Over two decades ago, I ventured into single channel music reproduction to trace the roots of high fidelity. From that whole experience, I developed an aesthetic quest for a certain purity and honesty in sound, which runs parallel with my other hobby of black and white film photography! Sadly, I had to leave that particular mono set up in the attic in 2017.
This ca. 1969 Kenwood turntable adapted the Thorens TD124 drive system sans eddy current speed control.
Whenever I find them at reasonable prices, I re-acquire audio components I owned and enjoyed in the 80s. I started my quest with the Grace G707 tonearm, a TDA1541-equipped Magnavox CDB 473 CD player and the dynakit stereo 35 PP EL84 power amp. I also tried to rekindle my affection for the BBC LS3/5A monitor and my MC SUT collection now includes a pair of Sony HA-T10s. Meanwhile, I've been hunting for an AR XA turntable and a first generation NAD 3020 to complete my journey back in time.
During a recent visit to Steve and Ray at VAS Audio, my attention was caught by an amplifier I built in the early 2000s. This is one of the very few I released into the wild.
 |
| L>R: 6AH4 + AliEx, 12B4A + Sony/Tamradio and 6AH4 + Hashimoto HL20K6 |
 |
| 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...
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.😊
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.
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.
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.
 |
| 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.
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."
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.
 |
| Canon P + Canon 50mm f1.8 LTM Foma 100 in Rodinal |
Inspired by my plate choke-loaded 76 line stage preamp adventures, I was curious how a similar driver circuit configuration would sound in an SE2A3 amp. So I pulled out my Radiotron Designer's Handbook, 3rd Edition to gain a better understanding of choke-capacitance coupling (aka plate choke loading) vis-à-vis resistance coupling.
Below are highlights of relevant information I gathered.
Inasmuch as I love music and retrotech high fidelity music reproduction, I think it's healthy to take periodic breaks from hifi. Frequent visitors know that I also enjoy photography, especially using black and white film loaded in old school manual focus cameras.
So today's blog is about the Shoten R50 lens adapter that's designed to take a 50mm (Note: a 35mm, 45mm, 55mm or 58mm, etc. won't focus accurately) Pentax K bayonet mount lens and fully couple to the rangefinder focus cam of a Leica M body from 0.7 meters to infinity.
I bought this Lafayette PK300 idler-driven turntable because it looked like an improved Shield MO-19 (aka NEAT P58H) with the added feature of an eddy current pitch control as found in the Garrard 301/401 and Thorens TD124.
 |
| Shield MO-19 vs. Lafayette PK300 |
Comparing them side by side, the PK300 turned out to be proportionately smaller in all dimensions and lighter in weight. Hmmm🤔…let's travel back to the late 50s.
