Really enjoyed this thread. A McIntosh tube amp is on my bucket list once I win the lottery.

quote:

Originally posted by Hamden106:
Here is Digger the Fishing Kitty in front of the console still in the family and still working just fine. Picture from late 60s

I love Digger (and the wire album rack!)

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:
I'm going to gut one and put it all new(er) electronics and speakers, just for the furniture aspect. As a credenza for my office, I think.

My only mid-century pieces are two reproduction Eames LCWs, an Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, a Nelson Bench, and a Nelson Bubble Lamp. All legit but none vintage.

/drift

Absolutely, great values out there and easily made into other uses. My downfall which made me own so many is I kept finding myself unable to butcher them. They kept making it home and then being so easily made to work, that I couldn't euthanize them. Heck, my first purchase was to have a touchscreen PC and Windows Media Center go into it. Had to be the early 200s or so. By the time I let my first one get altered, I was able to stream from an iPhone (wired).

Here's one I made into a smart phone/tablet charging station.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
That is just cool.

Someday you can check it out when you come over to help me figure out my crazy low-voltage switched lighting! lol

For now, that shit still works well though!

quote:

Originally posted by ryan81986:
I've always been told that vinyl sounds better than newer digital audio

Contrarian here.

Veteran of the old days when that was the only alternative, and since then I've been amused at people who want to spend top dollar to accurately hear wow, flutter, pops, hiss, crackle, potato-chipping, while getting their sound interrupted every few minutes to flip and clean their records and stylus, and worrying about feedback from having their speakers too close to their turntable if they crank it.

Yeah, in-between all that, maybe one can convince onesself it sounds better.

Meanwhile, I'll be listening to FLAC-encoded digital music on my Snell A-III's, with none of the above noise, selected via playlist to either do whole albums or a mix from all my sources, and the only interruption is when I want it to stop.

"Better" - pshaw.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:

quote:

Originally posted by ryan81986:
I've always been told that vinyl sounds better than newer digital audio

Contrarian here.

Veteran of the old days when that was the only alternative, and since then I've been amused at people who want to spend top dollar to accurately hear wow, flutter, pops, hiss, crackle, potato-chipping, while getting their sound interrupted every few minutes to flip and clean their records and stylus, and worrying about feedback from having their speakers too close to their turntable if they crank it.

Yeah, in-between all that, maybe one can convince onesself it sounds better.

Meanwhile, I'll be listening to FLAC-encoded digital music on my Snell A-III's, with none of the above noise, selected via playlist to either do whole albums or a mix from all my sources, and the only interruption is when I want it to stop.

"Better" - pshaw.

I have been somewhat amazed at how fast an album side is over, and you have to get up and flip it.

^ the vast majority of my collection is in FLAC and is heard through an Intel NUC HTPC, out to my old Adcom amps and Monitor Audio towers. Vinyl has its place, though (2nd place).

Many years ago when life interrupted my listening pleasure, i sold off my audio equipment. I continued to play guitar in public since it added a few bucks to the kitty. Since I have a lot of musical instrument equipment I started using some components to listen to my music. I have been using a Crown 300A PA for power, and PA speakers. It actually sounds pretty good with a disc player or iphone plugged into it. Not as nice as dedicated audio system, but good enough. I am not as picky as in my younger days. The solid state components kick some serious butt, and the fidelity is impressive. In addition, I can have the guys over, plug mikes in and go to it with minimum effort. However, all my instrument amps are tube powered Marshalls or Mesa/Boogie. Ya can't beat the tone and sustain.

I'm a Mesa Boogie and Fender guy, myself, and an analog pedal nerd, and think nothing (in the guitar world) sounds as good as those sorts of tube amps. I can hardly imagine having to go back to solid state guitar amps, or modelers, yet many solid state effects are amazing.

And with synths and recording gear I have a mix of analog and digital and it's perfectly fine.

And on my stereo solid state and digital is just fine, and sounds great.

And with DJing I vastly prefer vinyl yet have a digital setup, too, that gets more use.

I laugh at myself because of the inconsistencies.

It's easy to see how someone can prefer tube and vinyl for casual listening.

Count me in on tube guitar amps.

I have one commercial Marshall. I built knockoff Marshall 18 Watt and Fender Tweed Deluxe clones from kits. I built what is essentially a Trainwreck Climax from a kit made of leftover parts from the shop that made them (the Climax was a collaboration between Ken Fischer of Trainwreck and Gerald Weber of Kendrick, I bought the kit from Kendrick).

The Tweed Deluxe is close to as simple an amplifier as you can build. The Climax is moderately complicated. All four of them sound fantastic.

The downside is that they have to be played LOUD to sound right.

I bought a Kemper Profiler amp a few years ago so I could play direct to headphones without bothering my wife or kids. It's a very fancy digital modeling amp - as best I can tell, Kemper's Profiler and Fractal Audio's Axe-FX lines are pretty much in a class by themselves.

It sounds really good, and it can sound like ANYTHING. Kemper keeps pushing out updates and it keeps getting better.

At least through headphones, it can't quite match a real tube amp through a real speaker, though.

Even a homebuilt knockoff Tweed Deluxe in a bare chassis (guts exposed - don't get your fingers near the high voltage AC) connected via lamp cord to an $80 Jensen speaker sitting (not attached in any way) in a circular cutout in a cardboard box.