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zGman
Joined: 22 May 2006
Posts: 599
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| Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 3:05 am Post subject: |
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Really like all the custom speakers!
Can't help but have a distracting mental image of a handful of peanut M&M's
dancing madly on the subwoofer!
lovely cabinetry...
G
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Boilermaker
Joined: 21 May 2006
Posts: 527
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| Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 8:54 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Really like all the custom speakers!
Can't help but have a distracting mental image of a handful of peanut M&M's
dancing madly on the subwoofer!
lovely cabinetry... |
Thanks. Wish I could take credit for it, but the big sub box was found at a local junk furniture store for $35. It was a planter in front of a hotel in its previous life. I re-inforced it, allowed "Bassbox" to design a ported system; so now it is flat to 20Hz and can produce 126db all the way to 20. The only downside is that it weighs about 400 lbs so it needs to stay put.
Thanks,
Bob
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zGman
Joined: 22 May 2006
Posts: 599
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:10 am Post subject: |
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Sure is nice the way the lucky find on the sub cabinet matches the rest of your room.
Love the old classic equipment!
G
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Boilermaker
Joined: 21 May 2006
Posts: 527
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 8:46 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Sure is nice the way the lucky find on the sub cabinet matches the rest of your room. . |
Real lucky. If I didn't find it, I was going to built a box into the ceiling which would have been a real PITA with 12' ceilings.
I can't believe that no one has recognized the component just above the reel to reel. I must be the only one old enough to recognize it. I was sure Curt would have run into one with his audio experience.
Bob
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Nashou66
Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 16171
Location: West Seneca NY
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zGman
Joined: 22 May 2006
Posts: 599
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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dbx ?
G
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24396
Location: Langley, BC
TV/Projector: All of them!
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:04 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry, late to post here. Love the rack, I've never heard of a Perkins amp. Looks like something out of the 80s, when EVERYONE and their dog got into the power amp game. Some were great (Crowns), some were crap (Spectroacoustics), and a bunch (Ampzilla, etc) were inbetween. Would love to see an inside shot of the Perkins. 
Note that some of the Crown CE series had issues with the conformal coating going conductive over time, but if it hasn't failed yet, it's probably a later batch.
One of the pieces in the rack looks like a dbx unit, a range expander? Does he want to add THIS to the mix?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/320756684523?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
(another recycler find!)
Very interesting sub cabinet! I'd love to hear that system!
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Nashou66
Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 16171
Location: West Seneca NY
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Curt Palme wrote: | Sorry, late to post here. Love the rack, I've never heard of a Perkins amp. Looks like something out of the 80s, when EVERYONE and their dog got into the power amp game. Some were great (Crowns), some were crap (Spectroacoustics), and a bunch (Ampzilla, etc) were inbetween. Would love to see an inside shot of the Perkins.
Note that some of the Crown CE series had issues with the conformal coating going conductive over time, but if it hasn't failed yet, it's probably a later batch.
One of the pieces in the rack looks like a dbx unit, a range expander? Does he want to add THIS to the mix?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/320756684523?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
(another recycler find!)
Very interesting sub cabinet! I'd love to hear that system! |
Here is Bob's answer to Chris question on that Amp, pretty cool story.
| Boilermaker wrote: | | Quote: | | What the heck is that amp!? |
In the mid 1970's, a Canadian named Mike Wright started a speaker company called Dayton-Wright that built and sold a very different full range electrostat that IMHO had more potential than any speaker made up to today. Unfortunately, Mike never completely worked out all the many bugs before he ran out of $$, so it was never a commercial success. But that didn't stop me from buying a pair!
The biggest flaw was that its impedance dropped below 1 ohm at high frequencies which caused all amplifiers made back then to crap out at any reasonable volume level. That was before some companies started to build "high current" amps.
So, along with a friend who owned an electronics service company that had the tools to custom make equipment (Perkins), we designed and built a pair of monoblocks specifically to drive my Dayton-Wrights. It worked!
Particulars on the amps are: 150lbs. each, 220volt input as 120 volt/20 amp circuit breaker would usually trip on start-up, supply rails run at +-100 volts, output stage has 32 - 250watt bipolar transistors all mounted on a"chimney" style heat sink with a high volume fan at one end.
We measured the output power and got 500 watts rms at 8 ohms, 1,000 watts at 4 ohms, 2,000 watts at 2 ohms, but did not have an adequate load resistors to measure at 1 ohm, but felt fairly confident it would do 4,000 watts.
After I traded my Dayton Wrights, I have used the amp for many years as a subwoofer amp. About 2 years ago the full wave bridge rectifier went up in smoke on turn on, so I have been using a big Crown amp until I can lift it up to my bench and replace the diodes.
The circuitry was copied from an early generation Nelson Pass design (just put the power supply and outputs on steroids).
Bob |
Athanasios
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24396
Location: Langley, BC
TV/Projector: All of them!
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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Nice! Very few must have been built, I can find nothing on google... It does deserve a new faceplate, or at least a good cleanup of it though.
My only critique of the whole system is that the Otari 5050 deserves a place right beside the turntable. Shame to put it low on the (rack) totem pole. I personally would fear of people kicking it while selecting a digital media (shudder!) to play.... Put it up top, put rack shelving in its current place, and move the the CDs/DVDs down that it will hide while sitting on the counter.
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24396
Location: Langley, BC
TV/Projector: All of them!
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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BTW, the piece above the Otari I believe is a dbx range expander that had 3 bands for bass, mid and highs. I've never seen that version, but an old disco that I took care of in the 80s had a different version of it. 3 rows of LEDs, showing the expansion of each frequency band.
Am I right?
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Boilermaker
Joined: 21 May 2006
Posts: 527
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 4:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Is it an Oracle Turn Table? |
Good guess, but it is an old Panasonic SP-10 - A classic that went against the move back towards belt belt drive. Generally considered to be the best of direct drive. Built like a tank! The arm is another classic - Dynavector - still cool looking!
| Quote: | | BTW, the piece above the Otari I believe is a dbx range expander that had 3 bands for bass, mid and highs. |
You're 1/2 right. It was made by dbx, but was a full band compression/expansion device that was a direct competitor to Dolby's first product - the Dolby A noise reduction system that was used by the recording industry. The Dolby B was a junior version that was first used in the classic Advent Cassette recorder/player. That combination gave birth to using cassette's for music which exploded into a medium that surpassed vinyl sales before the cd was born!
Both Dolby A and dbx used analog compression on recording, and then an equal expansion on playback. Virtually every master tape made during this time period used either Dolby A or dbx. Both of these were good for an additional 25-30 db increase in S/N ratio. I kept mine because I still have 42 10-1/2", 1/2 track, 15 ips master tapes of a symphony that shall remain nameless to protect the innocent and the guilty! Still to this date the highest quality reproduced music I have ever heard!
I will remove the cage from the big amp and post some pictures when I can get the camera back. Hell, you have made me feel guilty about letting it get nasty and not replacing the rectifiers.
I also agree on the old Crown's. The first amp I got to try on my Dayton-Wright's was the old DC-300 when it first came out. Remember it? It obviously didn't handle the load, or I never would have had to build the big Perkins. BTW, we actually built 20 or 30 junior versions of it hoping to get into the high-end market, but they ended up with R&R bands! Go figure.
Bob
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Boilermaker
Joined: 21 May 2006
Posts: 527
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Looks like something out of the 80s, when EVERYONE and their dog got into the power amp game. Some were great (Crowns), some were crap (Spectroacoustics), and a bunch (Ampzilla, etc) were inbetween. Would love to see an inside shot of the Perkins |
.
Couldn't agree more! If you will look at the picture of the Perkins, you will see an Ampzilla just above it. I have a rack or 2 full of old equipment that I just can't throw away. I liked the sound of the AMpzilla, but found it wasn't very reliable (as I remember he had a dynamic bias circuit that was troublesome). I ended up using the case and power supply to build a 250 watt amp that I added full regulation for the output stage. Can you think of any amplifier ever sold under $20K that had a regulated output stage?
Way back when, I had many phone conversations with Jim Bonjierno (sp), the owner of GAS co., specifically about finding an amplifier that could drive the Dayton-Wrights. He promised me that his next amplifier was going to be a monoblock named "Godzilla" and that it would be able to handle the current requirements of the low impedance load. He even sent me a 2 page brochure on his "Godzilla" . He obviously never made it, but did make a really nice preamp called "Thaedra" that I loved.
Bob
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24396
Location: Langley, BC
TV/Projector: All of them!
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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I did service some GAS amps back when I owned a service company called Vancouver Audio Clinic. I remember nothing special about them, pretty straightforward amps, but I sure wished I had the 11 filing cabinets ful of old schematics that I lost when I sold the company and it went under a year later. I know where the schematics are, they are in California somewhere, everything consumer and pro audio from the 1950s to the time the company went under in 1995.
I posted a couple of years ago about the demand of old schematics, some which are unique, putting up a downloadable database for a pay per use thing, but no one here thought it would be worth the time and effort.
BTW, the argument is that an output stage should NEVER be regulated, as a good bass note will get stifled by the regulator. I tend to agree, but I'm also the guy that thinks that there is very little difference in sound between equally rated amplifiers within the same class of amp...
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Curt Palme
CRT Tech
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24396
Location: Langley, BC
TV/Projector: All of them!
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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BTW, I'm open to debate on anything I post, feel free to call me an ass....
I tend to think that most of the 'this sounds better' is due to the certain 'feel' of the amp, preamp, or whatever.
I know I still like my old Akai GX-630D reel to reel because of the way it 'feels' I don't like Teac for the same reason, but ultimately, my Technics 1500 reel to reel should smoke all other reel to reels on a spec basic.
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Boilermaker
Joined: 21 May 2006
Posts: 527
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 11:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | BTW, the argument is that an output stage should NEVER be regulated, as a good bass note will get stifled by the regulator |
If the regulator is inadequately sized or its output voltage is not set considerably below that of the power supply - I agree: Otherwise I disagree. The main reason it is almost never done is that it costs more than the amplifier does, and the heat sinking required is as much as the amplifier itself.
| Quote: | | I tend to think that most of the 'this sounds better' is due to the certain 'feel' of the amp, preamp, or whatever. |
I agree 100% - Provided the output impedances are similar, circuit topology is similar and power supplies are similar, the only noticable difference in sound is if any "protection" circuitry is screwing something up. Most of what you pay for in "high end" audio amps is a beautifully crafted faceplate.
| Quote: | | feel free to call me an ass... |
Can't see it - The funniest post I have ever seen on this forum or the other one is one you made many years ago. Not sure where it was, but someone started a thread by saying something like " I just got a model XXX projector and what do you suggest I buy for a power cord?".
Obviously, the guy was looking for a recommendation on some fancy silver litz wire expensive aftermarket power cord.
Your answer was "Get one long enough to reach from your projector to your wall outlet". I laughed my ass off!!!
Bob
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