Dec 15th, 2015
Q) Just found your site and I hope you won't mind answering a question for a
real neophyte when it comes to audio.
I have a real thing for the sound of vintage, tube stereos. I first had the
experiece of hearing my favorite blue note and verve lps played on a friend's
father's system. He's gone now, but I remember being blown away by the
warm, lush sound. All I can remember is him saying that he revered the
dynaco st-70 as the best thing going-- and one of the cheapest.
I've been tempted to try and put a system together on my on, trying to find a
dynaco in decent shape, looking for a decent preamp, and some vintage
speakers (I think my friend's dad had a pair of marantz speakers on
aluminum legs that looked and sounded beautiful).
Any advice on how to proceed? w/o breaking the bank?
Thanks very much for any ideas or advice.
A) I have answered many questions like this. I have and will continue to operate such vintage systems as you are trying to build. But its so important to decipher the myth and misconceptions. Especially strange are opinions people have concerning vintage equipment. I’m going to tell a secret that most people don’t want to hear. Either you will be enlightened or it will disturb your stereophonic psyche. First, it is important to keep in mind, in 25 years I’ve met and personally got to know many audiophiles and their “pet” equipment and why they think they like it. Obviously we will hear interesting differences among vintage equipment. Certainly our preconceived notions of vintage, esoteric or super fi can affect our sentiments. Hey, sometimes I think a piece of equipment sounds good just because it looks cool too! Older eras of audio equipment especially, have unusual sound character effects because of a designers preference of tonality or it’s faulty design or especially the device being too perfect or wickedly bad. Someone likes something somewhere. So with that foreboding thought in mind, realize I will critique the electronics but not damn the product unless it is a wreck or a hoax. OK? Be aware though that many supposed modern manufacturers who try to emulate the vintage tube effect are not who they appear to be. Some are frauds and some just overpriced marketing, that’s another story.
The vintage Dynaco tube amps were a great amp and certainly have their characteristics. They have a thick sound because of the under damped bass and velvety midrange sound due to audio transformer used as output to speakers. The use of output transformers creates inter-modulation distortion and phase shift which smears transients. When the amp is in proper running condition this effect can be pleasant though. However, most people own out of calibration versions with old tubes, bad capacitors, etc. They sound poor but many “audiophiles” don’t realize the severe sound quality deterioration and the sound will be “fuzzy”. The important thing to do is fix them up properly with fresh parts. These amps desperately need the fix up. Real working ones with good tubes are $300-$600! In some ways still a bargain. Ironically the new competitive tube amps could be clearly better if the manufacturers would fix some serious build quality or outright juvenile design flaws (and they want a lot of money and typically won’t fix a problem!). That’s what makes the Dynacos, McIntosh, Scotts, and some Fishers a remarkable deal. These units were done by professional engineers made to last for 20 to 30+ years at best. So when you seek vintage items, simply buy the best serviced condition you can get from an honest tech. It will save you aggravation. I can help. There are a few good tech shops out there too. Ironically my stuff sells like hot cakes. I don’t have much to offer. Call for latest equipment available if serious.
Now the critical concern is speaker choice. A clear point to make is mediocre speakers will dominate over the “character” of vintage electronics by a far measure. I prefer, and time and experience has proven that making an older speaker have more “correct fidelity” ie, better phase correction at woofer to tweeter crossover zones and optimally damped cabinet, more efficient internal crossover parts will do more than any fancy preamp or amplifier to improve fidelity. No doubt the use of equalizers or special imaging correction devices again will help to enhance older program material which unfortunately was mixed to good or bad engineers tastes 10 to 40 years ago. So vintage things can be very euphonic but most need updating to make the detail and dynamics of music come alive. Vintage speakers I have plenty of, however I have updated the crossover designs to be more efficient and phase correct.
The truth is that speaker type and design really dominate the overall perceived fidelity. Virtually every audio engineer (real scientists who have been involved in the business for more than just a few years!!) recognizes the limitations and the various effects of speaker design. Remember most speakers are just paper, glue, a little voice coil and a magnet, lots of goofy and inefficient internal circuit parts to make crossovers. What I have seen is some older speaker designers have scientifically and “magically” found ways to make certain combinations of parts work well. A lot of bad designs, a few truly remarkable designs. Often speakers are nowhere near accurate but sound a certain way for someone’s taste. Ultimately whether an older or newer speaker the cleaner the design the better it will be for long term and acceptable for a wider range of program material, ie, jazz, rock, classical. This is why many older designs must be “cleaned up” somewhat to satisfy a wider audience appeal. Certain older speaker companies did some great designs are Advent, Avid, ADS, and many others. So the bottom line is to properly match the older components to get the nice vintage sound.
Call for more info.
Thanks,
-Vince.