|   The best I could do on Old Gear: How good will it sound? | Dougman
Apr 9, 2001 10:26 PM | | With today's acquisition of an Apt Holman Pre-amp, I just completed the purchase of the final item in a system of top-tier used gear from the 1970's and 80's, mostly bought off of Ebay. I ended up buying analog gear only, for less than $2500 total. I'm incredibly curious to see how this system will stack up to the VERY BEST stuff made today, on analog sources. I'm willing to bet that it can hold it's own very comfortably, and it would NOT shock me if this stuff is EVERY BIT the equal of $25,000 if current generation equipment. The last of this stuff should be delivered within a week or so, and the music will flow from there:
Here's the system in question:
Speakers: KEF 104.2 $950 pair (private sale)
Amp: McIntosh MC2120 $440 on EBay
PreAmp: Apt Holman Preamp $225 on EBay
Tuner: Kenwood KT810 $150 on Ebay
Tapedeck: Nakamichi MR-2 $160 on Ebay
Turntable: Luxman PD264 w/arm $150 on Ebay
Cartridge: Shure V15-Type V $125 on Ebay
===================================================================
Total Current Cost: $2200
Once this stuff all arrives, We'll see how this stacks up against anything, on any source material, but I expect this system to compare respectably with the VERY BEST Tube or Solid State equipment sold today. Both the Amp and Pre-Amp are reknowned for the Tube-like qualities they get with solid state electronics, but unlike Tube gear, they are known for being exceptionally reliable pieces of gear. What do you think of this pretty reasonably priced system? I'm guessing it is the equal of 10 X the cost in current gear. We'll soon see! |
| re: The best I could do on Old Gear: How good will it sound? | Jerry O
Apr 10, 2001 10:08 AM | | For a vintage system, given that all is in proper working order, I expect you'd have a nicely balanced, musical system. If I had the opportunity, though, the only change I'd make would be going for a KEF 105 instead of the 104. The 105 was more open and fuller sounding. Enjoy. Regards, Jerry O. |
| I did have the opportunity, I heard both. I prefer the 104s -nt | Dougman
Apr 10, 2001 11:55 AM | | nt |
| re: The best I could do on Old Gear: How good will it sound? | ckelly
Apr 10, 2001 10:13 AM | | Hello Dougman
Congratulations!! It looks like you did your homework very well. That stuff where I live is as rare as hen's teeth and even more expensive =( . I have to hunt high and low for bargains here, as ebay international shipping kills all tha bargains from USA.
Let us all know how it sounds once you get all the stuff at home and plugged in. I bet it sounds great.
I would say the next steps should be a CD player, and a reel to reel deck, to have the ultimate system, and some very pissed neighbours.
=)
BTW if you have pix that would be even better, it's always nice to see what people are talking about.
Christopher |
| re: The best I could do on Old Gear: How good will it sound? | estan
Apr 10, 2001 1:12 PM | | Hey Doug...
I think you are doing great with your system and for the money certainly nothing will touch it that is made today. You couldn't even buy a pair of new speakers for $2500 to be better than the KEF's. However I've got a bit of a bone to pick...tube gear is not unreliable...far from it. It does require a bit of maintenance but so does solid state gear especially after 10 years of age or so. Resistors and caps change value with age and will eventually go out of spec. It is far easier to blow a SS output device than to blow a tube with a short to the output or again just aging components around the device. The best of tube components were and still are wired point to point eliminating printed circuit boards and trace delaminations that can ocur from heat and age.
A good case in point is the way the best tube gear of the 60's brings such a huge premium today over solid state gear.
I have seen my Mac components which had a combined retail price of around $1200 in 1964 bring as much as $6500 in todays market. The reissues of similar products are priced in the stratosphere. To duplicate my Mac gear with todays reissues would cost about $9000 just for amp and preamp. My gear still has most of the original tubes from 36 years ago and has only 3 major overhauls in all that time. The overhauls in total have averaged about $600 each and they have only been to replace parts that have gone out of spec because of age. This doesn't seem like unreliable to me but maybe some of the most reliable gear to have ever been built. I don't think there is a solid state amp in the world that will do as good or better.
As for tube sound...solid state devices do not sound like tubes. Better or worse but not the same. You would have to design a SS amp or preamp with some built in harmonic distortion to match the sound of tubes. The thing is the best of each breed have great sound...just a bit different. With your Mac poweramp the output transformers will have more to do with getting that "Mac" sound than anything else.
The Apt Holman was a very respectable preamp but I don't beleive it holds up like your Mac and the KEF's. And as for the front end it's ok for the money but that turntable and cartridge combo can't compete with an old Thorens TD124 and a good arm from SME and of course a moving coil cartridge. Today you can buy a used SOTA or Linn that will blow the Luxman far out of the water and for a lot less the Rega Planar with a Rega arm will still knock the socks off the Luxman.
So while I think you are on your way I think you have a way to go with the front end.
You asked and that is my honest opinion for what it's worth..
I do think though that you will have great sound but you're not going to blow away what could be done for maybe 10 grand today or even 8 grand in some used Krell, Levinson and maybe Martin Logan or Apogee ribbon speakers with a Linn front end.
Take care,
Stan |
| My only gripes with your response: | Dougman
Apr 10, 2001 5:39 PM | | 1) I can honestly say, I have NEVER heard any audible effect come from a good turntable - Assuming that the Cartridge and Arm are well matched. In my opinion, this is the most OVER-Rated appliance for pumping money into. A quartz servo-locked direct drive mechanism is the most accurate drive system known to man. And that can be found on sub-$100 tables nowadays. So, from that point on, all you can improve is the Tonearm/Cartridge system. And in this case, it is CRITICAL that they are well matched. I know the Shure V15 type V, and the Arm on the Luxman is an excellent match for it. There are certainly better tandems, but, not for the money. I would need to pick a specific cartridge first, and then I'd choose the arm that optimized it. It is silly to purchase the Turntable + Tonearm first, since even the BEST tonearm will sound like crap if the specific cartridge needs MORE mass to properly damp out it's stylus' resonance frequencies. Among all of the moderately priced tables out there, the Luxman is probably the easiest to replace the tonearm on, should I get to that point.
2) I actually think the Holman is MUCH the BEST component in the system that I got. I think it is far superior to any other pre-amp that I could have found in that range.
3) And finally, my comments regarding tube reliability assumed that when I want to hear music, I turn on the gear and listen, and when I'm done, I turn it off. No warm-up or cool down, as I'm too busy living my life to help the tubes live theirs longer. |
| gripe all you want but I totally disagree..... | estan
Apr 10, 2001 10:10 PM | | gripe all you want but I totally disagree with you on turntables.
A good turntable should be constructed of a very high mass and acoustically dead flywheel. A good flywheel driven by a belt will not fluctuate with the oscillations of the motor ...quartz locked...hysterical sysnthesised or not. More important is the bearing and the reason Direct drives are so difficult to get right is the bearing is part of the motor and therefore any play even the slightest amount comes right back to the record surface. Linn's great success comes from the most tightly controlled bearing tolerances in the industry. There are some great Direct Drive turntables from Technics and Denon but sorry man...overall the belt drives win by a wide margin. Also I think your reasoning about building a system around the cartidge is butt backwards.
Yes you are right about having the correct mass to damp out resonant frequencies of the cartridge so you should make a wise choice abou which cartridges will work in your tonearm. In your case you are using a rather low mass cartridge so an arm match can be more difficult because it is also designed to track at a fairly light tracking force. What saves you is what Shure calls Dynamic Stabilization and however they do it ...it works. As long as you can keep the resonant frequency at about 10hz you are going to be ok. I have had many iterations of the Shure V15's and the best results were with the arm that it was designed for...the Shure/SME. I am in no way knocking the sound of the Shure. It is definitely one of the best moving magnets ever and should be ...coming from the company that invented the MM cartridge. I just prefer moving coils in general and that is very subjective but I find them to be more involving in musical terms...not more accurate...perhaps less so but more ambient with more upper harmonic information.
I had no negative comments on the Holman whatsoever ...I just question your statement that what you do have will be as good sounding as new gear at 10x the price...I think I could give you a real run for your money.
On the tubes I am of the belief that if your going to listen on a particular day just turn em on and leave em on. The warm up period is not that long...maybe just long enough to mix a few drinks and pick out some recordings...usually stabilized in about 5 minutes.
As for your latest statement about "living your life" it seems to me that part of that living is in enjoying music and spending the time it takes to maximize that enjoyment including the time it takes to participate in forums such as this. |
| Well, here's the counter argument | Dougman
Apr 11, 2001 10:39 AM | | Turntables: The Luxman has the most massive platter I've ever seen on a Turntable - something close to 8 pounds. It's a quartz servo-locked flywheel direct drive unit: i.e. the motor imparts a magnetic impulse every beat of the quartz crystal, but the platter travels freely between pulses, and it is NOT physically coupled to the motor, JUST magnetically coupled - so, it has even BETTER motor isolation than a belt. The vast majority of direct drive units don't have this, but those that do are clearly better than belt drives in pretty much any way you want to measure it. And, generically, the quartz servo-locking mechanism is the most accurate drive unit known to man. It's a better table than the top Technics tables from the same era, although to be honest, I can't hear any difference between these tables either. The top Denons used the same principle, though, and would also have been fine choices, but the Luxman platter is heavier, and the arm is a bit better, and it is certainly more interchangeable.
Holman Pre-amp. I never meant to imply that this was better than $2000-$5000 preamps. Just anything under $500, and as good as most in the $1000 range.
Tubes: I don't drink, and I'm very good at choosing what I want to listen to quickly. So I have no use for the waiting time. And I don't choose to make value judgements on the time spent by others in waiting for their tubes to warm up, but for me, 5-10 minutes waiting for my system to warm up is a FUNDAMENTAL problem. I would have to percieve a far greater set of audible benefits from them than I do, in order to pay that particular penalty. But certainly, YMMV on this issue. |
| Well, here's the counter argument | estan
Apr 11, 2001 4:18 PM | | Ok man...you might be right on the Luxman..at the time I was using a Denon professional grade TT that came out of WQXR the #1 classical radio station in NY. I had a Lustre tonearm and
an Alpha Genesis MC cartridge with MIT Shotgun cable to a Levinson ML-1 preamp with the Levinson MC phono stage. The TT was mounted in a custom built laminate of MDF, lead sheeting and rubber in about 8 layers and then spiked with Tip Toes. The base alone weighed about 60 lbs. I traded this monster for a Linn after about 6 months of anguish and after convincing a dealer to let me take one home for a 2 week test period. My other option was a VPI...at the time the Linn won hands down...go figure!
If you ever get into solid state class A amps you might find that the warmup time is at least if not more than tubes. When biased to true class A they have to reach temperatures at least as high as tube gear.
No value judgements here...just a sense of humor.
Stan |
| Remember, 1980 was the heyday of the LP | Dougman
Apr 11, 2001 5:08 PM | | And the folks that made the BEST high end tables in those days were Luxman and Denon. Technics made the best among the more cost effective commercial grade stuff, and their drive units were bulletproof, however the Luxman and Denon stuff was just a cut above. Those were the days when it made sense to put R&D money into turntables for the bigger Japanese Audio manufacturers. But they stopped doing that completely when CDs took hold. But, in a few years, Denon and Luxman probably spent 10X to 100X the R&D on turntables that companies like Riga and Linn have spent over their entire corporate lifespans. They DID know what they were doing. But there's nobody out there today marketing the heck out of the best tables that these companies made in those days. The main philosophical difference between what Denon did was they spent a bunch of money trying to optimize the dynamics of the tonearms for their own MC cartridges, and automating the cuing and record play, without degrading the arm, while Luxman just kept it simple with very lightweight, completely manual arms. Luxman was also a MUCH smaller company than Denon in turntable market share since they never were interested in the volume end of the business that Technics owned. Denon was. |
| Remember, 1980 was the heyday of the LP | estan
Apr 11, 2001 6:39 PM | | The only Tecnics turntable that I will ever rfer to is the SP10 which in my estimation was one of the all time greatest direct drive TT's I have ever experienced. It had no tone arm and the base had to be ordered separately and came in many configurations including a floor standing unit for use in studios and a very large and heavy tabletop unit that would accomodate up to 3 tonearms. The powersupply was completely separate and had about a 6 foot cable to totally isolate it from the drive unit. The Denon that I am referring to also came without a base and was about the equivalent of the SP10 but whatever they were close. You would never see these in a consumer electronics store because they could not be taken home and plugged in a work. They needed a professional installation and therefore only pro sound contractors had access to them. They were used primarily for playback of masters from the lathe or the mother pressing in vinyl. Also they were used in radio stations that required the highest possible playback quality. Neither Technics or Denon even offered tonearms for these units and the most common ones used were the Shure/SME and the Fidelity Research. Both of these were made in 12" versions which gave a much better geometry than a standard 10" arm. Being a bit higher mass the cartridge match was somewhat limited if using the big arms so that is why multiple arms were common. Also don't forget that the big studios in Europe were using stuff like the Goldmund which cost as much as a Mercedes but even though some well heeled audiophiles got them they were mainly made for professional recording as a studio standard.
We were fortunate to have in NY a shop called Lyric HiFi. This was and still is a no holds barred over the top high end store. They were pioneers in the high end and went so far as to give financial assistance to designers such as Mark Levinson and eventually had much to do with the formation of Madrigal and the new Levinson gear sans Mark. This was the only place in town you could even hope to find an SP10 or one of the Denons and they sold them with their highest end systems. I am sure that their findings back then went into the development of the consumer products from these companies.
BTW Lyric was my hangout for many years and where I got a lot of my knowledge. Guys like Levinson and Richard Sequerra and Harold Beveridge were always there. It was like the forum of the high end gods. Levinson would bring in his master tapes so we could hear them on the 1/2" Studer and Sequerras newest Pyramid Metronome speakers. This was an amazing time.
Stan |
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