- Hi everyone, posting for the first time here on the Forum, I've been following the discussions here over the years , but never felt like I really knew enough to contribute anything. I finally decided to make some major changes to my Stereo setup and so begins my new diy journey --
I was born in Los Angeles , moved very young to Washington State, after High School I found myself back in California attending college in Riverside California, there I found my better half at college, and managed to somehow convince her that I was the guy for her - and got married ... still not sure how I manged that - LOL . After college we lived in Riverside for quite a while up until the housing situation went crazy in the Real Estate Bubble ... our friends had a cute little bungalow about eleven hundred square feet - one day it was worth about - $125,000 and in a just a short time went to $750,000 -- nuts.
We were living in a really nice 560 square foot apartment - (No kids) had a great balcony that was surrounded by trees and a creek below and we loved the location , quiet but about 2 minutes from the freeways, and were only paying 580.00 a month... well along comes the Real Estate Bubble......... so they put new carpet and counter tops in our apartments and stated charging - $ 395,000 for what they were now calling "Condos" ....... well no way we were going for that.
- About that time my wife got MS and then I had a number of issues - and within 3 years of each other we both ended up on disability , went from doing pretty well to below the poverty line - that was a shock - LOL !
- Well couldn't afford California anymore so looked around for about 2 years and then we moved and somehow ended up in Fort Worth Texas , where we have been living happily for about 14 years now - miss some of our friends that we left back there, and the mountains and beaches from time to time, But the people are great here, and we ended up with a 1,800 sq. ft. house for about what we were paying for that one bedroom apartment . . . . . . . . .So were Texans now!
- My set up is currently is a - diy Preamplifier , VTL Deluxe MB300 Monoblock Tube Amplifiers that are about 350 watts each , a very enjoyable Temple Audio Bantam One Integrated Amplifier , and a vintage Marantz Receiver. Speakers are NHT 3.3's - much loved by me , Magnepan MG IIIa's , Ryan Acoustic monitors .... Rotel Transport, Adcom and Buffalo dacs , Denon and Pioneer turntables. But times are a changing , I'm going to be selling it all and some other stuff and going a different direction !
- Going to be starting my life in diy audio , I will be building my own Preamplifiers , Amplifiers , dacs and Speakers. My speaker experience is pretty limited ... so I'm going to try a bunch of different kinds of speakers, I picked up a pair of Wharfedale W70 Speakers for a great price that actually sound very nice now , but I will be restoring them to their full former glory - or as close as i can get to it. Going to be building several Open Baffles designs , a MEH Horn set up , maybe some Frankenstein La Scala's . . . . and even a FAST speaker design too. - Most will be Hi Efficiency speakers 97 - 106 db.... Amplifiers will mostly be tube amplifiers with a few solid state ones sprinkled in. And also want to try a few vintage amps to compliment the vintage speakers.
LOTs to do and definitely Not enough time - I tend to procrastinate a little ... .... well maybe it's more like I love doing research trying to find " the best " audio equipment to build.... ( of coarse there is no best) , but at least make some good choices - funds are very limited - LOL. - I've started getting ready to rebuild , refurbish and mod some eBay vintage amplifiers for the experience , so I can soon tackle a couple of diy Tube amp designs. Anyway thought I would stop buy and say hello, and warn you .... you will soon be hearing a lot of silly Newbie questions - - - that will be me ......... I'll try not to drive you crazy. - sorry for the long intro - I can get carried away too ....... .
Best Regards,
Dean