'95 Nissan Altima

Our daily driver "Jill" (nickname inspired by the memory of my parents' first car, "Jack" a hybrid '41/'47 Chevy)...

...is a low mileage 90s surivor inherited from my cousin in NYC.

It survived the 240 mile trek but this rusty bit needed the attention of a body shop to pass MD state inspection. Soon after getting it titled and registered, the water pump and one of the electric fans seized, taking away the radiator. 

DIY

...so there's more budget left for folding bike parts, film, tubes, resistors, capacitors, etc. (toys) ;)

Got a brand new radiator and water pump locally, an original electric fan from the junkyard, wrenches and tools from Harbor Freight to get it back on the road, with help from my apprentice ;)

Chambersburg, PA
Canon 7s + Canon 35/2
Agfa APX100 in Rodinal

The car has taken us to the Baltimore/Washington, DC area, PA, NJ and back to NYC!

Octal EAR 834P phono preamp

During my visit to NYC earlier this summer, my buddy Ding loaned me his home-brewed octal version of the EAR 834P phono preamp using 3 x 6SL7 octal tubes. Powering the preamp is a General Radio 1201-B tube regulated power supply.

Ding is not into boutique parts. Instead, he used carbon film resistors, mylar coupling capacitors and electrolytic caps gathered from Hamfests and surplus stores. Proper grounding and parts placement ensured a very quiet phono stage.

Traditional tube phono stages like the classic Dyna PAS 3 and Marantz 7 employed active RIAA EQ networks inserted in the negative feedback loop from the final stage to the input stage. In the 834P, Tim de Paravicini used active RIAA EQ with a clever twist - the EQ network is fed from the cathode follower output back to the second stage only. IMO, the benefits of this topology are: a 1st stage unimpeded by negative feedback, low noise and low output impedance.

I've been enjoying this phono stage so much that I'm inspired to build my own version. Good job, Ding!

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.