Shippensburg Music Festival 2016

From 1999-2008, I spent three weeks of July making music with these wonderful musicians at the Luhrs Center. It was great to be back!

Vidcaps of rehearsals 

1st week

R. Strauss - Metamorphosen

2nd week

Schubert Symphony No. 9 - Finale

3rd week

Verdi - La Traviata

Capital Audiofest 2016

 Here's my Vintage/DIY centric point of view of the July 8-10, 2016 event at the Hilton Hotel in Rockville, MD.

EMIA

Custom turntable and tonearm

2 x 300B amps per channel 

using high nickel content iron 

wound and designed by Dave Slagle

Bi-amped stacked QUAD ESLs

DejaVu Audio

Mint Garrard 301 + Ortofon tonearm + Koetsu Rosewood 

in a custom plinth

Custom tube preamp and amp by Aldo D'Urso using vintage Western Electric tubes, iron, paper in oil caps and carbon composition resistors.

Speaker system by Aldo D'Urso 

Altec 803A woofers, 60s vintage Japanese horns + Jensen RP302 super tweeters.

Aldo D'Urso and Vu Hoang

DC Audio DIY

Joe Roberts' Garrard 301 + Schick 12" tonearm

in a custom plinth

Joe Roberts' Altec 756B in 2.5 cubic foot sealed cabinets on retro mid-century modern hairpin legged stands. Highs are augmented by Fountek ribbon tweeters through paper in oil caps and transformer attenuators. Hey Joe, you need Altec 3000s tweets there instead ;)

Custom GM70 monoblock amplifiers with hefty Tamura output transformers by David McGown

David McGown (center)

DCAudioDIY set up

Roscoe Primrose 

Head honcho of DCAudioDIY Forum

Lots of LPs!

Yours truly with Herb Reichert and Joe Roberts ;)

more pics

Leica Store SoHo NYC

While strolling around SoHo NYC,  we stumbled upon this Leica store. This guy looked so familiar, I had an inkling he was the one who sold me my Leica M6 at Tamarkin waaay back in '96! I was right! Nice seeing you again, Craig!

PNoy 2010-2016

PNoy at the November 2012 Hi-Fi Show 

I am glad the bulk of time I spent in Manila was during your term. I know you tried your very best. I just wish more Filipinos cooperated with your vision of a better Philippines. 

Thank you very much, Mr. President!!! 

(Re)building a Hi-Fi Room

ca. 2006

Eight years ago I vacated this space, not knowing that I would be back someday...

Late Spring 2016

Altec 605B experiments

VPI 16.5 - New Housing

I got this machine in the early 90s from Steve at Angela Instruments when he upgraded to a more deluxe unit. It was originally a VPI 16 (note the traces of the lid mounted vacuum nozzle), surplus from Towson University Library. Eventually the turntable motor burned out and when I placed an order for a replacement motor, I also opted for the ".5 upgrade kit". 

After 8 years in the tropics, the particle board housing started to rot due to extreme humidity.  So I took it apart, labelled the wiring and took pictures for easier reassembly.

I enlisted the help of Joey's woodworking shop foreman, Badjo, to duplicate the original using higher quality phenolic plywood.

This is the new box in its final reassembly phase - vacuum motor installed, turntable motor, platter and switch plate next.

Good for another lifetime?

With over 2000 LPs to care for, I need a back up in the form of my trusty Nitty-Gritty 1 from the 80s ;)

Mar Roxas + Leni Robredo 2016

Stereo > Mono Line Level Mixer - ***Revised 4/12/21***

Mixing line level stereophonic signals into full dimensional monophonic ;)

Here's a DIY project for mono aficionados that's so basic, I should have uploaded it many years ago. But other things got in the way.

Just like an MC step-up, these are entirely passive devices. 

1" compression drivers - Emilar, Renkus-Heinz and Beyma

Is there life after Altec?

My first encounter with Emilar and Renkus-Heinz was in a discussion at the Lansing Heritage forum in 2006. Apparently, Jonas Renkus was a principal at both companies in the 70s and 80s. Prior to co-founding these companies, he worked under John Hilliard at Altec Lansing and followed him at Ling Temco Vought (LTV) where they developed a new compression driver with a polyimide suspension aluminum diaphragm. A paper on this research was submitted to the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society in 1966. This association piqued my interest, which triggered my search for affordable Emilar and Renkus-Heinz drivers.

Austin Mini Maintenance Woes

As soon as I got the brakes sorted...

...I had the exhaust leak fixed. 

In preparation for the summer heat, I installed the 

heater matrix 

to function as an auxiliary radiator.

I was about to take out the clutch master cylinder 

to clean up the rust, but it was too late.

Now I have to wait a few weeks for a replacement clutch master cylinder ;(

Listening Room - JE Labs

Hi-Fi Lounge, late 2008

I started this blog in 2011 and overlooked the fact that I haven't posted details of my systems. Visitors who remember the defunct site will be familiar with most of the components apart from a change in venue.