On 21 Feb 2017 17:35:55 GMT, Peter Wieck wrote:
a) How many here actually have used a soldering iron on their own electronics in cold blood?
Been soldering since I was around 10 years old. I'm now mid 60s, and
still doing it.
b) How many here can read and understand a schematic well enough to make parts and quality decisions?
Give me a schematic for vacuum tubes and I can tell exactly whats going
on. Give me one with transistors and diodes, and I will work my way thru
it. Give me one with modern ICs and some of these new fangled solid
state devices, and I'll hand it back to you, and tell you about the
1500watt color organ I built from scratch in 1967 (which still works)
and it never needed any ICs. Just three triacs, 3 diacs, and some
capacitors, resistors, inductors and three pots.
c) How many here believe that there is a direct (if not necessarily linear) correlation between sound and cost?
To a degree. I'd love to own a pair of Mcintosh MC3500 amps, but I'd
have to sell my home to buy them. Then I would not have any place to use
them. The best stereo I ever owned, I built around 1969, using three
identical mono block amps salvaged from a company which installed them
in theaters. There was a fire in the building that housed them. They
were 1940's ish amps, and they had a smoke smell, but were not in the
actual fire. My father was working for a company rebuilding that place.
He was told to toss them in a dumpster.He brought them home for me. I
cleaned them up and replaced the octal based electrolytic caps. I built
two huge (heavy) refrigerator size cabinets, put in 15" and 12' guitar
amp speakers and some horns. Each amp output around 100W from the four
6L6 tubes. That was one heck of a kick-ass stereo, with excellent sound
and power to spare. Later on, I took the 3rd amp, fed it from a separate
preamp, using a mono version of the original input, and fed it thru a
guitar amp reverb spring unit. I built a smaller speaker cabinet with
two 12" guitar speakers, and that became the rear channel, (similar to
the later quad systems). But with that reverb, even the smallest room
was like being in a huge auditorium.
Eventually that all got packed away in a garage, because it would not
fit in apartments that I lived in, not to mention that too many times
the police came about noise complaints. Several years ago, the land
where that garage was, was sold and I had to move them. Well, I still
have all of this stuff and it now makes my workshop a little too small
because of all the space it takes. I plan to recap these amps soon, and
40 years later, put this system back in use.
In the meantime, I have had several fairly decent solid state systems.
They played music, and some were even loud, but none of them have had
that wonderful tube sound.
d) How many here have dedicated (single-purpose) listening rooms?
Nope, just my living room. In order to bring my BIG stereo back in the
house, I am considering building an addition on the house, which will
also serve as an indoor workshop for my electronics, because my other
workshop is not heated in a separate building which is 100 yards from
the house. But the good thing is that I now live on a farm and the
nearest neighbor is a mile away. I can play my music as loud as I want
and no one will call the police.... (at least not till I exceed 10,000
watts)
