Iconic stuff you still rate

[Gandahar]

I was thinking about this the other day and amongst all the stuff I have bought over the years my top 4 are

Sony CDP-997 CD player
B&W CDM-1 speakers
Pioneer A400x amp
AKG 550 headphones

and

TDK SA-X tapes !

Each are so good that if you had them for 10 years together they could still please. Well maybe not the tapes.

What's you old iconic stuff you still rate?

[dudleybloke]

Technics SL1200/1210.

[chibbard]

My 15 yr old daughter had her Ipad running through my stereo when her friends were round for her party last night and was impressed when I told her my Kenwood stereo was approx 31 years old. It sounds fantastic all these years on!!

[The_Burg]

I would say almost anything British built up to 1995 ish. Back then when folk cared.
Any high end Jap kit from mid 70s on. Amazing to think how it lasts. My Exposure amp must be near 30 years old. No issues ever, apart from power neon packed up about 10 years ago. Mind you all the old Quad valve kit...
Or the original electrostatic speaker near 60 years old and still rated highly.

[mp3manager]

Pioneer Kuro

Still loving mine after 7 years and only really thinking of replacing it with the £8000 Panasonic UltraHD OLED.

[rednotdead]

Mission 760i speakers - THE budget choice back in the early 90s, and still sound good today. They were awesome with NAD or Rotel amps.

And the Mission 752F or 753F - punched way above their price.

[Patch1875]

mp3manager said:

Pioneer Kuro

Still loving mine after 7 years and only really thinking of replacing it with the £8000 Panasonic UltraHD OLED.

My 435xde is 11 next month still a superb picture but have decided to replace in when we move in a couple of months probably for the LG oled.

[telecat]

Audio Innovations Valve Amps, Cyrus one and two Amps. Any Meridian 200 kit. Anything built by Chord. Linn Speakers Isobaraks, Index 1, Saras etc. Yamaha NS1000M's. Nakamichi Tape decks

[rex]

I still have and use daily a few NAD3020i amplifiers. Still a good sound for a budget amp. 2 are to run 2 sets of surround speakers and 2 to run the songs in ceiling speakers.

[bristolracer]

My Naim Nait 1

Sending it off for a service soon,should bring it right back to its peak again.

[Troubleatmill]

Valve amps.

A technology from the 1930's that still sounds better than all the transistors and tin you can muster.

[karma mechanic]

As mentioned above by telecat - I bought mine in about 1981. Since then I haven't found anything I like better. There's a big heavy mono power amp for each one, those are as old as the speakers but with new modern capacitors.

[MDMA .]

just bringing my Arcam Alpha separates out of retirement. posted in the hi-fi section last week.



went and collected some mission speakers for it also. 773's. will be good to dust off the old CD's.

[MDMA .]

I also still have my Alpine 7618r head unit. no car from that period to put it in at the moment though. last seen action in my mk2 Golf GTI.

[sajafzal]

telecat said:

Audio Innovations Valve Amps, Cyrus one and two Amps. Any Meridian 200 kit. Anything built by Chord. Linn Speakers Isobaraks, Index 1, Saras etc. Yamaha NS1000M's. Nakamichi Tape decks

Some old names there, that bring back memories, Audio Innovations made superb sounding Valve amplifiers, Meridian of old where superb too, and don't get me started on Nakamichi tape decks, awesome

Saj

[MDMA .]

Linn Sondek LP12. don't think there has been anything to better it.

[Crackie]

CD Players
Technics' MASH CD players from the early 90's ( The ones which used Philips swing arm mechanisms ). SL-PG520A and SL-PG620A in particular.
Sony CDP561E / Sony CDP715E
Rotel 965BX CD
Exposure CD player( The original one )

Amps
Audiolab 8000A
Cyrus One and Cyrus two amps.
Rotel RA-931 amp.
Rotel RB-971 and RB-981 power amps
Sugden A21a
Pioneer A400

Speakers
Hebrook HB1
Impulse H2
Celestion Ditton 15XR
KEF Coda 7
Celestion A3

Edited by Crackie on Sunday 15th October 10:47

[Watchman]

I still love the attention to detail found in the earlier Nakamichi cassette decks, especially the auto-reverse ones. I'll never use one, but I find myself sorely tempted by an RX-505 whenever they crop-up on Ebay. I have a BX-2 and whilst it genuinely does sound decent (for a cassette deck), it lacks the theatre of the RX-series.

You have to remember, iconic HiFi was made when people listened as much to the kit they owned as to the music it played. The ownership was made better by the perceived quality, weight, theatre, and sheer "slam" that some of this stuff had.

These days I have Sonos . It's nice-enough but the actual kit doesn't excite like the HiFi of old. Centre-piece HiFi doesn't have WAF - Wife Acceptance Factor - and I'm secretly pleased with this. Her desire to unclutter our house has led to our adopting Sonos and actually listening to more music as a result. But even though I am more in touch with music than ever, and even though I've let go of the desire for a centre-piece in my house, I do find myself missing it sometimes.


On that note...

The Quad 405 amp design makes all others seem pointless to me although original 405s are seldom perfect (age dries out the caps or the transformer hums). It's the circuit design I love - the error correction part in particular. They are so good, the Chinese have copied the design and sell 405 boards for £35 a stereo pair. You can buy a new and improved case which, if you build one with a modern PSU, will give you a perfect and powerful amp-for-life.

So... on Saturday night while my wife was out, I clicked BUY NOW on enough parts to build a pair of 3-channel active amps (and crossovers) for some speakers I'm also building. That's 6x Quad 405 boards, 2x 500KVA toroidal transformers, and 2x PSU boards, each with 6x 10,000uF smoothing caps. I haven't yet ordered the cases but it's already apparent that the power supplies will have to go into separate boxes to the amps and crossovers - and I haven't yet decided which speaker protection circuits to use. That was an expensive night on Ebay that I'm yet to answer for (when she finds out).


I've never really found a CD player that was worthy of devotion but for sheer build quality, the Linn Karik was close. Where most have plastic drawers, and generally feel cheap and nasty, the Karik had a milled aluminium drawer and similar attention to detail all-over. I just didn't like Linn's non-standard plugs and sockets arrangement.


For speakers, I've always though I would love a pair of active Linn Isobariks for their sheer ability to fill any venue with lots of full-range sound but recently I had one of those light-bulb moments whilst listening to a pair of old Rogers LS5/8s with Quad 405 amps and active crossover. I truly understand why the BBC worked with this kit to provide high-level monitoring. The best thing about it is that you can hear the "oldness" of the kit without it actually sounding bad or coloured. It's neither bad or coloured (any more than anything modern) but there's a certain quality to the sound that makes more modern stuff sound "too much"... difficult to explain.

[Crackie]

Watchman said:

Centre-piece HiFi doesn't have WAF - Wife Acceptance Factor - and I'm secretly pleased with this. Her desire to unclutter our house has led to our adopting Sonos and actually listening to more music as a result. But even though I am more in touch with music than ever, and even though I've let go of the desire for a centre-piece in my house, I do find myself missing it sometimes.

I have a very understanding wife who doesn't mind me having several systems and several pairs of very large speakers in and around our home. A pair of Duntech Marquis for the TV is a little excessive considering the main system is in the same room.

Watchman said:

On that note...on Saturday night while my wife was out, I clicked BUY NOW on enough parts to build a pair of 3-channel active amps (and crossovers) for some speakers I'm also building. That's 6x Quad 405 boards, 2x 500KVA toroidal transformers, and 2x PSU boards, each with 6x 10,000uF smoothing caps. I haven't yet ordered the cases but it's already apparent that the power supplies will have to go into separate boxes to the amps and crossovers - and I haven't yet decided which speaker protection circuits to use. That was an expensive night on Ebay that I'm yet to answer for (when she finds out).

Not sure if you have your crossover finalised yet but if not you may be interested in one of these. https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidsp-in-a-box/...
I've been using one at the heart of my main system since it was released in late 2012. MiniDSP have been gaining a great reputation over the years; helped last year by the fact Seigfried Linkwitz now uses the MiniDSP 4x10 for crossover duties on his LX521 reference designs.

[Watchman]

Crackie said:

Not sure if you have your crossover finalised yet but if not you may be interested in one of these. https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidsp-in-a-box/...
I've been using one at the heart of my main system since it was released in late 2012. MiniDSP have been gaining a great reputation over the years; helped last year by the fact Seigfried Linkwitz now uses the MiniDSP 4x10 for crossover duties on his LX521 reference designs.

Wow - that's a piece of impressive engineering. But the price would have me killed, not merely divorced.

I have actually ordered some KM-Tech 3-way crossovers. These "read" well (from the spec - low noise and easy to adjust for a variety of ramp angles), and as they are nothing more than pre-assembled PCBs, it gives me opportunity to include one crossover into the same case as the 3x Quad 405s that are needed for each speaker.

My objective is to have each amp/speaker independent from the other. I will work with my friend to make-up steel framed stands for each speaker that will contain each amplifier underneath (have a look at a pair of Rogers LS5/8 as an example) and I'll utilise a Chromecast Audio for each amp/speaker, utilising only the left channel for the left amp/speaker, and the right channel for the right amp/speaker. This way, all I need is a mains socket for each amp and by grouping the two Chromecast Audios, I can have stereo without having a wire between each amp/speaker.

I have the Chromecast Audios too - they were only £14 each in Curry's a couple of weeks ago.

The rest is going to cost a fortune... I've only got/ordered 3/4 of the parts for the amps at the moment. I have to go through speaker selection next. From previous history (I like making speakers) there's an element of science, trial & error, and witch-craft. I need to try and select speaker drivers according to their crossover characteristics and their input sensitivity to signal input and enclosure volume. Most of this can be worked into approximations - I'm never going to get close to what a HiFi manufacturer can achieve - but as an experiment that will result in a large "party" system, it'll be fine.

I'll be finished around Christmas. Probably.