don'ts in vintage hiifi. Have said this I do like the more private repair guys that "keep them running", be it consols, be it r2r, quad stuff, turntables etc. It's all such a nice heritage to conserve where possible.
Nowadays you can get many quad recordings in 4-channel digital format and just play them out via a multichannel DAC, perhaps using 2 amps and 4 speakers, just to enjoy those great (usually Pink Floyd) recordings
Thanks!
Glad Pop is back and doing well, best part of the video!
Thanks!
A really nicely and rationally explained ... video of let's say the ups n downs of vintage hifi.
The Bose 901s were a surprise, just that they look so great, but then you've got 9 speakers, cones, voice coils per side! We are in an odd time, that very few of these things were expected let alone designed to be working or fixable in 2024.
From my dad's console with the Garrard record changer to my Sony tape deck - you just took me through my audio history. Thanks!
Good to See Dad Back & Smiling. Us older tube radio guys call the consoles Aircraft Carriers lol Huge enough to land a plane on.
lol, true!
They used to like that stuff into space. NASA is still engineering tubes for deep space probing. Good clean sensing components.
A problem that I've seen with vintage gear is degraded phenolic PCB substrates. The damage ranges from copper delamination or cracks at land rings to carbonization under components that dissipate heat. In some ways a tube amp with sockets and point to point wiring makes more sense for long term survival. You can rebuild them to better than new if you can get the tubes.
Phenolic PCBs in anything post 1960 always scream "the manufacturer disrespected their customers" to me. And grunged up phenolic PCBs are just disgusting.
When I was in 8 th grade I worked under the table delivering Console TV’s. Those things were super heavy! Not as bad as a fold out couch/bed, but they were heavy!
I would never buy any kind of fold out couch, simply because I hated moving them so much!🤣
One of the worst moves I ever got suckered into was an older washer/dryer one-piece stack unit with a solid cinder block 'ballast' on the bottom. Up from the basement, through two doors with an L in between then downstairs to the driveway...BRUTAL!!
Your videos bring back warm memories of music in the home, and inspire future improvement and development of vintage audio equipment. I enjoy them thoroughly. Keep them up.
Brother man, I just discovered your channel, and already, I think I'm in love.
Thank you for this and I look forward to all the future videos you may make... For now, I guess I'll beat binging on your content that you already have posted!
I was beginning to think that nobody genuinely restored anything anymore... I love the old equipment, I hate the plastic crap we have today... Few things have brought me as much joy in life as my good old Ohm C2 speakers at home.. I love my music, and there's nothing quite as awesome as experiencing it on truly great equipment
There is no better “vintage” than your own DAD. God bless you both !
Thanks and agree!
Brings back many memories, I worked for United Audio Centers for almost 25 years, repaired Dual Turntables, Revox, AR, Garrard,
Benjamin, Grundig, Teac, Pioneer, Magnavox and many more. I remember when Sony sent out bulletins stating when internal pullies and
belts were no longer available. I became an expert on Dual Turntables. Panasonic seemed to become the standard for high-end TT .
Pioneer did the best job of making a tuner that was as good as the McIntosh Line. Enough great video.
You were in the trenches for sure. Thanks!
@@p.stephenbowermaster7397 I was Factory Service for all those brands Dokorder Wollensak, Marantz NAD National/Panasonic Harmon Kardon Akai Pioneer made a great tuner but Marantz 2270 I had with a Jerrold log/periodic antenna with Channel master rotator. 30 foot high. Picked out a 1,000 watt college FM with no noise and stereo lock next to a 50 Kw station on the back side of the antenna. I worked for Vectra Corp in Vista CA for gear bought from overseas to Camp Pendleton.
Can't argue with your reasoning, but that being said, I still enjoy my Sansui QR4500 with Bose 901s and Radio Shack Mach Ones....old habits die hard.
Not sure how this video came up on my feed, since it's not at all related to what I normally watch, but I'm 68 and having always been a bit of an audiophile I really enjoyed this. I grew up with one of those consoles in our living room, they may be unprofitable now, but it certainly brings back an era that we all miss. PS - seeing your dad at the end definitely earned a sub. Reminds me very much of my dad who passed away in 2017. I consider myself very lucky to have lived through the era that I did.
Appreciate that
Outstanding review; clear, concise, understandable and helpful for those of us who are on a journey to repopulate our 1970's era stereo equipment so we can enjoy all of our vinyl.
As any son to a father, father to a child… friggin’ awesome!
thanks!
Great to see your Father back. God Bless Him.
Thanks!
As in life, so in repairing old gear: it's an inevitably losing battle against entropy, the principle that governs the universe. Your old receiver is trying to return to the state of chaos from which all its parts began.
good one.
I used incandescent light bulbs to gradually warm up solid state circuitry that sat cold for a decade or more. Started off with a 25 watt bulb then went to 40, 60, 75 then 100.
Especially since, let's face it, even expensive hifi gear was rarely made from the kind of relatively entropy proof parts and materials you would find in lab grad test equipment or military electronics (which is often a few parts terminally shot, the rest good as new). Usually, as somebody who enjoys restoring professional electronics like these, whenever I look into mid level stereo gear I think "it sold at what price - omg, people were had so hard back then!"
Learned a lot. Brought back plenty of memories. Thank you.
Treasure your pop. He's the only one you will ever have.
I'm so glad to discover your channel. My dad (RIP) loved good audio and always wanted a reel to reel deck. I'll be watching more!
Your Dad being Back just made My Day!!!!!!
Thank you, mine too!
1) I was... very briefly... a Magnavox sales rep in the early 1980's. By that time we were obviously getting killed by component audio in the marketplace. The only thing we could promote was the quality of our all-wood cabinetry, worth far more than the crappy components inside it. There's a problem when you're trying to sell furniture to audio stores. Nowadays they make excellent home cocktail bars 2) Like you I'm sad to see reel-to-reels on this list. I owned premiere models by Teac, Akai and Pioneer. Back then few people bought commercially recorded tapes; most people copied music from borrowed records or FM broadcasts-- radio DJ's (KSHE95 Real Rock Radio) would announce what was coming up and cue the listener with "Start your machines NOW." 3) The only time I ever seriously considered quadrophonic as a viable format was in a hazy college dorm room listening to Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein" at maximum volume from a Sansui QRX9001. But then I sobered up. 4) Welcome back Dad!
Very interesting salesman's point of view on console sales. Thank you for sharing!
Quadraphonic kept going though. They added a sub and a few tweeters. 5.1 surround is just quadraphonic with bad mixing unless you've got oversized center speakers.
Welcome back Dad! We missed you. God bless. Here’s to many more years of music! Wyoming sends love and peace!
Thank you!
Great video. My dad started me repairing things too and I find myself taking on lots of things these days. So I appreciate the advice. I did however just repair a 1965 Westinghouse console stereo. I was able to find two germanium power transistors I needed, but for $21 each. Phono motor was seized so I put a Bluetooth receiver in at that place on the function switch. The college kids I repaired it for love it, and appreciate the Bluetooth function even more.
Loved this video. Thanks. Just ordered that Marantz t-shirt in XL. Get more XL of the other styles and you'll sell some. Bummer on some of your realizations. Have been thinking about a Reel to Reel lately. Still may, but now realize it'll cost me. Hmmm. Anyway, the bit about your dog meds was funny, relatable, and instantly made me a fan. Talking to your dad at the end was brilliant. Clearly you're just being you. LOL I typed that in unison to you saying dad just being dad. Ha now I'm a follower!!! Thanks
Our job as audiophiles is to take what's obsolete and "LOVE IT FOREVER!!!!!"
How can you not!? Thanks
Ha ha! So true.
Somewhat more challenging when you have to deal with RX/TX and the random mix on any day.
I still use, to this day a set of Fisher ST-828s I bought in 1986. They are a bit bass heavy due to the 15" woofers, and god forbid you put them on the floor... but when a kick drum thumps, with these, so does the whole house.