New Radio / best £1.24 ever spent

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Wonder what the sensitivity is, and whether you can get a good signal from a piece of string. Most Jap. tuners of this vintage were pretty good in this respect.

Some, however, only had a 300 ohm aerial input, which made 75 ohm British compatibility awkward (baluns often needed).

Pity about the carriage costs!!!!!

it does seem very sensitive. even without an add on ariel i was picking up one of the local stations.

it does only have 300 ohm input, i was unaware of this not being the standard in the uk. can you (or anyone else) expand on what you mean by "balnus"?

there is a wire that conects to one of the fm terminals from the inside of the box (ground maybe??) i get better signal with this disconected and a 300 ohm t shape arie, is this ok to do?

i only listen to radio 2 for the most part and although i do get it the signal isnt perfect and not nearly as good as radio one (although radio one sounds more compressed?????). when stereo switch is set to on i get a slight increase in background hiss is there something that can be done about this?

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Incidently... I'm also bidding on an identical tuner.

good good, its always nice to start a trend!!

[The Vinyl Adventure]

lovely tuner - very naim (in a good way)

great spot

yeah and a significant deal cheaper than the nat 02 i very very breifly conciderd

http://www.creative-audio.co.uk/NAIM_NAT02_SH.html

[The Grand Wazoo]

If you're looking for a good vintage tuner, you might try something like this - a bit of a sleeper very under-rated & therefore usually go for not much lolly.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VINTAGE-YAMAHA...3A2%7C294%3A50

[baron]

I had one of those before I got the FM4, it was a very good tuner.

[Puffin]

I used to have an ST70. Really good tuner, served me well for years, but bettered by miles by the Creek which matched the 40?? series (too lazy to walk upstairs and get the model No!). You can pick them up quite cheaply.

[shane]

Just found this thread, and a little clarification is in order, I feel.

The Leak tuners referred to (in one case as a Truffle; not heard that one before) are the venerable Leak Troughline 1, 2 and 3. These were Leak's original valve tuners, and are generally held to be some of the best sounding tuners around, but there are a couple of caveats. Even in mono form, they were not very sensitive and need a really strong signal to get a decent performance out of them. Only the later versions were available with stereo decoders, and the Leak ones weren't very good. A number of people have made after-market decoders which were much better, but in all cases (as with any tuner) you need an even stronger signal for stereo. Any Leak tuner that does not call itself Troughline, ie Stereofetic, Delta etc, should be avoided.

The 70's Japanese tuners, especially the Yamahas, had amazing front ends and some were spectacularly sensitive and gorgeously built. They didn't sound bad either, so in your situation they would be well worth looking at. Also, some of the eighties UK tuners, especially from Arcam, sounded really good and performed well, but it remains true that no matter how good a tuner is, it will always need to have the best possible aerial. In the same way that you would judge a turntable by using it on a carpet in the middle of a suspended floor without bothering about setting up the arm properly, you shouldn't judge a tuner by sticking a bit of old wire or a TV aerial in the back.

Once that's sorted out, FM radio can be the best sounding source of all. It's just a shame that broadcasters no longer strive for perfection, and have settled for mediocrity, simply because most of their audiences neither neither know any better or give a damn about sound quality. If that attitude had prevailed in the 50s we'd still be listening to AM radio and watching 405 line tv.

[Marco]

'Morning Shane,

Could I draw your attention please to this post here (#21 - scroll up) where I asked you about Heybrook:

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showt...3032#post53032

It would be nice to know the history

Cheers!

Marco.

[shane]

'Morning Shane,

Could I draw your attention please to this post here (#21 - scroll up) where I asked you about Heybrook:

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showt...3032#post53032

It would be nice to know the history

Cheers!

Marco.

Sorry Marco, I thought it was common knowledge.

I have mentioned it before in a thread from one Vinylgrinder who I think was banned, but was also a TT2 fan. It was a long time ago now though.

It all started in about 1968 when I became good friends with a bloke at school who shared my interets, ie cars and women, but also knew a fair bit about something I had recently discovered called hifi. The bloke in question went by the name of Peter Comeau. After we left school he went off to London and I got a job in a local Hifi shop in Plymouth, but a couple of years later he came back and joined us. The shop belonged one Peter Wanstall, who one day bought a Keith Monks record cleaning machine and set up a subsidiary business cleaning records, which he called JPW, using his initials. He also toyed with the idea of making speakers using the same name, and he and Peter C(mostly Peter C) put together a few interesting ideas, but meanwhile the shop went spectacularly bust, so the JPW thing disappeared, only resurfacing about five years later.
Peter meanwhile had gone off to become a full time journalist, but had also got the designing bug and after a couple of years experimenting came up with a really nice little 2-way reflex design. He had kept in touch with an ex-customer from the shop who was happy to put some money up (and happened to live in a place called Heybrook Bay). They rented an old cowshed on the outskirts of Ivybridge in Devon, and the promising little 2-way became the Heybrook HB2. I joined them about a month later in November '79 as first employee, loudspeaker assembler and general factotum. As the business grew I took on most of the assembly work, with Stuart (the ex customer) running the business and Peter doing the design and development. Best bit was probably going to the large number of local hifi shows that used to happen in those days. (Being introduced to the joys of Carlsberg Special by Max Townsend was a seminal moment).
Back in the Wanstall days, I put together a number of Connoisseur BD1 turntable kits for customers using a variety of plinths and arms which in retrospect must have sounded pretty dire, but sparked a few ideas, and over the next couple of years I cobbled together a turntable out of assorted odds and sods (suspension courtesy of Austin 1300GT throttle return springs, chassis from Dexion, etc etc) and ended up fabricating a chassis from 1" x 2" steel section which worked pretty well. Stuart and Peter liked it, so with a bit of fettling and cosmetic work it became the Heybrook TT2, going into production in 1981. Dead proud, me.....
Come 1984, the company hit a bit of a rocky patch and had to contract back to virtually nothing, so I moved on to pastures new and rather lost touch with all things Hifi, and not long after, Stuart and Peter lost interest and sold their shares in the bsiness which ironically ended up in the hands of Audio group International, belonging to one P Wanstall esq.
I began to get interested in all things hifi again about four years ago and Peter pointed me at the WD forum, which he had just taken over, and through that I found Nick's Audio-Talk forum and this place. And who did I find here? One Guy Sergeant, also ex Heybrook, who should be able to complete the Heybrook story, since he joined not long after I left. Over to you, Guy...

[Marco]

Thanks for that, Shane - most interesting

(Being introduced to the joys of Carlsberg Special by Max Townsend was a seminal moment).

Do you mean Carlsberg Special Brew -the stuff that's about 10% vol? Man, that's what the 'alchies' drink up in Glasgow... Quality!

It would be very interesting for Guy now to pick up on where you left off...

Marco.