Vintage Audio Equipment

[ignoramus]

Value amps add the famous warm sound. To me it's pleasing but not accurate.
A well made solid state amp/pre with heaps of headroom is the way to go. Again, there's more to listening than the sterility of reality.

(sold my house last year and sadly my inwall Sonance silhouette 2 were part of the home's home theater setup. Gonna miss them)

[onlinebiker]

You don' t NEED really old amplifiers - as long as they have tube finals.....

Tubes are superior in most respects EXCEPT electrical efficiency...

Solid state vs valve amplifiers is going to run to personnel preference every time. Most of us aren't going to be able to tell the difference between an $11,000 Miacintosh MC 1502 tub amp and a $5,000 Macintosh MC 152 solid state amp. You might like one better than the other though.

Amplifiers really have not progressed much in the last 100 years - EXCEPT - in terms of electrical efficiency. Those gains have been huge.

I had a good friend that was a genius electrical engineer. He gave me a pretty convincing demonatration (back when my ears were still good) of an ancient Altec tube amplifier vs a modern high end transistor using a early laserdisc. We really could not hear a difference. He was able to show me in/out measured distortion levels - and at higher power levels the tubes were much better...

FWIW

[Ranjr]

I have a Revere portable reel to reel from the late 1950's.  It was dad's.  It weighs a ton and sounds like bacon on a skillet.  Kinda smells like it too.

I have a Peavy 5150 that will be considered vintage by the time I'm ready to pass it on to my daughter.

[HappySkeptic]

Tube amps tend to sound better close to clipping, and they excel at micro-detail at low volume.

They also add 2nd-harmonic or 3rd harmonic distortion that some find enjoyable, though I don't except in small doses. Fortunately tubes can be free from higher-order distortions, particularly at low volumes. On the bad side, they have poor damping factor, which can give a "tubby" bass on some speakers, and a low input impedance that can affect frequency response on capacitor-coupled or high output-impedance preamps. They also change their sound as the tubes age.

I'm not a tube guy.

[popeyespappy]

I just ordered a recapped and serviced Marantz 2230B off eBay.

[onlinebiker]

I just ordered a recapped and serviced Marantz 2230B off eBay.

I have had a couple of Marantz amps... Ran reliably for years. Only complaint -


the push button switches can be twitchy......

You will enjoy it.

[popeyespappy]

New Speakers! Wharfedale Linton Heritage 85th anniversary edition. Had them delivered to work so somebody could sign for them and couldn't resist hooking them up already.