Forty-Plus-Year Adventures with Vintage Dynaco Stereo Equipment and More! PART TWO.

July 18, 2018

#259

Gentle reader, 

I am starting this second chapter to:

Forty-Plus-Year Adventures with Vintage Dynaco Stereo Equipment and More! PART ONE.

mere hours after publishing part one. Your warm and kind response do so encourage me to continue in what started as simply something new to do.

Above shows how I set the den up initially. Optimus Pro boxes hide the Lyric speakers inside them. Wrote about that, too. BOSE 301s are atop those, I don't remember what the little black speakers are. May, 2010.

We left off with the decision being made to move the TV/surround system to the living room and move the main stereo into the den. 

For a while, I had speakers in this room, my "home office", which is across the hall from the listening room, and had no separate components at the time. The speakers were driven by the living room stereo and later the home theater receiver. I had found some 10 gauge speaker cables that are twisted with one wire silver-plated with clear-insulation and the other being copper with clear-blue insulation. And they have a second thick clear insulation cover. (Can be seen in the LAST photo below.) I put a terminal plate on the ceiling above the living room stereo and another on the ceiling in here. Ran the cables through the attic to this room. I don't recall the brand of the cables, but am using them right now, with the office stereo. 

Here is what I have right next to me now in the office:

Pioneer was $14.99 at a thrift store, Denon the same price, via eBay. I normally frown when people put amps atop other components, but this receiver gets very warm, even just in stereo mode, so the Denon went underneath. IT doesn't seem to be stressing the DVD player. I have a dual whisper fan coming to help extricate the heat from the receiver.

Since I'm on the subject of the office, I once had this all-Onkyo kit shown here. Note OPPO universal player at the top.

Here's another angle of the early Listening room. I'd read that one should not have things in between the speakers, thus, the components were on the left wall. Chair was rescued from a friend's apartment. I hated it, so it didn't last long. As a bonus, I could reach the volume knob if needed. 
NOTE, the wood beneath the down-firing subwoofer? It makes NO sense to have a subwoofer firing right into carpet and the padding beneath! The wood directs the sub's sound outward so that it is not absorbed or muffled by the carpet.

Back to the story, the former den, now listening room, was all mine, all mine. And as you can see on the photo above, I had a few things to fill it with. Only one of those radios shown is old, the black Halicrafters was my father-in-laws. Coincidentally, my father had a similar one. The rest are "retro" models with modern electronics. Some are exact replicas.

As BOSE model 301 are for most purposes the top of the BOSE line now, and are a "Direct-Reflecting" design as well, it made sense to mount them in such a way as to reap the sonic benefits of the design. CRT-TV wall mount stands did the trick. I made sure they were the same distance from the side walls and the front tweeters aiming towards the chair. Those are the DCM speakers. OH! Those are the cables I mentioned above. For a while, I had a pair of them climbing the left corner to the ceiling where I had a terminal plate mounted. That brought sound into this room from that one. My wife likened the look of the cables to "Umbilical cords".  

I had to remove the top glass shelf to fit the table (now equipped with casters) through the den door. Same set of components as before.

Yes, those are the legendary B.I.C Venturi speakers! I about flipped when I spied them in an antiques store. Same store I found the White Van speakers in. I had to repair the paper surrounds of the midrange cones and carefully pull the poked-in woofer caps back out. I must admit, I had higher hopes for the sound of these. So, they were passed on to a new home.

I'm trying to remember the names of any of these thrift store speakers. So, I looked through the HUNDREDS of photos of former speakers. The ones on the floor are Genesis I models, someone replaced the woofers. On the stands are my first Wharfedales, Diamond 7 models. Atop those are some small SONY units.

I lucked out at Salvation Army one Wednesday (25% off day!). Someone had donated a set of FIVE Definitive Technology speakers, two towers, a center and two bi-polar surround speakers. Got the lot for $99.99. Also a Pioneer receiver and one speaker.  I decided to make a mono system out of them. I managed to stuff them all in this car:

Good thing it has a back seat. I miss it, it gave me six years of fun. 1990 Australian Ford Capri. Sold here as a Mercury. It is the XR2 turbo model.

The only change I see in this photo is rubber feet I added to some things for isolation. Did they help? Meh, who's to say.

Well, as you can see, I scored a few speakers. Two sets one store, one day. Starting with the top pair, they are the Genesis I models. They sit atop Pioneer R500 models with their two-tone grilles. The middle ones are Coral speakers, but I don't remember the model number.

Here, once again are the FIVE Definitive Technology speakers and a new pair found at a pawn shop: ADS MV30/t models. Twin 5 or 6 inch woofers with a tweeter in between. Sounded great. Mesh metal grilles are convex and screwed on. 

Here are a pair of Paradigm Mini Monitors. It think the tweeters had a problem so I replaced them. The silver components are matching Sansui Classique A-470 amp and T-470 tuner. In front are a Denon 3-head cassette deck and a SONY CD players. Sad story, the USPS dropped the box carrying the Sansuis to their new owner. Ruined the amp. No insurance. Sigh.

Here, the Sansui models are driving the Paradigms and the old tweeters are atop one of them. 

I scored four KLH Model Twenty speakers. They were four-ohm and had a single RCA terminal. I swapped in a pair of three-way terminals instead. Cy Beam was kind enough to part out a Model 20 he had to sell me a tweeter.

Ah! My most valuable find. At the time, I'd never heard of Spendor or that some BBC scientists had created their own speaker designs for studio and mobile studio monitors. So, when I spied these small black speakers marked, "SPENDOR LS3/5A" on the back, I honestly told the man, "I've never heard of this brand, how much?" "Ten bucks?" "OK." I later sold them for $1,100.00 to a man in Hong Kong.
The big ones are Electro-Voice Interface 1 Series II speakers. Also note the GARRARD 4-speed turntable which I equipped with a Shure 78 RPM cartridge to play the 78s I'd been finding.

I pounced on this Sansui AU-717 amp when I saw it. I believe those are the Paradigm Mini Monitors atop the BOSE 301s. ADS towers in the corners. This photo is out of order. Oh, well.

KLH Twenty-Four speakers are the latest, sitting atop the E-V speakers.

Too many speakers, was the title of this photo. Starting with the outside are a pair of hand-made, solid-oak (no particle board or MDF) speakers built by someone in Maryland. I know this because he carved his driver's license in the back of them. All Radio Shack components. I restomodded them as well, and wrote about the project. NEXT is a pair of DCM Time Frame 275 transmission-line speakers. And the ADS towers in the middle.

This is the setup I made to play mono 78 RPM records. I don't recall why the SONY CD player and Dynaco QD-1 Series IIL are there. Midi-Mitsubishi equipment drives a Sherbourn power amplifier. 

And here they are "in action".  

Unseen in most of these photos are the changes that are happening in the rest of the room. More and more CD racks are needed as I keep buying them. More and more Asian art, and more to fill the empty walls.
Changes above include a TEAC V-95RX cassette deck. I loved the wooden case. AND another incredible bargain:  SONY's FIRST SACD/DVD player, the DVP-S9000ES. I got it for $9.95. HUGE and heavy with solid COPPER chassis. Thrift store only saw "DVD" and priced it like the rest. 

Getting rather crowded again. Let's see, the stack in the middle and two taller speakers were all found at the same place and time. A pair of small SONY speakers, a Zenith Tube radio which had issues, a SONY cassette deck and Technics cassette deck. 
Bottom is a Radio Shack ELECTROSTATIC speaker! Who knew they made such a thing? Well, I could never get it working, so sold it on. As I did with the rest seen. The speaker had a finish similar to a high-end piano. Lastly are a pair of RCA (formerly Radio Shack Minimus 7) diecast aluminum speakers.

Now we can see the Wharfedale W40 speakers better. I found a spec sheet attached to the back of one:

 How cool is this?

 An on line search revealed stickers I copied for the rears.

One can clearly see the cables I described at the top of the article.

That is it for now! Many more changes are coming. We are up to June, 2012 at this point and I'm about to add a SIX-CHANNEL SEPARATE SYSTEM to the already crowded listening room!

Thanks for looking, stay tuned for more!

Scott

July, 18, 2018
#259