[Raul]

Hi all,
I'm new here and maybe my post is a bit off-topic as I havent a headphone (yet), but I learned from my favorite Vintage Asylum forum that there are several Fisher 400 lovers here.
I too am a Fisher 400 fan, and I'd like to introduce myself and my small collection of vintage tube amps.
I am from Italy and here it's very difficult to find vintage USA amps, so I have to turn to ebay (no garage sales or thrift stores here).
I began to be interested in vintage hi-fi only one and a half year ago, so I'm a bit of a newbie.

During this period I bought:

- FISHER 400 receiver (circa 1967) (eBay Germany), in very good condition with wooden cabinet, all telefunken (diamond) 12ax7's, mullards on mpx section, good original 7868 output tubes. Very nice faceplate. A friend refurbished the cabinet that now looks nearly as new. Another friend installed a FisherDoc Restopack on it. Great sounding receiver, perfect with my BC1's below.

- VOICE OF MUSIC 1448 (circa 1963-4) integrated amp in very good condition (eBay USA). Very nice retro look, and great sounding small 6AQ5 amp (also Joe Rosen on Vintage Asylum praised it very much)

- VOICE OF MUSIC 1465-2 tuner (circa 1963-4) (this came in a lot with the above amp)

- HEATHKIT AA-32 (circa 1968-9) integrated amp (ECL86/6GW8 output tubes) in great cosmetic and working condition, all original mullards (eBay USA). A friend from USA replaced all old caps with Wima polypropylene before shipping it to me. It sounded very good. Then, some days ago, I triode strapped it (it was my first soldering work!) and wow, now it sounds still better!
To me it's one of the best kept secrets in vintage audio, a great sleeper amp. A bit ugly, but really good. Buy one until they are cheap (available from $60 to $100 on ebay)

- SHERWOOD S-5000 (circa 1958-59) integrated amp (7189/6BQ5/EL84 output tubes) (eBay USA). Very good condition, faceplate without noticeable flaws. It sounds great and looks very spiffy.

- SPENDOR BC1 (1981) SPEAKERS pair in near mint condition (eBay UK). Great speakers, for many the best dynamic speaker ever. Midrange is unsurpassed. These beat speakers costing thousands of $$$

- DYNACO A-25 (early '70s?) SPEAKERS pair (eBay Germany). In great condition, great sounding speakers. Not as good as the Spendor but they sound really nice with vintage tube amps. Still a bargain, a must have.

Well, this is my collection until now, I'm very happy with all my purchases and I would not sell any of them. Very probably I will buy some more, as this is a really addictive hobby. I was warned at the beginning, but I didn't listen...
Best
Raul
Italy
P.S. can you advise a good (and cheap) headphone well matched with the Fisher 400?

 

[FreddyE]

I have an old Akai reel to reel tape recorder with crossfield heads and two separate tube amps, one for each channel from the 60's. It is a portable and very big and heavy. I feel like lugging it out to see how the amps sound with good earphones (grado 60's)

 

[john_jcb]

What you need now are the AKG K-1000's

http://www.headphone.com/layout.php?...tID=0020121000

The Fisher does a great job of driving them. Would be fun to try the other you have.

Welcome to Head-Fi

 

[mkmelt]

Besides the Fisher 400, which of your vintage amps have headphone jacks or the provision for one to be added?

I too think the Fisher 400 is a great tube amplifier as well as FM receiver (note my head-fi avatar). It happens to work well with most headphones. If the AKG K1000s are not for you, consider the Sennheiser HD-580 and HD-600. Both sound exceptionally good when driven by the Fisher.

When I am not using my HD-600 headphones with my Fisher 400 and Ampex reel to reel tape player, I like to use these headphones to listen to CDs through a Dynaco SCA-35 (12AX7 x 2 phono, 7199 x 2 driver and 6BQ5/EL84 x4 power tubes) integrated amplifier that I modified by adding a headphone jack. When I don't feel like firing up the Fisher, the little Dynaco is there to fit the moment.

 

[tom hankins]

I'm drooling over those Spendor's.

 

[tanfenton]

Raul,

Our tastes coincide: I love the VoM 1448, Sherwood, and Spendors (better than much of the junk passing as audiophile these days). I know whose home I'd be staying at were I to visit [Italy]!

NGF

 

[Dan H]

Welcome Raul.
Neat equipment you have! Like mkmelt I also use the Sennheiser HD600 headphones with a vintage Fisher, it’s a 500C very similar to your 400.
Please tell us more about the Voice of Music amp and tuner you own. I have small vintage collection mostly tuners.
I think you can get the Sennheiser for ~220.00 euro.
Dan...........AKA Mossback

 

[Raul]

Thank you for your very nice answers.

- The Fisher 400 is the only one of my amps that has an headphone jack (I don't know about provision)

- the AKG K1000 is way too expensive for me

- which are the differences between Sennheiser HD 580 and HD 600? Is the HD 600 the one to buy or the cheaper HD 580 can be a valuable option?

- tom: you're right, the BC1s are wonderful

- tanfenton: and now I know where to go when I'll visit Florida

Out of joke, I'm glad to find someone that has my same "vintage tastes". Do you own the 1448, Sherwood and BC1s? I agree with you that these beat much of today's "hype-end" hi-fi stuff.

- Dan H: the VoM 1448 is a great little amp. Mine is in very nice cosmetic condition. It is dead quiet also. Here is some comment by Joe Rosen (if you are in the Vintage Asylum you surely know him) about it:

"I bought it, figured it for a half-interesting piece-of-****, put it on a shelf after buying it, forgot about it for 10 years, then got bored one day and pulled it down, tested the tubes (all OK but one output weak, so just threw any old 6AQ5 in), and plugged it right in, no soft-start with a Variac transformer, just hard turn-on, and wait for the smoke to come out from frying resistors, melting valves, blown diodes, leaking electrolytic condensers, etc.
So of course, none of these things happened! I was just floored!
Here was an amplifier, upon closer inspection, where the engineer(s) had stuck to the ratings of the components he was using with religious fervour, NOT ONE RATING IS EXCEEDED IN ANY COMPONENT IN THE AMPLIFIER! And you just don't see this kind of conservative engineering: That's right, not even in Marantz, and NOT even in McIntrash!
Maybe the fact that the amp sounds so good is a happy accident. But the fact that it was truly designed by someone who REALLY understood reliability is an amazing bonus!
...6AQ5's sound like 6V6's, so they favour voices and higher frequencies, and the higher the frequency, the softer and "airier" this valve sounds!... The midrange is unbelievably good, forward in the best sense, with remarkable presence. The tone is gorgeous: The midrange is full, so sweet, never harsh, glassy, thin or glaring. Yet, it is not ridiculously euphonic: Bad recordings don't sound like anything other than what they are, but they don't sound worse, either! They can be fatiguing, just not AS fatiguing as they would be with other equipment. And the 1448 doesn't do this by "taking from Peter to give to Paul", which is to say, it doesn't do this by ridiculously compressing dynamics (which many "soft" sounding pieces do, and quite severely), or totally ravaging the frequency response, or wrapping the music up in a hissy, fuzzy gauze (which is how Harman-Kardon does it, only the extreme treble is a true revelation. The 1448 is far more "full range")...
...It is, quite simply, the BEST vintage integrated amp I've heard, if perhaps not the most "neutral" in its tone. Finally, one piece that earns the promise inherent in its name!"

I cannot say much about the tuner, I just tried it for a brief time to check if it was working ok, and it did. It's very nice looking and matches perfectly with the 1448 amp style. I bought it because it was in the same lot with the amp, but it was he amp that I was looking for. So I cannot give you technical details about it.

Best
Raul

 

[Dan H]

I’ve heard the Sennheiser HD 580’s and think that they are very close to the 600’s in sound quality.

Nik is the head-fi member from Italy who has an outstanding head-fi setup.
http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/membe...fo&userid=2390