Shielded Finemet FM-MCT1 MC Step Up Transformers

 

It's been almost a year since my favorable review of this Finemet MC step up transformer. Overall, it has given me great musical pleasure! However, when tasked to amplify MC phono cartridges with lower output than a typical Denon DL103, in particular the Ortofon SPU and Fidelity Research FR1 MkII, hum could be intrusive in softer passages of classical music, especially when not carefully sited away from motors and power supply transformers.

As I had suspected in my initial review, the FM-MCT1 wasn't as well shielded as the Hashimoto HM7, Tamura TKS83, Altec 4722 and other vintage MC SUTs in my collection.😔 Now, I had no recourse but to compromise my aesthetic preference for an open chassis in favor of an enclosure to provide additional shielding.

Silbatone Box Adventures

from Western Electric Oscillator July 1947

Whether it's an open baffle as conceived by G.A. Briggs or an enclosed box like the Western Electric utility boxes above, I've always been an advocate for a wide baffle design. The wide frontal area serves as an acoustic reflector that helps propagate sound toward the listener instead of escaping to the sides and back. Somehow the wide baffle, whether open or closed, always makes reproduced music sound more alive to my ears!

A notable exception is the narrow front baffle Silbatone box designed by Dr. Stefano Bae for the Western Electric/Altec 755A. Since I uploaded the cabinet project under the auspices of Joe Roberts, it has garnered a following amongst DIYers who've reported successful results mounting other 8' drivers like the Altec 755C, 755E and the Lafayette SK98/Pioneer PIM8L. 

I finally got a chance to mount and listen to my 755Cs and PIM8Ls + other 8" wide band drivers. Hopefully, this article will encourage readers to DIY this mini-monitor sized box because it really offers a lot of musical pleasure per cubic inch!

To recap, let's start with the...

SETUP 2024

Single Ended Triode Users of the Philippines 2024

At the dawn of the 21st century, I uploaded hifi systems owned by audio buddies who had been inspired by the Sound Practices ethos. These were the guys who originally coined SETUP. After a couple of decades, the number of Filipinos who indulge in this hobby has increased exponentially.

Here's what I saw and heard during my recent visit.😊

Harana Audio Workshop

Altec 311-60 horns + 288 drivers with Fostex super tweets on top of a pair of Harana V-Vent bass bins with partial horn loading

Finemet FM-ATVR1 + Intact Audio Nickel 28-step Autoformer Volume Control

Japanese Idler-Driven Turntable Part 6: Realistic Mark 8

Just like cars, a new turntable model has to be introduced every year or two to keep consumers' interest and convince them that newer is better.😊

from page 37 of the 1960 Radio Shack Catalog

The Realistic Mark 8 improved upon the similar looking "motor unit-stye" Mark 7 in Part 4 of this series by adding a 16 rpm speed and supplying a half pound heavier cast aluminum platter.

OJAS 529B Horn

During my visit to the OJAS listening room late last year, Devon asked me to evaluate a pair of horns OJAS developed in collaboration with Lycan R&R. The OJAS 529B is a 500 Hz horn rescaled from the large format Altec 329A for use with 1" format Altec/GPA compression drivers.

  This horn was designed with a throat inspired by the Western Electric 32 horn to avoid the harshness and distortion I (as well as others 😉) associate with the Altec 811 and 511 horns, 

For more details about this horn's evolution and construction, please click here.

SE171A Amp Remastered

My dad would've turned 97 today. To celebrate his birthday, the video clip above features a recording of his favorite violinist, Nathan Milstein, playing Presto from Bach's Sonata No. 1 in G minor for unaccompanied violin. While he was doing post-graduate studies at The Juilliard School in the mid 50s, he was fortunate to have attended concerts of the great violin virtuosos of that era - Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein, etc.

He would later recount that Nathan Milstein's performance of the Glazunov violin concerto was the most unforgettable! Even if he never got a chance to add this violin concerto to his repertoire, he conducted the Manila Chamber Orchestra with me playing the Glazunov violin concerto in 1987. The music of the slide clip above is the middle movement from our performance.

Before I bore everyone reminiscing about my dad and our life as musicians, let's get on with the subject at hand. The amp featured in this upload uses a directly heated triode power tube that was introduced around the time my dad was born.

Line Transformers for Digital Audio

Altec 15356 + UTC A20

While browsing at Books Kinokuniya in NYC in the 90's, this Noguchi ad from the November 1994 MJ Audio Technology issue inspired me to experiment with line transformers as digital sound enhancers. Since I was living on a post-grad assistantship budget back then, importing this pair from Japan was out of the question.

Minimalist Twin-Armed Thorens TD124

Ever since I left this twin-tonearm compatible TD124 plinth in the attic, I've been trying to find the simplest way to use two tonearms on this turntable.

JE Labs Man Cave 2024

This is the side of the man cave where I spend a lot of time listening and evaluating new projects.

In the coming months, I will be talking about phono preamps, autoformer volume control, revisit the transformer coupled line stage topology, SE amps, etc. I will also continue my classic Japanese idler-driven turntable series, feature a couple of SE-DHT amp-friendly drivers + more.

Most of the audio components listed below are hyperlinked if you mouse over the text. Those that are not will be linked once the article is uploaded.

I like to taste new sonic flavors that are within the DIY realm😊

JEL man cave tour

3D printed WP12024 horn from Lycan R&R

In late September, I received a message from Trieu of Lycan R&R, asking if I'd be interested in evaluating his 3D-printed prototype pair of multi-cell horns.

Before proceeding further, this blog entry contains a lot of hyperlinked texts to either previous entries or other sites pertinent to the article (e.g. "Lycan R&R" above). Mousing over and clicking those texts will open the link on another page. Thanks!

Design notes from Trieu: "These horns are slightly wider. The original KS12024 has a rather narrow 50° horizontal dispersion. When updated to the 1" driver opening, the wider initial diameter of the of the 1" driver would not allow for the throat geometries to work correctly. I felt the slim vertical profile of the original KS12024 is important sonically.

The best way to maintain it is to increase the horizontal width via a wider angle. So I increased the horizontal dispersion to 62.5° allowing for the proper expansion and geometries of the throat piece. BTW, I used carbon fiber infused PLA filaments."

OJAS Listening Room @ USM in SoHo NYC

I never imagined 30 years after the late Don Garber closed his Fi audio gallery at 30 Watts Street, that there would be a similar gallery in SoHo NYC again.

In the summer of 2022, I visited Devon Turnbull's OJAS exhibit at the NYC Lisson gallery. Click here to read about it. This past summer, a similar exhibit was presented at the London Lisson gallery. 

As soon as the London exhibit concluded, Ken Micallef, whom I follow on YouTube, uploaded this video featuring OJAS hifi systems inside a posh SoHo boutique. This was the main motivation to add it to my list of must-see places on my next NYC trip! 

Without further ado, here's what Tish and I experienced when we visited in mid November 2023.