When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Sourcing the belts was the easy part, But on this deck the transport assembly had to be removed 😲, and the rear panel of the transport assembly. To get to that assembly the top and the bottom and the sides and the motor and almost everything else has to come out, it’s crazy.
The build quality on this is amazing, but the engineering to make it so hard to replace belts is questionable.
Thankfully it’s all for fun and keeps me busy when it’s too hot to be in the garage👍
This was my favorite equipment back in the day. I don't have it any longer but I really enjoyed it while we had it. these aren't my pictures of it but this is what I had back in the late 80s to early 90s. I also had a Yamaha natural sound FM tuner, a Technics direct drive turntable and A 15" JBL subwoofer that was powered by the Phase linear amp, and a pair of Roger Sound Labs 3600 studio monitors (those I still have).
I"ll keep this short because I'm not a audiophile but I'm still using my same stereo equip from my early 20's and its still kicking out the tunes
1. Sansui model 6 receiver
2.Pioneer PL 115d turn table
3. Kenwood cassette deck
4.Teac PD710M disc changer
5.originally had Jensen column speakers but when my kids were young they decided it was cool to pull off the covers and pick out the colorful foam around the bass speakers and punch the nice bright chrome domes in the tweeters !! so they were replaced with JBL bookshelf speakers, but still kickin it today !!
in my veh had a Craig cassette player and a set of Tenna/Ranger sound boomers, these were 6X9 speakers with a sizable amp built on each speaker They rocked !!
I remember first tune to be played through them was Mountain Mississippi Queen !! they rocked the Block !!!!
Enjoyed my separates prior to the turn of the century. My fav grouping was the Hafler amp, APT Holman preamp, NAD tuner (those items I still retain), Denon turntable, Sony tape deck, Dahlquist DQ10's in front and OHM Walsh 2's in the back. Miss my vinyl.
I collect vintage tube audio gear including, Fisher, Scott and McIntosh. I also have built 3 tube amps from kits. One of my favorites is a Scott 340B tube receiver that I restored. It's not the last word in vintage audio but it is very musical and has great looks.
My system(s) are still further evolving and as of late I have added a fully recapped/modded Pioneer TX-9500 II tuner, an also fully gone-thru Marantz 1060 amp and Pioneer PL-540 turntable to the master bedroom - also working on the recap/upgrades to a recently acquired 1-owner matched set of Kenwood KT-7500 tuner / KA-9100 amp for my living room system, which will also mate to a Technics SL-Q2 turntable and a vintage 80's-era ADC 12-band/channel equalizer.
The combination of vintage audio components and original vinyl is still as awesome as ever - I especially favor beat generation thru early 70's indie rock and just about any good swing-era vocal jazz from 40's - 50's.
Top is a ST 70 Series 2 slightly modified. Middle is a wonderful sounding AVA Ultravalve based on the ST 70 circuit but with regulaton on each stage and third is a solid state Pioneer SX 828 used as a tuner when I'm not using my Mac MR 67.
Lots of great gear on here. Glad to see some of the Realistic equipment, I had friends with some of those and always respected them. I didn’t get a stereo until after high school (‘80) but ended up being one of the first guys around with a CD player in ‘83, It was a Phase Linear 9500, single disc, cost me $600 but I loved it! Had a Tandberg cassette deck which made nice tapes for the car (Alpine deck, Separate amps, component speakers w/ real crossovers & preamp EQ nicely mounted in center ac duct of 76 Cutlass), stand-alone tuner, Sherwood HP1000 amp and Altec Lansing Model 14 monitors which I still have. (cassette deck too)
Interestingly I had been shopping for speakers in stereo stores, couldn’t afford the high end stuff but every time I listened to all sorts I loved the Altecs & kept picking them as my favorites but they were $1300 a pair, way out of my reach. One day, casually looking through a local weekly paper’s ads I was jolted by a pair of Mod 14’s, with the Sherwood amp iirc like $450, in the boxes, in town! They came out of a Christian recording studio in NYC & the padre had moved here. I begged, borrowed & practically turned tricks to get the money & snapped them up.
For hahas I just searched a couple of these components, wow, some people are looking for strong money but it was real nice stuff & there are few tactile experiences like vintage stereo stuff, especially the volume dial on the Sherwood, heavy detents, each with its own resistor as opposed to a pot, cool buttons too.
Back in '76 I bought my Sansui 7070, B.I.C. 920 turntable, and a pair of Pioneer HPM 100's. The turn table lasted about 5 years, I have the Sansui out in the garage, but it's kaput, too much exposure to moisture when I had water problems at my old house. My current living room just wasn't laid out right for the HPM 100's, they were in the way, and I stopped using them about three years ago. I sold them about three months ago for more than what I paid for them 44 years ago. I had calls from Ohio, Indiana, and S.E. Michigan when I advertised them on FB marketplace. Sold them to the first guy who responded about 25 miles from me.
This is a great thread. It has been my experience that a lot of car guys have very similar likes outside of cars. Vintage audio equipment for example. Is it simply because we too are "vintage", or as I like to think, music is an analog medium that cannot be accurately reproduced digitally. When people speak to the "warm" sound of the vintage equipment, I like to think it is because it is an analog reproduction of an analog recording. I still prefer my vinyl to my cd's. I saw a reel to reel earlier in the thread. That is about the pinnacle of accurate analog sound reproduction. And of course the best part of our vintage gear... they look awesome!
My wife thinks I'm nuts, but that's ok. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I like the vintage audio gear both tubed and solid state, though most of my vintage gear is tubed. I have a fair amount of newer tube gear, three amps I built from kits and a couple I bought new or slightly used. My newer gear uses vintage tube circuits with refinements learned over the decades and heavy all metal chassis, around half is hand wired and the other half uses circuit boards. Like the older cars vintage audio has a certain look and feel, unlike the cheap black plastic boxes of today.
Last edited by Destructor; Oct 9, 2020 at 03:56 AM.
I believe it is both a somewhat retrograde taste in style, both music and automotive design, as well as a love of power. I do not need 185 wpc to power my Cornwalls, but I got it.
I like the vintage audio gear both tubed and solid state, though most of my vintage gear is tubed. I have a fair amount of newer tube gear, three amps I built from kits and a couple I bought new or slightly used. My newer gear uses vintage tube circuits with refinements learned over the decades and heavy all metal chassis, around half is hand wired and the other half uses circuit boards. Like the older cars vintage audio has a certain look and feel, unlike the cheap black plastic boxes of today.
Im sticking with my Sansui model 6 receiver and the rest of my mix and match system, Kenwood, Pioneer all still working great except the Jensen tower speakers are long gone they fell to the fingers of a four year old daughter that thought the pretty colored foam around the bass speaker and the chrome in the dome tweeters needed to have a finger put through them !! they have been replaced with JBL bookshelf speakers. I also have no use for the plastic crap, as long as they keep pumping out the tunes I'm keeping and using them !!!
For your consideration, most recent acquisition: 1982 Luxman RX 101 Digital receiver, colloquially known as the “suck face”. Termed “ServoFace” by Luxman engineers.
Right side of faceplate sucks in when turned on and pushes out on shutdown - in theory to avoid unauthorized hands from disturbing treble bass loudness and volume controls. Typically worked in the showroom, and then perhaps a few years before mechanism shut down.
40 W per channel entry Luxman, next up was RX 103 at 90 W per channel, somewhat of a collectors / novelty item, especially with suck face working.
Of course this suckers mechanism isn’t, belt ordered and disassembly begins, should be fun, not unlike cassette deck belt replacement.
Marriage of the old and the new. That right-out-of-the-1977-Radio-Shack-catalog Realistic STA-77A receiver I posted a photo of early on in this thread connected to a piece of technology that is definitely 21st century, a satellite radio receiver, and the satellite receiver gets its signal through the house wifi, something ELSE that wasn't even conceived of back in 1977.
Jaunty that’s a great set up. In my bedroom I enjoy 70 vintage WPC via a 1978 Technics SA 600. All on voice command through Alexa powered outlets, and a Bluetooth adapter streaming Spotify - so my favorite playlists happen pretty quickly - all hands free. Old school watts plus current technology = music nirvana. Almost as good as vinyl.
A lot of my older gear got stolen ,when house got broken in to.
Much of my gear is late 90's and early 2000
Nak, dragon cassette deck.
Denon c/d player
Kenwood c/d player
pioneer dvdr+data recorder
Pioneer c/d recorder
Sony mini disc player/recorder
B&K 7.1 surround unit
Soundcraftmen 31 band 1/3 octive eq
2) audio technica turntables
Onkyo duel cassette deck.
3) nad amps
1) kenwood power amp
B/A loudspeakers
Ohm loudspeakers
Tech reel to reel
Carver pre amp
2) carver silver 7's
Yamaha natural sound surround unit I use this to add sound stage when recording older mono records, big band albums/etc.
Tascam 16 track reel to reel recorder
Rega-Aria phono preamp
Pro-ject debut phono turntable analog to digital ubs digital
Logic X-Desk superAnalogue mixer For home recording /mixing remixing
Last edited by Grayghost; Feb 2, 2021 at 05:48 AM.
That's some gear. How much room does that all take up? I have a Nakamichi Dragon myself.
Some of it is in the tv room, but much of higher end gear is in my game room,
The nad amps, power different rooms
1) dining
1)computer/office
1) back yard
the kenwood power the kitchen and breezeway
The other suff is set up to record or re mix music. I take the mono recording of the big band /etc and play with the eq and a digital delay/reverb on a few of the surround sound units inputs, and then mix them on the mixing board, then record them off studio mic's to get that extra echo of a hard wall room. on different recording to add some sound stage . it can make a mono album sound like a stereo live recording from a church or hall. I have to mix in a mono channel as doing all the effects tends to put the vocals buried under the music, so the mono feed from the mixing board allows me to bring it front and center again.
Thanks for the Technics (Panasonic)call out. Their equipment always sounded great. Their turntables were awesome. I didn't own any of my own equipment until the eighties. If I touched my older brothers anything I would lose a limb. Ha ha. I owned Technics and Kenwood mostly. Yamaha equipment was also awesome. Harmann Kardon as well. I got deals thru my car stereo shop. So Kenwood and Technics were abundant. I still have so much including Teac reel to reel's just sitting wanting a life. Teac was one of THE names in reel to reels. Oops. Showing my age?
Last edited by no1oldsfan; Feb 2, 2021 at 08:16 PM.
Japanese manufacturers of audio equipment in the 70s were the quality and market leaders. Many would argue they extrapolated that expertise in the 80s to take over our automotive market.
I particularly enjoy the name origins of many Japanese audio companies, when not eponymous:
TEAC - Tokyo electro-acoustic company
Onkyo - Japanese for “sound harmony”
Sansui - Japanese for “mountain and water”
Kenwood - created from familiar
American name Ken and durable material “wood” - appealing to American consumers
Sanyo - Japanese for “three oceans”. Created by a former Matsushita (Panasonic/ Technics) employee and Matsushita brother-in-law, emblematic of his desire to sell equipment across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.
If anyone sees TOTO on a *******, it's not the little dog or the mediocre 80s band, but an abbreviation of Toyo Toki, which is Oriental Ceramics. There were so many good audio companies back then. Now stuff is cheap and light. I'll inherit a couple TEACs from my dad, reel to reel is not something I'm set up for yet.
Wikipedia says SONY started as Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation and SONY is a combo of sonus (sound) and sonny. Sonny boy was a borrowed English phrase in Japan meaning smart dressed young men, so the company was smart dressed young men selling sound equipment.
Japanese manufacturers of audio equipment in the 70s were the quality and market leaders. Many would argue they extrapolated that expertise in the 80s to take over our automotive market.
I particularly enjoy the name origins of many Japanese audio companies, when not eponymous:
TEAC - Tokyo electro-acoustic company
Onkyo - Japanese for “sound harmony”
Sansui - Japanese for “mountain and water”
Kenwood - created from familiar
American name Ken and durable material “wood” - appealing to American consumers
Sanyo - Japanese for “three oceans”. Created by a former Matsushita (Panasonic/ Technics) employee and Matsushita brother-in-law, emblematic of his desire to sell equipment across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.
Panasonic - Pan/all things, sonic/ sound
Yeah those were the days. Not even that sure what all I have. Stuff just sitting in the garage ha ha..
Still have those mix tapes from the 80s? I do, and they sound crisp and detailed on this recently resurrected JVC KD A7 from 1980. With beautiful peak VU meters, and a spectrum analyzer, it looks great and sounds even better. Robustly built with huge power supply - heavier than many receivers. Sold new for about $450, way above my pay scale in high school!
My Nakamichi is still in the closet at my fathers house. My cassette deck is the only piece of equipment I don't use. I still use my turntable quite a bit.
Finally got the rack done after 2 years almost since buying the wood and rebuilt the system this past weekend.
This is:
A Marantz 2385 receiver pushing
2 Klipsch Cornwall III speakers, with sources of:
2 Technics SL-1200 Mk2 'Wheels of Steel'
A Nakamichi Dragon Tape Deck
A Marantz 6006 CD player
A Pioneer H-R100 8 Track Tape Deck
An AudioEngine B1 Bluetooth Receiver
An old laptop.
DBX-200 for extra sources.
DBX-2015G equalizer if desired.
Furman Elite 15 power conditioner and Blue Jeans Cable component and speaker wiring.
The rack is 1.5 inch birch butcher block stained and polyurethaned and 3/4 inch allthread with associated hardware painted black, all from Menards.
The older stuff is an Edison Diamond Disc Player, a Victrola, and an RCA Magic Brain Radio.
Yeah, I couldn't find a rack I liked that had the dimensions I wanted that was heavy enough to hold the receiver. It, at 58 lbs (thought it was more) and 18 in wide, is less than the 50 lbs per running foot of "heavy books" that good shelves are supposed to take. So I upsized a Salamander design to home improvement scale.
Marriage of the old and the new. That right-out-of-the-1977-Radio-Shack-catalog Realistic STA-77A receiver I posted a photo of early on in this thread connected to a piece of technology that is definitely 21st century, a satellite radio receiver, and the satellite receiver gets its signal through the house wifi, something ELSE that wasn't even conceived of back in 1977.
That looks just like the Realistic receiver my best friend used to have. We used to jam out in his basement on the way home from school. He blew the outputs once or twice and I fixed them for him (TO-220s IIRC).
Speaking of antique radios, I have a early 1930s vintage Zenith multi-band radio and record player that used to be my grandparents. It had push-button presets for the AM band, and you could also select 2 other SW bands. I remember listening to AM rock on it in the '60s when we were picking cherries at their house. 30+ years ago when I first got it, I had to replace the leather belt that was used between the dial and the tuning capacitor on the chassis. Not thinking long-term, I replaced it with a rubber band. It worked great for many years, although the non-permanent magnet speaker needs to be re-coned. Last time I fired it up a few months ago, it made noise, but the rubber band has likely turned to dust and I was unable to move the dial to tune in a station When I retire in a few years, restoring its cabinet and inner guts is on my bucket list.
1980 Technics SL J2 Direct drive linear tracking turntable, a valiant attempt to fend off “digital audio discs”, CDs, which were in development and soon to be available. I’ve got a few LT TTs, and they’re really pretty special; repeat and skip functionality, tracking mimics the original cut of vinyl. Load disc, err vinyl, press start button, enjoy vertical or horizontal play.
