Having owned a mix of the two, I'd say that the vintage gear can sound extraordinarily good, and much of that quality comes from them using decent sized transformers.
Some of the Sansui stuff also have some extremely well designed audio stages - the 9090 in the photo (I have the 8080) is a good example.
Another thing I discovered is that music from that era can often sound nicer on the gear of the time. This is preferences, not measurements. And tone controls - yes, they help, mastering of that era was 'inexact'.
I think another thing is that as your photo demonstrates, much of it looks awesome 🙂
Modern stuff has for a long time looked terribly dull.
You mention tube, but perhaps you are unaware of the appeal of old receivers such as the Sansui 220, 250, 1000a and the Pioneer SX800? - classy tube receivers with top quality iron... packaged in cases like the '80s transistor stuff.
The perception of a better sound is correct too, for many: in modern BT headphones and earbuds, with pitch edited product of various boring entities
....compare that to analogue with real singers, with 1980s gear that often have a huge chunk of photo pre-amp built in, and speakers of the era - KEF etc, and mouths drop as they realise how good real music sounded back then 🙂
Well, many musicians love distortion, they even have special boxes for it, and love overdriving stuff to get it 😀
Tubes.. well, I see them as intrinsically more linear than solid state, and therefore lower distortion.
IIRC the directly heated triode is the most linear, off the bat 🙂
I picked up a Sansui 661 a while back, it was dusty and been through the wars, it required 1 fuse, a good dusting and all was good. One thing I remember was being hugely impressed by the sound quality. It was just so unexpected 😀
I have also found this, for power amps!
I put it down to an amplifiers ability to deliver dynamics, which brings me back to the old Japanese 1970s-80s amplifiers - big transformers and huge capacitors.. then in the NAD3020 era I marvelled at how small they were 😀
I had an original Cyrus One that sounded fine until I plugged in my DIY monoblocks with monster PSUs 😀
The dramatic difference in sound wasn't down to the THD levels 🙂
You know an Tannoy Westminster driven by a tube amp fed by vinyl on an Linn LP12 with Shure cell is not accurate at all, but i spend hours with my former father in law in front of it and we had big fun. And that is what counts at the end...
Off course, for studio monitoring i want also utter accruacy and would probally buy some Neumann monitors. And i can have fun with those also, but not like there with the antique setup of my former father in law (that he has since the late 80's btw)
And when diy building, you tailor your speaker to your wishes (or at least try). That is why there is so much variation in what gets build. And that is good. Just don't spend a zillion bucks because someone on internet told you it would sound better. That is almost never the case. Even those Tannoy Westminsters of today are way overpriced at 60K, that should be 1/10th of that if you ask me...
Off course, for studio monitoring i want also utter accruacy and would probally buy some Neumann monitors. And i can have fun with those also, but not like there with the antique setup of my former father in law (that he has since the late 80's btw)
And when diy building, you tailor your speaker to your wishes (or at least try). That is why there is so much variation in what gets build. And that is good. Just don't spend a zillion bucks because someone on internet told you it would sound better. That is almost never the case. Even those Tannoy Westminsters of today are way overpriced at 60K, that should be 1/10th of that if you ask me...
Hi Globulator,
I did warranty service for Cyrus and Mission. Very familiar with those amps. The Cyrus one needs service if it hasn't had it done, so it isn't a Cyrus One anymore.
When musicians create music, they are looking for "a sound". Certain kinds of effects can change the harmonic structure making it sound a certain way. A pure guitar is pretty boring for example. Additionally, equipment used to record that music isn't as good and may have been also used as an effect. Tape machines add their own sound, but we tried to make that as small as possible. Studer machines were about the best for that.
Equipment back then wasn't designed for synergy, it was the best for the price point they could come up with. Everything improved with time up until the early 1980s where profits and a great story/advertising took over with companies with poor products, later everyone followed suit. Unfortunately, Pioneer was never good product, especially their tube equipment. But hey, obviously their advertising worked a treat! Anyway, with better equipment you finally hear the mix as it was intended, but that won't match with your memory unless you had very good equipment back then. Speakers would make the largest difference.
Tubes have lower transconductance than transistors and a square law characteristic for a triode, not true for a tetrode or pentode. Transistors are generally a cubic. Neither are what I would call linear. Circuit design has much to do with linearity, and modern input stages are extremely linear. Sounds like you've been reading something semi-technical from the audio press. Not accurate.
You did get one thing right. Sansui iron was far better than most, especially Pioneer. But brands like McIntosh, Marantz and Eico also had great iron. Probably others as well. But transformers have issues, they are also required for tube circuits. OTL amps are hugely problematic, tubes are not designed to drive low impedances. Solid state devices are far better suited to low impedance loads.
The design of an amplifier is by far the most important factor. Anything that has distortion (has a sound) is exactly like putting a distortion box in front of a very good amplifier. It colours everything the same way. Probably not what you want. And musicians? They wouldn't run their instrument through a pedal, then turn around and run everything through the same effects unit, would they?
Don't confuse sound reproduction with creation of music. They are not the same thing.
I did warranty service for Cyrus and Mission. Very familiar with those amps. The Cyrus one needs service if it hasn't had it done, so it isn't a Cyrus One anymore.
When musicians create music, they are looking for "a sound". Certain kinds of effects can change the harmonic structure making it sound a certain way. A pure guitar is pretty boring for example. Additionally, equipment used to record that music isn't as good and may have been also used as an effect. Tape machines add their own sound, but we tried to make that as small as possible. Studer machines were about the best for that.
Equipment back then wasn't designed for synergy, it was the best for the price point they could come up with. Everything improved with time up until the early 1980s where profits and a great story/advertising took over with companies with poor products, later everyone followed suit. Unfortunately, Pioneer was never good product, especially their tube equipment. But hey, obviously their advertising worked a treat! Anyway, with better equipment you finally hear the mix as it was intended, but that won't match with your memory unless you had very good equipment back then. Speakers would make the largest difference.
Tubes have lower transconductance than transistors and a square law characteristic for a triode, not true for a tetrode or pentode. Transistors are generally a cubic. Neither are what I would call linear. Circuit design has much to do with linearity, and modern input stages are extremely linear. Sounds like you've been reading something semi-technical from the audio press. Not accurate.
You did get one thing right. Sansui iron was far better than most, especially Pioneer. But brands like McIntosh, Marantz and Eico also had great iron. Probably others as well. But transformers have issues, they are also required for tube circuits. OTL amps are hugely problematic, tubes are not designed to drive low impedances. Solid state devices are far better suited to low impedance loads.
The design of an amplifier is by far the most important factor. Anything that has distortion (has a sound) is exactly like putting a distortion box in front of a very good amplifier. It colours everything the same way. Probably not what you want. And musicians? They wouldn't run their instrument through a pedal, then turn around and run everything through the same effects unit, would they?
Don't confuse sound reproduction with creation of music. They are not the same thing.
Sometimes we older folks try to recapture a cherished memory of a perception we had that dated back to this era. If you put enough context in place, that just might happen. As a kid I used to ride into Schenectady to visit the HiFi shops, just to hear what stuff I'd never afford sounded like. I remember the Tandbeg cassette deck into a Design Acoustics D-12 sounded unbelievable to my 15 year old ears.
Would I be able to recapture that moment, were I to re-assemble the constitutent bits at 67? I doubt it, but there's no harm in trying as a hobbiest pursuit. Methinks if one gets that recording, that player, that amp and those speakers together today, all refurbished to OEM performance, one can reconstitute a moment from their past, as illusory as it may be, with the mind glad to put back anything missing.
People will pay big money for that. In other areas besides Audio too. "What I wouldnt give" for a red 1964 Pontiac GTO convertible, in great shape complete with the matching red stripes on the tires, like my father had when I was a kid - and as such, never got to drive? I'm one to let that memory go, versus paying someone perhaps $50, 100k for a second glimpse into that past reality. Others feel differently.
Would I be able to recapture that moment, were I to re-assemble the constitutent bits at 67? I doubt it, but there's no harm in trying as a hobbiest pursuit. Methinks if one gets that recording, that player, that amp and those speakers together today, all refurbished to OEM performance, one can reconstitute a moment from their past, as illusory as it may be, with the mind glad to put back anything missing.
People will pay big money for that. In other areas besides Audio too. "What I wouldnt give" for a red 1964 Pontiac GTO convertible, in great shape complete with the matching red stripes on the tires, like my father had when I was a kid - and as such, never got to drive? I'm one to let that memory go, versus paying someone perhaps $50, 100k for a second glimpse into that past reality. Others feel differently.
I revisit the sound of an era by playing records from that time period on my modern system. Records from the 1970s still sound like disco. 😉
Ed
Ed
Hi jjasniew,
Fully get you on that.
I would love to recreate a '67 Cutlass I had. I had two at the same time, but the one I want did the 1/4 in mid-twelves in 1978 - 1979 in street trim. If I had the money and place to park it, I absolutely would do it.
Fully get you on that.
I would love to recreate a '67 Cutlass I had. I had two at the same time, but the one I want did the 1/4 in mid-twelves in 1978 - 1979 in street trim. If I had the money and place to park it, I absolutely would do it.
Hi!
This was many years ago now, around year 2000, but it was still quite old back then (1984? 16 years old).
I sold it soon after my A/B comparism 🙂
I don't think I ever got the best out of it though, New, it was paired with Celestion Ditton 110s, which were Ok when quiet, but the hopeless tweeter filter made it very tiring at higher levels.
Then it got paired with some big old KEFs (B139/B110/T27) which was Ok, but put in the shade by the new DIY monoblocks.
Agreed, it was noticeable. When Sansui went to plastic knobs, the writing was on the wall for me..
I haven't listened to the Pioneer SX800 yet, it needs new output tubes and then perhaps I'll fire it up.
It's party trick is a tube MM phono stage, quite rare for that age, the contemporary tube Sansuis have transistor MM boards.
I'm rather a fan of Lynn Olson and his Nutshell HiFi articles, yes 🙂
His philosophy just resonates with me better. http://nutshellhifi.com/
Can you point out his mistakes please?
I found the PSU was equally important. But then again, what is an amplifier, if not a voltage controlled PSU?
These are missing from my collection, but I will remember the names, if any crop up. Of course McIntosh I'd automatically get! IIRC they did a transistor design with OPTs - is that correct?
Naturally, but I'm frequently amazed how few problems they add to the sound. Perhaps there's a synergy between the voice coil and secondaries?
I miss the enthusiasm and progress in HiFi.
Nice old car values are falling though, at least in the UK, the bubble is deflating!
Hi Globulator,
The early Cyrus units had problems with a few specific capacitors. One result was the phono regulators went into oscillation. That interfered with everything. Later Cyrus products are advanced, I have the very first Mono X and Pre X in Canada, lovely units.
In service, by the 1990's I was no longer excited to see what was in the service manuals, before that my interest waned in fact. Only a couple brands interested me. Most became plastic, flimsy and difficult to work on with poor performance.
Pioneer pushed output tubes way too hard. Individual components they used were very cheap. They haven't changed one bit through time.
Everyone went to solid state phono stages due to noise. Transistors have far less noise than a tube stage. Plus the EQ curve is more accurate as the overall gain is much higher. When I see a transistor RIAA stage today, I replace the original transistors with low noise versions if they are silicon.
Sorry, I haven't got time to read his articles. I've read many from various authors in the past and they oversimplify in order to echo whatever message they wish to put forward. So their comments are often out of context with reality. Remember that technical people who are actually trained really do not have time to write for HiFi mags as a rule.
Yes, a voltage regulator is just an amplifier for a reference. An audio amplifier is rather more complicated. Assuming a good amplifier design, the power supply goes hand in hand. however there is a point where improving a power supply results in zero improvements elsewhere. A great example would be a low power preamp with a massive power supply, or stupid high filter capacitors. They actually cause problems, not solve them.
Those brands are classics. Benchmarks back in the day that everyone else tried to measure up to. Eico was a really good kit, as was Heathkit now that I think of it. One thing I noticed was that English kit was built in tiny chassis'. This causes problems solved with a larger chassis. North American and Japanese products used a larger chassis for good reason.
Transformers add phase shift, limiting the amount of feedback that could be used. They also reflect the impedance they "see" back to the outputs, so you can have more interaction between the speaker and amplifier stages. That is not a good thing and is in no way a positive "synergy". That is why open speakers on a tube amp may result in damaged output tubes and often shorted output transformers. Do not use banana plugs with tube power amps. You want to screw those connections down tight.
Yes. Equipment used to be exciting as build quality improved and performance improved. it was less costly to make a light unit (save on shipping and materials) and sell features while avoiding talking about performance in a real sense.
The early Cyrus units had problems with a few specific capacitors. One result was the phono regulators went into oscillation. That interfered with everything. Later Cyrus products are advanced, I have the very first Mono X and Pre X in Canada, lovely units.
In service, by the 1990's I was no longer excited to see what was in the service manuals, before that my interest waned in fact. Only a couple brands interested me. Most became plastic, flimsy and difficult to work on with poor performance.
Pioneer pushed output tubes way too hard. Individual components they used were very cheap. They haven't changed one bit through time.
Everyone went to solid state phono stages due to noise. Transistors have far less noise than a tube stage. Plus the EQ curve is more accurate as the overall gain is much higher. When I see a transistor RIAA stage today, I replace the original transistors with low noise versions if they are silicon.
Sorry, I haven't got time to read his articles. I've read many from various authors in the past and they oversimplify in order to echo whatever message they wish to put forward. So their comments are often out of context with reality. Remember that technical people who are actually trained really do not have time to write for HiFi mags as a rule.
Yes, a voltage regulator is just an amplifier for a reference. An audio amplifier is rather more complicated. Assuming a good amplifier design, the power supply goes hand in hand. however there is a point where improving a power supply results in zero improvements elsewhere. A great example would be a low power preamp with a massive power supply, or stupid high filter capacitors. They actually cause problems, not solve them.
Those brands are classics. Benchmarks back in the day that everyone else tried to measure up to. Eico was a really good kit, as was Heathkit now that I think of it. One thing I noticed was that English kit was built in tiny chassis'. This causes problems solved with a larger chassis. North American and Japanese products used a larger chassis for good reason.
Transformers add phase shift, limiting the amount of feedback that could be used. They also reflect the impedance they "see" back to the outputs, so you can have more interaction between the speaker and amplifier stages. That is not a good thing and is in no way a positive "synergy". That is why open speakers on a tube amp may result in damaged output tubes and often shorted output transformers. Do not use banana plugs with tube power amps. You want to screw those connections down tight.
Yes. Equipment used to be exciting as build quality improved and performance improved. it was less costly to make a light unit (save on shipping and materials) and sell features while avoiding talking about performance in a real sense.
Spot on for the SX800, 7189A at 450Vdc, so I think I'll order 6P14P-EV for them.
The A version that came shortly after went to 7868 running at 460Vdc, which was a bit smarter.
He shows all the measurements and the graphs, in his articles. He's on diyaudio, usually in the speaker section these days IIRC.
Sometimes yes. Armstrong went from building rather sweet tube radio chassis to solid state in strange, small boxes. Usually they would fail for some reason. Goodmans was fun, the Module 80 we had at home for a bit. Terrible sound, it's party piece was on switch-on the output capacitor charged up via the 12" Wharfedale woofers, that always obliged with a short dance.
The british didn't seem to understand transistors for a long time. I've got a nice leak 3900 amplifier, but I think that's based on a Rotel...
True, but listen to a well maintained Sansui 1000a and it's crazy good.
I do my day-to-day listening on a GU50 SEP, that doesn't include the OPT in the loop, and that sounds rather nice too - the spookiest thing is that it's got cheap chinese iron too, but sounds effortless - no one would guess it was a lower power amp.
This was the situation when I started liking HiFi. About the era of the Pioneer SX838 (which now needs new driver transistors), when Pink Floyd came out and we looked around for the helicopter landing 🙂
Now of course, I'm coming to understand that almost every single aspect of life was better back then, and like someone else commented earlier, if there was a time machine I'd be racing for the door 🙂
I have a dead one here. 🙂
There will be a stampede, so be careful. 😉
jeff
I watched a few youtubes on the SX838, the driver transistors go bad (on many Pioneers of this era, and the 550 perhaps too IIRC), mine started just kicking the protection out.
I'll fix it as they look magnificent, and sound good enough for a casual room too!
Not sure what transistors to go for yet though, some where a bit unobtanium, but it can't be that difficult !
What state is yours in?
I'll fix it as they look magnificent, and sound good enough for a casual room too!
Not sure what transistors to go for yet though, some where a bit unobtanium, but it can't be that difficult !
What state is yours in?
It lights up, relay clicks, the power supply checks out, but the output stage is cold as a cucumber. That's as far as I got with it. I have to fix my 636 first.
2sc1451 transistors are known to fail in these amps. The BOM's for these amps show KSC3503dstu as a replacement. They appear to be in short supply now. I should have bought some years ago, but of course procrastinated. 🙁 Maybe Chris knows of another suitable replacement for these?
jeff
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Hi Guys,
Pioneer ran parts close to limits and hot quite often. H-K does the same. Upgrade the drivers in power and current, watch voltages since our mains are higher than they were back then. Modern output transistors might improve performance too.
I would definitely upgrade them. I would need an SX-838 in front of me, and it would leave much higher in performance.
Hi Globulator,
I've designed good tube amps. My latest used custom output transformers from Hammond. Serviced many. I like them, they can sound really good. The best so far, a McIntosh MC60. The MC240 sounds really nice, as does the Eico HF-81. So while they can sound really good, I listen to SS most often. Right now a modified PC-2002 (Yamaha) and also Marantz 300DC modified.. The best SS amp I have heard was a Bryston 4B cubed, had one for 3 weeks on loan.
Pioneer ran parts close to limits and hot quite often. H-K does the same. Upgrade the drivers in power and current, watch voltages since our mains are higher than they were back then. Modern output transistors might improve performance too.
I would definitely upgrade them. I would need an SX-838 in front of me, and it would leave much higher in performance.
Hi Globulator,
I've designed good tube amps. My latest used custom output transformers from Hammond. Serviced many. I like them, they can sound really good. The best so far, a McIntosh MC60. The MC240 sounds really nice, as does the Eico HF-81. So while they can sound really good, I listen to SS most often. Right now a modified PC-2002 (Yamaha) and also Marantz 300DC modified.. The best SS amp I have heard was a Bryston 4B cubed, had one for 3 weeks on loan.
The concept of nostalgia has come up on this thread and I would like to also suggest a variant labelled "historiography." This is the study of historical information about a particular topic -- audio equipment in this case.
Those of us that build Aleph amplifiers as clones of the original (with identical parts) are engaging in audio historiography. We operate as a time window into the past because we recreate the same device and have the pleasure of hearing exactly how it sounded back in those days -- when it was new and before the inevitable entropy takes place.
Musicians have been doing this with instrument building for hundreds of years -- recreating harpsichords modelled after 16th century instruments and violins after Stradivari. You not only time travel back to a particular sound ideal, but you also learn how to play the way musicians of that day did.
So with audio historiography we can recreate interesting audio equipment, hear exactly how it sounded, and compare it to modern equivalents.
Have been doing this for the last 5 years and have concluded that the original Aleph design easily blows away the other quality tube and SS amps I have. So much so that I have abandoned the practice of switching between 300B tube, Class A, A/B, and transformer amps and use the Aleph monoblocks exclusively.
Think that similar historiography could take place with speaker design from the 1950s and would love to hear a "new" example of the Fisher speakers my parents bought at that time. Could it be that, like analog equipment, there is a level of quality unmatched by modern speakers?
Those of us that build Aleph amplifiers as clones of the original (with identical parts) are engaging in audio historiography. We operate as a time window into the past because we recreate the same device and have the pleasure of hearing exactly how it sounded back in those days -- when it was new and before the inevitable entropy takes place.
Musicians have been doing this with instrument building for hundreds of years -- recreating harpsichords modelled after 16th century instruments and violins after Stradivari. You not only time travel back to a particular sound ideal, but you also learn how to play the way musicians of that day did.
So with audio historiography we can recreate interesting audio equipment, hear exactly how it sounded, and compare it to modern equivalents.
Have been doing this for the last 5 years and have concluded that the original Aleph design easily blows away the other quality tube and SS amps I have. So much so that I have abandoned the practice of switching between 300B tube, Class A, A/B, and transformer amps and use the Aleph monoblocks exclusively.
Think that similar historiography could take place with speaker design from the 1950s and would love to hear a "new" example of the Fisher speakers my parents bought at that time. Could it be that, like analog equipment, there is a level of quality unmatched by modern speakers?
That memory for me? I ran the service shop at an Olson Electronics store that was next to the University of Miami where rich kids took a 4 year vacation on daddy's money. It was the number one (sales revenue) store in the country for that reason. In addition to below mediocre contract build Olson branded stuff, we sold Acoustic Research, Lowther, Kenwood and Fisher stuff. I got to play with all of the decent stuff when the boss wasn't around, which was quite often.
Directly across US-1 from us was a small hole in the wall "HiFi" store that was started by a slacker kid that I went to high school with and funded by a bunch of his rich dad's money. He had "THE ROOM" where you could really be "in the music." I don't remember the speakers or the turntable, but the receiver was magical. Even the University of Miami 10 watt FM radio station sounded good. I have seen the name Sansui mentioned in this thread a few times, but there is no mention of that magical receiver, the Sansui Eight. Even in 1971 that thing cost more than my car, but it was nice. I found myself dodging cars while running across 6 lanes of the "longest north - south road in the USA" to play some records in "The Room" for an hour or two several times a week.
The slacker kid thought that he was so special that he didn't need to pay taxes or follow a few of the other rules enforced by society, so one day the store was no more, and I never saw the kid again. Rumor had it that he spent a few weeks in jail and daddy "fixed it" and sent him off to an expensive school out of state. The word got out that the Olson store was getting fat off the UM kid's money and within a couple years there were several discount stereo stores near the school. I bailed in late 72 and got a job at the Motorola plant 40 miles north and didn't look back.
Wow, I recently serviced a Sansui 8. Even after repair it didn't perform that well to be honest. Mind you, for the time it was probably top or near top of class.
838, 636 ... I have a little SX434 built into my bedside table. It sounds pretty nice playing through a pair of HiVi B3N's (Zaph's design). Nearfield, the limitations of these doesn't matter.
Ah yes, the dreaded 2SC1451, I see here in my schematic someone has even added a comment 🙂
I wonder if a 2N5551 might go in there, perhaps doubled up or heat sunk? I don't know how precious the circuit is for the exact parameters of the original, digging up a datasheet for the old one was somrthing I tried a while back but didn't succeed to my satisfaction.
Very nice, it's a shame we can't buy this type of thing today, the sheer build quality of the solid metal knobs, chassis etc simply can't be afforded today, the bean counters would have a fit and people today are fully loaded up on tax and energy bills.
Half a century of 'progress' .. I'm not seeing it!
I have the 535 too.. I like they way these are all dark, and then come to life when switched on, better than Christmas lights 🙂
I think this is a good example of THD's failure to quantify sound quality 😀
https://bb3blog.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/the-sansui-eight-receiver/
It's noticeable that many amplifiers of the time that make wonderful music, are in the 0.2-0.8% THD brackets, because back then stability mattered, and no one really cared so much for THD. It's an interesting schematic, lots of LTPs with complimentary stages up to the output where it goes quasi. High power PNPs being rare then I guess.
I didn't even know they made this - doh!!
What a masterpiece of design, cost no object, plug in boards!!
I can see similarities in the 8080 machanical layout of the tuner on top, amp underneath, and the front panel.
People still seem to love the sound of these, perhaps this was the last great Japanese receivers, as the oil crisis of the mid '70s is said to have made it uneconomical - so all our 1p80s gear - magnificent as it is compared to todays stuff - is actually 'budget' for that era 😀
But I suppose I already knew this, looking in the top of the Sansui 1000a is an object lesson in the freedom to build decent stuff in the past 🙂
