It has been my great pleasure to bring you posts from Yazaki-san for his article “My Adventure With My Old Marantz Model 7”. Thank you, Yazaki-san, for taking time to write this article and share your substantial audio wisdom with us, it is very much appreciated by me, as well as all of us here at... Read More »

It is my great pleasure to bring you the third post for the article that Yazaki-san is writing for us, “My Adventure With My Old Marantz Model 7”. Many thanks to Yazaki-san for taking time to write this article and share his wisdom with us, it is very much appreciated by me, as well as all... Read More »

In my earlier blog post I introduced Mr. Shirokazu Yazaki to those of  you who are new to Jeff's Place, and for the rest of you Yazaki-san needs no introduction, as you have been following the illuminating audio adventures with Yazaki-san for quite some time now. I met Yazaki-san back in early 2015 while I was preparing the article about... Read More »

As I alluded to in my earlier blog post, while I was traveling in Eastern Europe over the last few weeks, I received a message from Mr. Shirokazu Yazaki in Tokyo, Japan, about an article he has been working on for some time now for the readers of Jeff's Place, and one that I was very... Read More »

It has been a busy audio weekend, and I'm trying to get caught back up after Jeff's Place going down due to the hacking event last week. The good news is that you've encouraged me to keep going with Jeff's Place for the foreseeable future. I was pretty discouraged after the hacking event, but with all... Read More »

This morning I'm writing the introductory part of the Lefson resistor article for Positive Feedback while listening to music, with plans to write up listening impressions on how the Lefson resistors performed in my Altec A7 Voice of the Theatre project crossovers tomorrow, and hopefully write a summary & conclusions section before the end of the weekend. I hope... Read More »

It's always exciting to start a new audio adventure with vintage hi-fi electronics, and I'm particularly excited about my new vintage audio adventure with the vintage monaural McIntosh C-8 'Professional Audio Compensators' as McIntosh called them, or phono preamplifiers, as the rest of us call them. I read where the original principals at McIntosh thought... Read More »

I had forgotten all about ordering a copy of the new book, The Garrard Story, by E.W. and B.E. Mortimer, but today it arrived and reminded me! I think you all know I really love the Garrard 301 & 401 turntables, and if I could I'd have one in every room of my house! A while back... Read More »

I got up this morning and drank an adequate amount of coffee to wash down a slice of Thanksgiving's leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast, while listening to Jazz24 on the Stokowski A7 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers. Yazaki-san’s superb SPEC RSA-M3 EX Real Sound Amplifier is a perfect match to my Stokowski A7's, giving a musical... Read More »

Thanksgiving kicks off the Holiday Season in the States, and I want to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! I have a lot to be thankful for, when reflecting back upon the past year, but it's also been a tough year with the passing of my Dad, and due to some health crises for my Mom,... Read More »

Man, I love my vintage McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier, but lately the main volume control has become noisy, as have the little volume pots on the phono & auxiliary inputs. I had been dragging my feet on doing the needed maintenance, but when I watched the Care & Cleaning Of Vacuum Tube Audio Amplifiers & Amateur Radio... Read More »

It is always a delight to hear from Yazaki-san as he travels the world pursuing audio adventures with kindred spirits, this time checking in from Surabaya, Indonesia, while visiting Handoko-san at his shop Mega Audio & Disc Collection. Thanks for sharing your audio adventures with us Yazaki-san! "Dedicate to Jeff-san, After pleasant business talk with... Read More »

After writing my last post, I got all excited about wiring up my A5 VOTT's Altec 16 Ohm 515B Alnico drivers in the 825B bass horns with Duelund DCA16GA wire. First I removed the backs of the Altec 825B bass horns so I could get at the 16 Ohm 515B Alnico drivers, and then removed the vintage... Read More »

It's always good to get home and fire up the stereo after being off on a long week of work travel. The first thing I did after getting home from a long day of flying was to plug in my vintage McIntosh vacuum tube electronics and vintage Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers based system to... Read More »

I had intended to spend quite a lot more time listening to the gorgeous sounding vintage Sprague Bumblebee 0.22uF capacitors in the C93 & C95 and C94 & C96 positions of my MX110Z to establish a 'baseline' before trying any more capacitors. The Bumblebee's are my favorites of all the capacitors I've tried in those positions for the MX110Z... Read More »

After getting up this fine Saturday morning, while drinking a couple cups of my favorite coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters, I set about pulling off the bottom of my vintage vacuum tube McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier so I could do a little surgery on it. I had two things I wanted to do while under the bonnet, the... Read More »

If you read my recent post about tone capacitors you know there are three vintage capacitors that are very highly regarded for their tone, the Sprague Black Beauty, the Sprague Bumblebee, and the Mullard Tropical Fish, and they represent a sort of 'holy trinity' of tone for electric guitarists, as well as being at least partly responsible for the rich, musical tone,... Read More »

I'm not often gobsmacked by audio gear anymore, but when I laid my eyes on Markus Klug's Klughoerner hand-crafted wood replicas of historic multi-cell horns I almost swooned and fell out of my chair! Markus' Klughoerner multi-cell wood horns are stunning! To the right in the photo above, you can see Markus' hand-crafted Klughoerner wood replica... Read More »

I had a nice day of music listening yesterday afternoon with Leo, Pete, and Ron, as we did some listening comparisons with the Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers and their Hiraga-san inspired crossovers. The Jean Hiraga designed crossovers are about as perfect a match to the Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers as one could hope for,... Read More »

As I have gotten older I've found myself becoming more interested in history in general, and our audio history in particular. Over the last ten or fifteen years I've become increasingly fascinated with the vintage Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers that started their storied journey into theaters back in 1945, as World War II was winding to... Read More »

I am delighted to say that the vintage Altec-Lansing A5 Voice of the Theatre Project is now moving forward again! In the first phase of the project I commissioned Gary Fischer to restore a vintage pair of Altec-Lansing A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers, which I described in three parts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.... Read More »

While doing the vintage McIntosh MX110 tuner-preamplifier adventure we experimented with several brands of new & NOS metal film resistors in the circuit in various places, but basically I always ended up preferring the vintage 2-watt NOS Allen Bradley carbon comp resistors that Andy Moore had suggested I try. The vintage 2-watt NOS Allen Bradley resistors had better tone,... Read More »

The Vintage Beat It sure has been a wonderful experience dipping my toe into the waters of vintage hi-fi gear, like with my original Garrard Project (1, 2, 3) articles: Or with my restored vintage McIntosh kit like the MX110Z tuner-preamplifier, stereo MC240 amplifier, stereo MC225 amplifier, and MC30 monaural amplifiers: Or the world of vintage... Read More »