Classic Hifi Care

.....to bring stuff home from storage. While we are waiting for the shop to be done in dribs and drabs, we are doing things in the house. We have the wife's "she shed" done in the second bedroom. Now we start on the den. I'm going to set my "laboratory" back up in the den, rather than in the shop. We had a cabinet built from hardwood in Mexico to hold records, VCR movies and CD's. I know, I know. VCR movies and CD's are obsolete. Well, so am I. I have three or four VCR/DVD players around here. I'm going to set my music digitizing process in the den. I still need to find a set of bookshelf speakers with reasonable performance for a reasonable price. I'd like to gang my old Win 7 computer to this one. I'm not sure that's within my wheelhouse or not. I'll use the old Marantz 2245 until I get the SX-1050 gone thru. Depending on what work station we get, I'll have between three and six turntable/changers available for the various recordings I want to process. This tends to be hard on needles, so I have extra turntables available. And it looks really cool. I'll have a cassette deck and R-R deck as well. I brought ten boxes of records to sort thru and get into the rack. 16 more boxes to go.....

Your projects sound like more fun than mine. Today I started by cleaning the fridge--whoopee--and then advanced to working through the mountains of paper on my home desk. Then the valuable stuff has to get filed away wherever it will be saved. Boat stuff, car stuff, electronics stuff, correspondence, addresses, dimensions or secs for to-do projects, on and on. Temps got into the teens today so it was a good indoor day.

Chris Campbell

Chris, are you done sorting at your Mom's house? It took me a year to go thru my parents home after Dad died.

Bill

Somebody did a really crappy job of sorting my records. I thought I had them well-sorted, but that sure wasn't the case with the first ten boxes. I got them all done and the boxes broken down and in the recycling bin. 16 more boxes of LP's to go plus the 45's and what few 78's I saved. I may not have much room for VCR tapes when that's all done. I may have to come up with Plan B for those. I have a feeling this is not the only time I'll have to activate Plan B.......

Shame on Mari for doing a poor job sorting!

That must be one huge shelving unit you had built? 16 boxes of records is a lot of records. It's good that you are moving forward with the project and have plans set in motion to make it fun for you. Getting things back to normal is always a good thing.

Bill

It is four feet wide and six feet tall. The same finish as the table and hutch. I didn't see any sense paying for particle board and having it fall apart with the weight. This one is all wood.

I had 26 boxes of LP's plus the 45's and a few 78's. Around 800 LP's.

Sounds like fun to get it all up and running. Greg here's a pr of new bookshelf speakers that are an amazing value imo. I had a pair in my office and only gave them to one of our sons when I'd finished replacing the tweeters in my ADS bookshelf spkr, because of space issues, or I'd have kept them too. I have to say they gave the far more expensive Braun/ADSs a real run for the money, amazing performance for what they sell for, check their reviews. The price is more than right, and they sound excellent, I think you'd be pretty pleased with them!

https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Au ... ir-300-652

Those little P-E speakers look interesting. My office system has a pair of Radio Shack Minimum-7 speakers but after we moved I got a larger space, maybe so I wouldn't grump about the 3-mile bike ride. The little speakers actually sound better in the larger room but still aren't exactly earth-shaking. Maybe the P-E models would be better.

Chris Campbell

William wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:00 am Chris, are you done sorting at your Mom's house? It took me a year to go thru my parents home after Dad died.

Bill

We're still working on the stuff. What's interesting is that the least valuable stuff can take the most time effort. Like, for example, the contents of various drawers. Just by way of example, the last time I found an "Eifel Multitool" in a drawer of odd items. It's an odd-looking little stamped-steel device that has 4 screwdrivers, a bottle-cap opener, and a sort of nail puller. See copies and discussion here:
https://forum.multitool.org/index.php?topic=46696.0

The papers have been mostly sorted--tons of letters, post cards, receipts, cancelled checks, tax records, magazines 1940s to present. My sister got a 2nd recycling rollaway bin to accommodate the volume.

I'm still trying to give away some vintage TV sets. "Free" ads are over on videokarma and ARF but I can send details & photos on request for TV fans. I'll have to rent a storage unit for the jukebox, the ca. 1950 RCA radio-phono console, the Home-Mark curbside find, a pair of E-V kit speakers, the Sears one-wheel trailer, the model train set, and other such bulky items. I really need Greg's solution.

At some point I need to find a space for the late '20s Colonial Mfg. (Zeeland, MI) grandfather clock. This came to Mom's family when they purchased a model home in a fancy suburb of Birmingham, AL just before the Depression. It was the model home, all furnished. When they got foreclosed on in 1932, they moved into town and took the furnishings with them, including the clock. It returned to MI when my Mom acquired it from Granny's estate and we popped it in the back of a rented station wagon.

After the sorting is done, we'll have an estate sale for the furniture and such that family haven't taken.

Chris Campbell

Roger, thank you for that suggestion. Those are exactly what I've been looking for. I own a set of 15" Fisher speakers, but those are really too big for the den. I'll use them in the shop with the SX-1050 to annoy the neighbors.

Speaking of speakers, I like big ones. My favorite pair of speakers that I have ever had was a pair of Altec Lansing 820 like the ones in the youtube video below. They had two 15" woofers and a horn. They were huge. I sold them and got a lot of money out of them but I regret that move. They're the best speaker that I've ever heard. Now that's not to say there aren't any better.

I had a pair of Klipsch Chorus I and might not should have sold them. When I look back I'm thinking the Crites upgrades might have made a good speaker very good.

Right now I have a pair of Great Plains Audio 604-8H II mounted in a cabinet that is close to an Altec Stonehenge. They are a 15" duplex speaker. They're one of the biggest disappointments in speakers that I've ever had. They don't sound bad but they don't sound great. I think they're capable of sounding great based on reviews that I have read but I don't know how to get the best out of them.

I have a pair of Altec Lansing Flamenco speakers in a back room that have a 15" woofer and a horn. They sound very nice and will probably take the place of the GPA speakers If I can't figure out how to make the GPAs sound better.

I have a pair of Acoustic Research AR9s in storage that need woofer foam but I haven't ever heard them yet. They have two 10" woofers, mid range, tweeter and what I guess is a super tweeter. They're supposed to sound very good. I need to get them fixed just to see what they sound like.

On my, I'd like to have (or at least hear) list is a pair of Altec Model 19s and a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls. Both of these have 15" woofers. The price of both have gone up drastically in the last few years so I doubt if I'll ever own any unless I get lucky and find a pair for a reasonable price.

https://youtu.be/pjDykyWCmUI

danrclem wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 8:08 pm Speaking of speakers, I like big ones. My favorite pair of speakers that I have ever had was a pair of Altec Lansing 820 like the ones in the youtube video below. They had two 15" woofers and a horn. They were huge.

I have a pair of Altec Lansing Flamenco speakers in a back room that have a 15" woofer and a horn. They sound very nice and will probably take the place of the GPA speakers If I can't figure out how to make the GPAs sound better.


https://youtu.be/pjDykyWCmUI

The 820s looked like corner horns in the initial still pic but the video has them playing without being in a corner (but also music without deep bass anyway).

The Flamencos are what the late Art Dudley of Stereophile magazine loved. He had a pair as his main speakers.

Chris Campbell

TC Chris wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:05 pm

danrclem wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 8:08 pm Speaking of speakers, I like big ones. My favorite pair of speakers that I have ever had was a pair of Altec Lansing 820 like the ones in the youtube video below. They had two 15" woofers and a horn. They were huge.

I have a pair of Altec Lansing Flamenco speakers in a back room that have a 15" woofer and a horn. They sound very nice and will probably take the place of the GPA speakers If I can't figure out how to make the GPAs sound better.


https://youtu.be/pjDykyWCmUI

The 820s looked like corner horns in the initial still pic but the video has them playing without being in a corner (but also music without deep bass anyway).

The Flamencos are what the late Art Dudley of Stereophile magazine loved. He had a pair as his main speakers.

Chris Campbell

The 820s are corner horns. He must just have them in that position so he can video them up close. You'd think that with two 15" woofers that they'd be bass monsters but they aren't. They have good bass but it isn't overpowering. What they are is very good speakers.

The Flamencos do sound very good but I wouldn't say great. They also don't have a huge bass but it is good enough. I need to change the crossover caps because they're original. I've also read that if you raise them up about 12" putting the horn at about ear level it helps the sound out a lot. It might be hard to build a set of stands for them that look good. I'm thinking that if I build a set I'll just paint them flat black.

You know, I think Art Dudley's speakers were Valencias. Read here:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/listening-125

He says the difference from Flamencos was cosmetic. And he always admitted that they were imperfect, but what mattered was that he liked them.
My uncle has an Altec Lansing 604 that I'd love to inherit. His is from the 1950s. They're worth about as much as my house. His system included a Fairchild 225A cartridge that he gave me eventually. It was my second magnetic cartridge, after a GE VR-II. There are people who will rebuild the Fairchilds and one of these days I'll send mine in. Art Dudley was also big on real mono cartridges for mono records.

Chris Campbell

I love big speakers but the wife doesn't. I had a mint pair of Altec Valencias 846a , the good earlier ones with AlNiCo magnet 15" woofers and 800 Hz compression driver w/ sectoral horns. Even the fragile wood grilles that almost always are damaged were good. I bought a perfect functioning pair with beat up cabs for $300 then later got a pr of mint cabs for $100 from a guy on eBay who stripped the spkrs for shipment and got stuck with the cabs, and I just swapped out the guts. Flamencos and Valencias were the same drivers, crossovers, and cabs with the former having the more florid styling.

I also had a pr of 604-D 15" duplex concentrics, but never got around to getting cabs for them. Many love them, but I think the Altecs with separate drivers in the right cabs are better. 604s are often used as studio monitors for their single-point sound in closer quarters.

They were the best speakers I've ever heard at very loud (ear splitting) volumes as they were the home version of the Altec Voice of the Theatre speakers used in concert venues (those crossed over at 500Hz to the horns and had even bigger cabinets painted gray). Bass was not as good as you'd expect at normal sound pressure levels but at full throat they were just incredible, rock at real concert sound levels was their forte, also vocal + ensemble. The trouble is if listened to regularly the way they were meant to be, you'd soon lose your hearing. Also I found then less than convincing for classical/orchestral than electrostats or planar-magnetics like Magneplanars. Gave the Valencias to my son in VT for his basement club-room. The Klipsch KSBs that have replaced them are superb all around at much saner volumes, much more suitable for the LR, and small enough to hide away for the wife.

That was a good read, Chris, thanks for sharing the link.

Bill

I thank you too for sharing the link Chris. It's a good write-up but I think I'd be leery of putting a heavy speaker like that on stands without leg bracing.

I don't think that either model is a particularly good looking speaker but I do like the Valencia looks better than my Flamenco.

Those 1950s Altec 604s would be worth a lot. My 820s were from the 50s and I got a good price out of them. My GPA 604-8H II are made by the people who bought Altec Lansing out. The link is of the newer version of my GPA speakers.

https://great-plains-audio.myshopify.co ... 604-8h-iii

IIRC GPA is also the source for re-coning and other repairs to any of the vintage Altecs.

Altec was originally All Technical Services division of Western Electric for theater sound and James Lansing was their principal designer, later split to become JBL and Altec Lansing, now all part of Harman International.

I'm pretty sure that is one of the Valencias at the extreme L side of the avatar picture, to the L of the Motorola ------>
I had them at about the same time. No wonder the wife wanted 'em gone!

The Altec 755a is also mentioned in Art Dudley's article, I had a pair I scavenged out of a pr of AR-1s I got for next to nothing in VT, they were used as the mid-range, it was Edgar Villchur and AR's first speaker . The 755a is an amazing 8" full-range speaker that was first made by WE. Sold em to a guy I knew in DC who exported them to Japan where they're in huge demand for use with SE Triode amps.

I have all my LP's in the cabinet. They are tighter than I'd like, but they are all in one place, accessible without using a ladder, for the first time in over 20 years. I'm thrilled to be this far. Now to find the Windex and a micro fibre towel. I'll clean a stack and see what the old Symphony will do with some George Morgan records.

I'd use the big Fisher speakers I have, but the wife would be on the warpath. No sense in causing trouble. I can use the big ones in the shop to my heart's content.

I've been spinning platters all day. George Morgan, Mitch Miller, Al Hirt, Waylon Jennings. I took a picture of the LP cabinet.