[scottiebabie]

Quote:

 
 
Thanks, based on your advice I guess i'll pass on it. Is there anywhere you gather your info about these amps? I have developed a list of local amps of interest and am having a hell of time narrowing it down to just one (two wouldn't kill me, I guess 

).

oh nooo hope i didnt steer u away from a nice amp. LOL audiokarma's very good vintage resource & since google's your best friend, doing your homeworks half the battle. i still have about 7amps & have sold atleast that much just in the past year so i guess one picks up info along the way. despite or inspite rather of forums posts with the best intentions, the only way to truly know is to buy & try it out in your rig. luckily for now atleast, vintage gear can be had for very little money so one can literally go to down on trying stuff. keep the ones u like & blow the rest out for very little loss again if u do your homework.
 
another good thing for us headfier is we dont need the big guns. anything above 20w is 100x overkill to begin with for anything other than K1ks & hifiman orthos. even with those, 20w rms will drive em to mind blowing volumes. if u havnt caught on yet, 20-40watter baby amps get no respect from buyers which works out beautifully for us headthumpers. eg i just pick'd up a pioneer sx450 lastweek for $15 with some blown lights. $5, 5bulbs & a coupla hrs later, she's lighting up the room like a mini xmas tree. i havent found a vintage amp yet that hasnt needed the case to be crack'd open & thoroughly soak with a good contact cleaner - we canucks can get MG's Nu-trol for $11 a big can & it works wonders. case her back up, let her dry & fire her up. thats it.
 
thats about all normal pitfalls of buying old stuff. ofcos i've screw'd the pooch a coupla times but i take my lumps & call it partial payment in vintage education. OTOH i've more than made up for it in reselling stuff. u have it much better over me with much bigger pickin's in the GTA region as GVRD is 4-5x smaller market. i'd snoop round CL as its been my best source so far both for buying & reselling. personally i stay from fleabay if for no other reason, shipping costs a ton,
 
thats as far it goes for headfi needs. if u do turn into a collector, thats another ballgame entirely. its even more fun & potentially a better investment although it also comes with bigger pitfalls. im very close to being done for headfi & am basically looking for collectable purchases. thats where MONSTA amps/receivers come in. for those that think a 'Sui 9090s big, put a SX1980 beside it & everybody goes......Holyyyy Jeeeeezz! heheh. i love it!
 
ps:no diss intended on the 'Sui 9090 as its a very well respected receiver & its big by most standards. just goes to demo how "BIG" Monsta amps/receivers are.
 

 

[REB]

Quote:

My Kenwood KA-6000 is a powerful and neutral integrated amp from the 1970's. It had a very clean sound until it stopped turning on, hopefully it's something like the power switch rather that the PSU and I will be able to revive it sometime soon. I also have a nice 1980's Sansui tuner I can use with it. A good friend gave me the amp in the 1980s, and I got the tuner from a pawnshop for $20 in the 1990s.
 

 

Very nice! And that for $20... Design-wise, It is strikingly similar to my ka7002.
 

 

[grokit]

Actually the amp was free, or in return for a favor or something; the guy wasn't using it any more. I was driving a multi-zone speaker system with it until a few years ago.
 
The tuner was $20

 

[REB]

Ditto for mine: two phono imputs, two aux, one tuner, two tapes, one mic.

 

[REB]

That's even better! Hope you can get it fixed.
 
Quote:

Actually the amp was free, or in return for a favor or something; the guy wasn't using it any more. I was driving a multi-zone speaker system with it until a few years ago.
 
The tuner was $20

 

 

[REB]

Listening to keith jarrett, jack de johnette and gary peacock live at the blue note through the Kenwood: It's like I'm there.

 

[REB]

I had that happen with a sansui 555a. The seller put it in a large cardboard box (not a snug fit at all, the amp could move around) and that was it. the amp is now at a repair center to see whether it can be salvaged.
 
Quote:

Some people have no idea about packaging. I received a CD player once with no packing at all, just knocking around in this big old box (thankfully it was okay). Some people are the opposite and wrap even cheap items up like a Russian Doll, with so many layers of wrapping that it costs twice as much postage. Eek.   

 

 

[pp312]

Did you let the seller or Ebay know?

 

[REB]

I bought it through a local site (similar to craigslist in the states). I let the seller know, but he never responded. i paid only 50 euro's, but still... mostly, buying vintage audio from that site works just fine. This one time it didn't.
 
Quote:

Did you let the seller or Ebay know?

 

 

[Skylab]

Yep, I learned the hard way - no EBay, at least not for bargain hunting, or unless the seller is local to me (which in Chicago certainly does happen).  It will be really sad Wednesday when it's trash day to see that SX-780 on the trash heap.  With a better packing job, it could have been different. 
 
But if you live in a major metro, I've discovered just in a month or so of looking there are opportunities to buy vintage amps and receivers than one could ever even check out!  I'm trying to resist the temptation right now to buy a fully serviced Pioneer SX-1250, which I could pick up 12 miles from here...

 

[REB]

The good news is that I just heard from the repair guy that the sansui amp will be ready next week and that everything will have been fixed for a reasonable price. If that is the case, I'm gonna send him my other vintage stuff as well to clean, upgrade and revise.
 
That pioneer is a beauty! to quote oscar wilde: I can resist anything but temptation. So go ahead and take one for the team!

 
Quote:

Yep, I learned the hard way - no EBay, at least not for bargain hunting, or unless the seller is local to me (which in Chicago certainly does happen).  It will be really sad Wednesday when it's trash day to see that SX-780 on the trash heap.  With a better packing job, it could have been different. 
 
But if you live in a major metro, I've discovered just in a month or so of looking there are opportunities to buy vintage amps and receivers than one could ever even check out!  I'm trying to resist the temptation right now to buy a fully serviced Pioneer SX-1250, which I could pick up 12 miles from here...

 

 

[Zida]

This might be better suited for the sound science forum, but I feel it relates to vintage receivers better than most other topics on head-fi...
 
What do you guys think about the THD%. I've seen them listed as high as 1% and all the way down to 0.004% out of these vintage amps. I'm inclined to weed out some amps based on that spec, but I'm not sure if it's actually audible and I might be passing on some good amps for no good reason. Now, I believe that, as WPC can actually only tell you so much about an amps ability to drive speakers, a THD spec can only tell you so much about the harmonic distortion, but in some of your experiences (any of you who have toyed around with a couple receivers) have you noticed anything about THD worth noting?



-----
And incase anyone feels like passing some judgement on some local deals I'm now looking at
a Pioneer SA-8500, not mkII,         60wpc        0.1%thd       which is supposed to have a clean and clear sound sig which is important to me,
Harmon Kardon HK630,                30wpc        0.7%thd        twin powered *receiver model, not the integrated amp of, seemingly, the same name

there also looks to be a well upkept sansui 7070 which probably isnt a bad idea for me since I've never tried to clean electronics or change caps or anything.

 

[Skylab]

First of all, I seriously doubt anyone could hear the difference between 0.7% THD and 0.1% THD, but that said, it also depends on what the harmonics even are.  even-order harmonics are generally considered to be pretty benign, whereas odd-order harmonics are more objectionable.  So only knowing THD without knowing what the distortion products are, isn't enough to go on.
 
And the fact of the matter is, in a vintage receiver, noise is likely to swamp THD anyway.
 
 

 

[wualta]

I'm with Skylab on this one. Using a one-dimensional figure of merit like THD to make a buying decision is like buying an LCD computer monitor by looking at the response-time spec. It tells you something about the design philosophy of the unit, but it's far-- too far-- from giving you the whole picture.

 

[moodyrn]

I would also like to add, if people soley went on thd, there would be very few tube amp owners out there. Some very good tube amps can have a thd as high as 1.0%. A lot of people will tell you that anything below 1.0% is inaudible. This is just like people only looking at frequency response graphs to judge how a headphone will sound.