Breaking news! Duelund Coherent Audio DCA16GA! I'm really excited about this! Update!
A lot of you (and me) have been lamenting that the superb Western Electric WE16GA wire has become essentially extinct, and I am down to the last little bit of WE16GA I have left, which is what I am using to wire my new crossovers for my Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers project.... Read More »
Bill Van Winkle, Our Friend and Fellow Audio Traveler, Passes
It is with sadness that I report that our friend and fellow audio traveler, Bill Van Winkle, has passed after an extended battle with cancer. Pete Riggle sent me a message saying: Finally Bill has reached escape velocity, not just from earth, but from the Milky Way. I walked out last night and looked up into... Read More »
A Couple of Breadboards for the Altec A5 VOTT Project!
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 »
Vintage tone, and other stuff.
I've been thinking a lot about tone lately, and in particular, vintage tone. If you look up 'tone' in the dictionary you'll see half a dozen definitions for it, but what I'm referring to when I say 'tone' is more in line with what musician's mean when they say 'tone', and what I think music lovers & audio hobbyists mostly... Read More »
The A5 VOTT Project Commences: Resistors and capacitors, and inductors, oh my!
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 »
The Vintage McIntosh Resistor Adventure Continues (and other stuff)!
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 »
Jeff checking in ... a look into the crystal ball: the past, present, and future!
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 »
The Vintage McIntosh MX110 Adventure: OMG! Up Next - The A5 VOTT Project!
Ron-san and I got together today to celebrate the joys of audio & music and to listen to the latest iteration of our Real Sound Adventure with the vintage McIntosh MX110 tuner-preamplifiers. To complement our listening adventures, we had a couple of superb bottles of regional wines to sample, a 2013 Walla Walla Vintners Cabernet Sauvignon, and a 2013 Anelare... Read More »
The Vintage McIntosh MX110 Tuner-Preamplifier Adventure: The Arizona Capacitor Palette!
A good alternate title for this post would have been "The Real Sound Education of Jeff Day" because that is the result of Yazaki-san's and Ron-san's influence on me during our mutual adventures with the vintage McIntosh vacuum tube gear. Due to Ron's influence, I have now made the transition of being a modification observer... Read More »
The Vintage McIntosh MX110 Tuner-Preamplifier Adventure: The Tepro Transformation!
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with a major revelation? In my case my major revelation came at 2:53 a.m. last night, according to the screen on my iPhone. It was three thoughts coming together that triggered my overall revelation, but I want to tell you the story in the sequence that it occurred... Read More »
A Slick Schick Woody-Wire Re-wire - Updated with listening impressions.
If you read my post about Rafe's and Don's road trip to Jeff's Place (and Rafe's Part-Time Audiophile trip report), you know that one of the demos we did was a comparison of one of my Schick tonearms to the Woody SPU tonearm using a Ortofon SPU Classic GM Mk II stereo cartridge. I really like... Read More »
Jeff checking in ... Arizona Capacitors, Tepro, Schick re-wire, and music!
I sure have been busy lately, it seems, and I haven't been able to keep up with the blog posts I've been wanting to write for you, or to respond to your comments as speedily as I'd like to. If I forgot to answer a comment you directed at me, ping me again, because it... Read More »
The Vintage Beat: Audio Research SP-6B, Harmon Kardon Citation 1, and McIntosh MX110 Preamplifiers
Ron, Leo, and I got together to do a little listening to a variety of vintage preamplifiers last weekend, the Audio Research SP-6B, the Harmon Kardon Citation 1, and the McIntosh MX110. First we listened to Ron's vintage Audio Research SP-6B preamplifier so we could get a performance baseline for it, as we are getting ready to... Read More »
Part Time Audiophiles' Road Trip to Jeff's Place - The Trip Report!
It sure was nice to have Rafe & Don visit me and my pals Ron, Leo, and Pete, here at Jeff's Place, and we had a ball listening to music together. Rafe published a very gracious writeup of their visit here to Jeff's Place at Part-Time Audiophile, which you can read here. Thanks for the kind words,... Read More »
Jazz to sip bourbon by ...
This has been a busy weekend for me, and I'm finally getting a chance to just sit down this evening and listen to music and relax, just for the fun of it. At this moment I have no reviews I'm thinking about, no listening impressions to record, no other duties of any kind, I'm just listening... Read More »
Kindred Spirits: Kato-san Checking in from Hakodate, Japan!
It's always a delight to hear from Yazaki-san, and I got a very nice email from Yazaki-san introducing his good friend, Kato-san. "I’m so happy to introduce my good old friend, Kato-san to you and Ron-san. Kato-san had been working in the research and development division of PIONEER until 10 years ago, and at the same... Read More »
Preliminary Listening Impressions of the New Duelund CAST Silver-Copper Hybrid Capacitors.
I was able to get in a nice listening session with the new Duelund CAST silver-copper hybrid capacitors, and I wanted to give you the scoop on my initial listening impressions. My apologies to Frederik for the lengthy delay in writing about his new hybrid silver-copper Duelund CAST capacitors, as it has taken much longer than I... Read More »
The MX110 and Saturday Morning Soldering - the Oddio Resistance!
I was so pleased with my vintage McIntosh MX110 tuner-preamplifier 'resistor adventure' this morning I just had to tell you about it! As you know, the MX110 Adventure has thrown us a few unexpected curve balls, and in response Ron-san and I have been going through component-by-component to figure out what was going on and... Read More »
Reflections on Music & Hi-Fi
It was a lot of fun to have Rafe (Part-Time Audiophile) and Don visit Jeff's Place over the weekend, and we covered a lot of ground musically, sonically, and philosophically. From a musical perspective we did a little bit of a survey of the recording arts, starting with some very early mono recordings, progressing through... Read More »
Rafe & Don Visit Jeff's Place - Road Trip!
It's always a lot of fun to make new friends and visit with you all when you stop by. Rafe (Part-Time Audiophile) and his brother, Don, also a devoted music lover and audio nut, made the journey from beautiful Vancouver, B.C., to Jeff's Place. Welcome to Jeff's Place, Rafe and Don! Pete and I met Rafe... Read More »
Happy Birthday Mom!
Happy 91st Birthday, Mom! Sunday was my Mom's 91st Birthday, now that's something to celebrate! Mom and I started our day of celebration at a nice little French restaurant that's just down the street from Mom's apartment. We had a delicious brunch of coffee, mimosa, veggie crepes, and Eggs Benedict, that were all made from scratch by... Read More »
The Vintage McIntosh MX110 Adventure: Allen Bradley & the Naked Ladies
If you've been reading along about our real sound adventures with my vintage McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier, you know the modifications we did threw us a curve ball, and the resulting performance after our modifications didn't sound nearly as good as my stock MX110Z. Argh! While there were some promising aspects to the performance of my modified MX110Z, we basically struck... Read More »
Jeff Checking In & Previews of Coming Attractions!
It has been bitterly cold here in my part of the Pacific Northwest until this last week, when temperatures soared into the high 40's and low 50's (Fahrenheit). The skiers & snow boarders have been happy with all the snow in the mountains, but us bicycle riders in the flatlands a little less so. The previous... Read More »
The Power of the Orchestra!
Normally when I hear the phrase 'The Power of the Orchestra' it makes me think of the famous Kingsway Hall recording by Kenneth Wilkinson of René Leibowitz conducting The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing Pictures At An Exhibition & Night On Bare Mountain (RCA VCS-2659), which has long been on Harry Pearson's Super LP List, and renowned for its remarkable dynamics,... Read More »
The Vintage McIntosh MX110 Tuner-Preamplifier Adventure: In Pursuit of Real Sound.
Yazaki-san, Ron-san, and I, buoyed by our dramatic success with our Real Sound adventure with my vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers (below), embarked on another Real Sound adventure with my vintage McIntosh MX110 tuner-preamplifier, as I have reported on earlier in several posts. Well how do I say this? Things haven't gone so well with our... Read More »
A Listening Adventure: A Trio of Modified Vintage McIntosh MX110 Tuner-Preamplifiers
Ron, Leo, and I got together last weekend to listen to a trio of vintage McIntosh MX110s variously modified by Ron-san with Real Sound modifications as suggested by Yazaki-san, which are similar to the modifications Yazaki-san has performed on his personal vintage Marantz 7 preamplifier. Prior to being modified by Ron-san, two of the MX110s were restored -... Read More »
The Duelund CAST Hybrid Silver-Copper Capacitors Adventure
I wanted to tell you a little more about the new 6.8uF Duelund CAST hybrid silver-copper capacitors from Frederik that I mentioned in this post. As a refresher, let me remind you how the hand-crafted Duelund CAST silver & copper capacitors are made. In the Duelund CAST capacitors Frederik uses only pure annealed soft copper... Read More »
Gary Fischer’s A5 ‘Voice of the Theatre’ Restoration Part 3: the 288C, 1005B, and 515B
In my Part 1 post I introduced you to Gary Fischer and the Altec-Lansing A5 Voice of the Theatre restoration he did for me that forms the basis of the Altec A5 VOTT Project here at Jeff's Place. For my restoration, I chose two 825B bass horn cabinets, two 515B Alnico low-frequency drivers, two N-500-C crossovers, two 1005B 10-cell horns,... Read More »
The Westminster Royal SE Duelund CAST Crossover Project: Hybrid Silver-Copper CAST Capacitors
I'm on a crossover roll to start off 2016, and now it's time to discuss some exciting developments with the Duelund CAST crossovers that form the beating heart of my Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers. In the The Duelund Coherent Audio / Tannoy Westminster Royal Special Edition Project that I chronicled in real time here at Jeff's... Read More »
My First Post of 2016 - The Vintage Beat: An Altec A5 VOTT Project Update
Happy 2016 my friends, and thank you all so much for all the well wishes in closing out 2015, I truly appreciate it! I want to start the New Year of 2016 with a post about the last thing I mentioned in my last post of 2015 - the Altec A5 VOTT Project. The Altec-Lansing Voice... Read More »
My Final Post of 2015 ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ The Year in Review! ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪
The waning hours of 2015 are upon us, and I thought I'd make my last post for 2015 a look back on the year. This past year has had so many highlights it boggles my mind as I think back on it, and I’m so thankful that I was able to share all my audio &... Read More »
The Jeff Awards for 2015 ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ Ron Barbee ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪
As I was preparing the Jeff Award for Yazaki-san, I was also thinking about another friend who has had a profound influence on me and my enjoyment of the audio & musical arts over the last several years, my good friend and fellow audio adventurer, Ron Barbee. Ron is a life-long audio enthusiast, music lover, musician (guitarist),... Read More »
The Jeff Awards for 2015 ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ Shirokazu Yazaki ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪
For my 12th Annual Positive Feedback Writers’ Choice Awards I did something that I've never done before, I gave an award to a person instead of an audio product, Mr. Shirokazu Yazaki. The Positive Feedback Writer's Choice Award acknowledges Mr. Shirokazu Yazaki for "his significant design work" which he surely deserves. In Japan, the term 'Living National Treasure'... Read More »
Gary Fischer’s A5 ‘Voice of the Theatre’ Restoration Part 2: The Bass Horn Cabinets
As I promised in my Part 1 blog post, using the A5 VOTT loudspeaker system that Gary Fischer restored for me as an example (below), I’ll describe the details of Gary’s restoration process. One thing that I really appreciated was that Gary sent me photos and kept me informed about what he was doing as... Read More »
Gary Fischer's A5 'Voice of the Theatre' Restoration Part 1: Introduction
I'm really impressed with the quality of Gary Fischer's restoration of the Altec-Lansing A5 Voice of the Theatre (VOTT) loudspeakers that I purchased from him, so I wanted to tell you a little bit more about Gary and his restorations. To serve as the basis of my A5 VOTT Project here at Jeff's Place, I wanted to get a pair... Read More »
The Jeff Awards for 2015 ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ The Garrard Project 2015 ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪
The Garrard Project 2015 was one of my three choices for a Positive Feedback Writers’ Choice Award for 2015. The project team of Garrard specialist Ray Clark of Classic Turntable Company, bespoke analog maven Christopher Thornton of Artisan Fidelity, tonearm craftsman Thomas Schick, and yours truly, worked together to create an analog work of art that... Read More »
