Audioless Winnipeg Group!

The rosewood vinyl wrapped twin sibling of the Yamaha YP-221, they are the exactly the same other than the colour of the plinth and instead of silver plastic bits on the YP-221 the YP-66 has black bits. This is your typical belt drive turntable of the mid to late 70s.  It's a 2-speed with automatic return (semi-automatic).  It's a nice entry level turntable with all the decent built quality that you find on majority of the Japanese made tables of that era.  It has a good sized motor and a decent weight.  Yamaha tables are like Sony tables, they always have decent quality components and they always look nice to the eyes.  The slight smoked dustcover and the rosewood plinth makes it quite unique to look at. Sadly, the antiskate weight on our isn't original.  It was missing when we got it.  After a bit of research we found the appropriate weight and found an appropriate weight to retrofit into our table.  We found a nice brass weight to fit with the design.  And, as usual,

Another Luxman but of the early 70s.  This is a beast, that it weights a lot.  Over the internet the Luxman FQ-900 has another name.  People assumed the Lux BIC 71/3R belongs to the bigger sibling of the FQ-900, the FQ-990.  However, I think the Lux BIC 71/3R is the correct one and the Lux BIC 71/2R is the FQ-990.  Why?  Well, from what I've "researched" i.e. Googling, the 71/2R retailed at a higher price, thus I am assuming it had more power.  Both the FQ-900 and FQ-990 shared the same design, just one had more power.  So, higher retail price probably meant more power.  That is my story and I am sticking to it until I get more concrete evidence.  However, these units are quite "rare" and I haven't seen a lot of information about them. This is a solid state receiver, in case I didn't mention it.  And, like the R-3030, it shares very similar sound signature, that it's smooth, open, and very balanced.  However, I do think the R-3030 is a bit more ref

It's been awhile since we last wrote about a receiver, however, this is a Luxman and deserves to be talked about.  While it's a little guy at 30wpc with the right speakers it sounds superb.  Like all Luxman, it's a very smooth, clean and has a balanced sound signature.  It is one of my favorite sounding equipment there is, especially anything with that Duo-Beta circuitry.  It has all the usual goodies that you find, tone controls, phono input with a subsonic filter with a cool LED display when dialing in the tuner.  Not to mention, like all Luxman, it looks great.  The grey face plate with the rose colour vinyl case, it is truly a beautiful piece to look at and to enjoy. It's hard to describe the sound signature of the Luxman for those who haven't heard them.  It's like a mixture of Yamaha meet Harman Kardon with edge of refinement.  Actually, I prefer the sound of the Luxman over the HK and Yamaha, at least to my ears.  I just like how clean and open it sou

The venerable 2-way speaker from Acoustic Research.  If you like and collect vintage speakers, people say the AR4x are special set of speakers.  However, they all suffer from some sort of corroded rheostats for the tweeters. Disassembly was dirty, had to be done outside.  The fiber glass filling is nasty stuff, gloves and mask are needed.  Once inside, I've noticed this "brick" underneath the choke, it was a wax capacitor and huge for 20uf by today standard.  Pulled the rheostats, took it apart to remove the corrosion and lubricate it before reassembly, put a new capacitor inside and put everything back together.  On the walnut veneer I did a light oiling.  So, these have been completely refurbished. So how do they sound?  Well, over the years I've heard and had many speakers, including some bigger ARs.  They clearly have the sound signature of that era, definitely not as forward sounding to more modern speakers but, they definitely have more "fuller" si

Now this is the oddity I want to write about.  There is absolutely no information on this turntable whatsoever but, it is 100% Japanese and no doubt a CEC machine re-badged for EDS who was an importer of electronics in Canada.  It is your typical belt drive, 2-speed yet fully automatic turntable with repeat!  Good sized motor that you will find on any belt drive Japanese turntable of the era, well made, though a bit cheesy with the plastic levers.  Clearly, it was not a high end table of the time. Tone arm can be found on many CEC branded tables, Realistic comes to mind.  It had 7", 10" and 12" lead in and that lovely wood grain vinyl look. So, why do I want to write about this turntable?  It's the interior or guts, sorry no pictures, I knew I should have taken one.  All the guys know I dislike idler wheels due to the complexity and levers and multiple gears and what not to re-lubricate.   Clearly, this is an early fully automatic turntable, reminds me of some

Found my camera backup so I thought I would make some blog postings on some of our previously sold turntable for posterity and because I think they are cool and neat, starting with the Kenwood KP-2022A. The most striking feature is the tone arm, it's neat.  The design was to prevent tone arm resonance, much like more modern tone arms.  Don't know why the design didn't last because Kenwood went back to the more tradition S-shaped arms.  It was also the Trio name plate as well. At the time, I had several Japanese turntables, the EDS and the Keio which I wrote about quite some time ago (or at least I hope).  Oddly enough the Kenwood had some striking similarities with the Keio.  I thought the Keio was designed by CEC but, when examining the Kenwood, there is some real resemblance, so I have no idea who made the Keio or even the Kenwood.  I will just assume they're all working together somehow. In any case, was a nice table, typical well made table of the era, good me

This turntable has been a running joke amongst us, and we have two of them to boot!  I have no idea why no one wants this turntable?  We've had this table for sale for quite some time and even when offered in a package at a lower price people opt for a different turntable.  Is it because it's silver?  Maybe it's not aesthetically pleasing?  I have no clue! It's actually a pretty nice table, I've used it on several occasion to play music during the holidays because it was already hooked up to the system, of course I've used a different headshell to prevent wear on the new stylus. It's very comparable to much of the belt drives of the era.  It's a 2-speed, semi-automatic table that I've completely gone over, lots of tweaking.  Granted it's not as "heavy" as some due to the more plastic interior, lots of empty space and they don't use a heavy bottom damping plate like the Technics (lots of empty space in them too!) but, it's st

This has had to be one of the cleanest turntable I've ever serviced.  It looked as if it was well cared for and the interior e.g. guts were really clean.  I was very impressed and happy that I didn't need to take out the gloves! Sony made good turntable, excellent turntables and awful turntables.  I would have to say the PS-1700 is your typical, average (which means good) turntable.  Considering the design I will assuming it's from the mid to late 70s.  Aesthetically, it is very appealing, very retro looking.  So, I am sure it will not last long. Overall, it's a well made turntable as are any Sony turntables of that era.  The dust cover is one of the nicer design I've seen and usually Sony puts a nice effort in having some really sleek dustcover designs.  For example, on the PS-1700 the dustcover is curved in the front.  As well, the two tone colour, the wood vinyl plinth with the grey top.  It is a very sharp table as well for those who are looking for the retr

Finally finished fixing up this lovely turntable by Sansui (though it's already been sold!).  I thought I would write a post about it for posterity sake as a lot of nice tables have been sold without anyone writing anything about them. Like the SR-525 that I had in during Christmas, they share a lot of similarities, though mostly cosmetics.  However, the design of the tone arm makes you wonder how much trickle down technology they used on the SR-222.  It is a beautiful and sharp looking table, especially that thicker platter over the grey plinth. Though, it didn't rank the highest among the line up, it is a fantastic table.  It's 2-speed, belt drive and pure manual, just the way I like them.  Simple, elegant and easy to fix, well...if you have the right parts.  This is the first generation (MK1) of the SR-222, in case anyone was confused. It's also well built, good size motor, interesting isolation mounts, thick and heavier than your average belt drive platter and