ff1d1l
09-12-2014, 12:26
I have a friend with whom I play music, and when she recently moved to a flat with a spacious living room I offered to lend her “a stereo”. She didn’t mind what it looked like, as long as it would sound good….all those SWMBOs out there please note! Vinyl not needed, she doesn’t have any.
I crawled about retrieving stuff from the attic, and last night I turned up with a car full of space junk, mainly car boot finds.
Lowliest was a Hitachi tuner, a ft-d100.
CD player was a Marantz cd52 se. Another booter, from years ago.
Amplifier was a Harmon Kardon HK 6550. I remembered buying this – the volume pot’s retaining nut had worked loose, allowing the whole assembly to rotate drunkenly on the fascia. Tightened up and working fine, I remembered being impressed with the sound before stashing it away in the attic. Because of the knob issue it had come in very cheap, less than a tenner I think.
The speakers looked pretty dreadful, and on the face of it like some Maplin PA speakers that had led a hard club life. Covered in that black felty carpet that cheaper PA is associated with, with a few matted bits due to spillage. I think they say Pro Sound on the grilles. However you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and these might have started life as Maplins not-even-the-finest, but they have been pimped up monstrously. A year or two ago I saw the cabs being offered at the car boot sale for a fiver, 15” Bass units were missing, and the horns, which were still in situ were probably not working anyway. But I had a light bulb moment, and remembered various homeless Tannoy DC’s I had at home.
Back home, it was grilles off, treble horns out, and a quick conversion of the treble driver mounting slot to a port by gluing in four pieces of plywood. Then in with a pair of 15” Tannoy HPD’s and crossovers (the only non boot finds), wire them all to the original quarter inch jack sockets, grill back on and bingo. Cabs are trapezoidal, so pretty stiff and less standing waves than a cuboid cab. The carpet probably helps too with cabinet talk.
My guestimate port worked pretty well with firm but not boomy bass down to acceptably low frequencies. Whole thing took less than an hour. Apart from the glue drying.
Anyway, back to the flat lash up. Speaker leads were some 79 strand that had ended up in the pa odds and ends drawer, but already terminated with jack plugs. Connectors were nothing special, just what I grabbed as I left, one generic phono to phono, which went on the tuner, and some leads which were made up of some quite nice mic cable, but with old phono plugs. This ended up on the Marantz (annoyingly I’d brought a good lead with QED quenex plugs and cable, but one channel didn’t work). Connecting it all up, narrowing down why one channel was silent and then positioning the speakers on some makeshift stands took about an hour. No arial for the tuner, so an offcut of tv arial cable was pressed into use. Reception was now acceptable for mono, but still hissy in stereo, so a decent arial is on the to-do list. Finally, everything working, we made fresh cups of tea and sat back to listen.
9bach’s “Tincian” was the first on. This is folk electronica, really well recorded and the lead singer has a voice to die for. Right from the off it all sounded extremely good, and to be honest I’d have been well pleased had it not improved. But warmed up, this system was something very special, doing scale, dynamics and a spatially resolved soundstage. It also managed that elusive, spooky “in the room” trick a couple of times, on vocals and percussion.
I won’t rhapsodise further, but if anyone out there wants to put together something stellar comparatively cheaply – HPD’s are still the bargain of the classic pepperpot-and-alnico Tannoys – you could throw many, many times what this system would cost at boutique hi-fi and not come near this sound.
I crawled about retrieving stuff from the attic, and last night I turned up with a car full of space junk, mainly car boot finds.
Lowliest was a Hitachi tuner, a ft-d100.
CD player was a Marantz cd52 se. Another booter, from years ago.
Amplifier was a Harmon Kardon HK 6550. I remembered buying this – the volume pot’s retaining nut had worked loose, allowing the whole assembly to rotate drunkenly on the fascia. Tightened up and working fine, I remembered being impressed with the sound before stashing it away in the attic. Because of the knob issue it had come in very cheap, less than a tenner I think.
The speakers looked pretty dreadful, and on the face of it like some Maplin PA speakers that had led a hard club life. Covered in that black felty carpet that cheaper PA is associated with, with a few matted bits due to spillage. I think they say Pro Sound on the grilles. However you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and these might have started life as Maplins not-even-the-finest, but they have been pimped up monstrously. A year or two ago I saw the cabs being offered at the car boot sale for a fiver, 15” Bass units were missing, and the horns, which were still in situ were probably not working anyway. But I had a light bulb moment, and remembered various homeless Tannoy DC’s I had at home.
Back home, it was grilles off, treble horns out, and a quick conversion of the treble driver mounting slot to a port by gluing in four pieces of plywood. Then in with a pair of 15” Tannoy HPD’s and crossovers (the only non boot finds), wire them all to the original quarter inch jack sockets, grill back on and bingo. Cabs are trapezoidal, so pretty stiff and less standing waves than a cuboid cab. The carpet probably helps too with cabinet talk.
My guestimate port worked pretty well with firm but not boomy bass down to acceptably low frequencies. Whole thing took less than an hour. Apart from the glue drying.
Anyway, back to the flat lash up. Speaker leads were some 79 strand that had ended up in the pa odds and ends drawer, but already terminated with jack plugs. Connectors were nothing special, just what I grabbed as I left, one generic phono to phono, which went on the tuner, and some leads which were made up of some quite nice mic cable, but with old phono plugs. This ended up on the Marantz (annoyingly I’d brought a good lead with QED quenex plugs and cable, but one channel didn’t work). Connecting it all up, narrowing down why one channel was silent and then positioning the speakers on some makeshift stands took about an hour. No arial for the tuner, so an offcut of tv arial cable was pressed into use. Reception was now acceptable for mono, but still hissy in stereo, so a decent arial is on the to-do list. Finally, everything working, we made fresh cups of tea and sat back to listen.
9bach’s “Tincian” was the first on. This is folk electronica, really well recorded and the lead singer has a voice to die for. Right from the off it all sounded extremely good, and to be honest I’d have been well pleased had it not improved. But warmed up, this system was something very special, doing scale, dynamics and a spatially resolved soundstage. It also managed that elusive, spooky “in the room” trick a couple of times, on vocals and percussion.
I won’t rhapsodise further, but if anyone out there wants to put together something stellar comparatively cheaply – HPD’s are still the bargain of the classic pepperpot-and-alnico Tannoys – you could throw many, many times what this system would cost at boutique hi-fi and not come near this sound.