AG Pool Audio System.

We might need to start an audio section! I have been an audio hobbist since the 60's when I was in Jr. High and got my first component system! Built more speaker systems than I care to think about and still remember the day I bought my Dual 1219 turntable/Shure V15 type II cartridge when I was in High School! Worked my way through college by first working in and then becoming the Audio Dept. manager for an Audio/musical instrument store! (That was back in the days of quadraphonic sound! I actually spoke with Joe Grado from Grado labs on the phone many times about his phono cartridges and CD4 demodulator setup. He sent me one of his signature series cartridges as a gift!)

I took the easy way out for my pool sound for now....Have an Advent wireless outdoor speaker...mono only but very good sound for the money (was around $100, sorry to say Thompson sold Advent to audiovox and they no longer offer the unit). Have the transmitter hooked up to my computer right now and listen to MP3s and internet radio by the pool but I used to have it hooked into my home theatre system. Had to run upstairs to the living room to change music which is why I switched it over to the computer. My office is right next to the pool and has sliding glass doors so it's easy to adjust things if I want to. Plan to install outdoor speakers some time in the future but this works fine for now.

Y'know, I think I'm going to move this to the non-pool topic....It's not really an A/G thread.

I just replaced the 19 year old CD player for the pool. My wife looked askance at me, spending more money. It's a beautiful old Yamaha we got as a wedding gift. It stopped opening and closing, so I pulled it apart and found the eject belt was stretched. I replaced it for about $3 or $4 bucks, with a spare, and it was like new!

So why replace it? I replaced it with a 5 CD table changer that can play CD-R, CR-RW, and MP3s on CD. I really got tired of having to get out of the pool every 45 minutes, dry off, run inside and change it. Now it's 5 CDs in a row--and all for $80 new!

I have to watch the pots and switches on the old Dynaco stuff--they can cause a channel to drop. Work 'em a little and they are fine. The amp is scary--big, tall, wide, heavy, and 200wpch. But it's 25 or more years old and still kicks! With the classic Pat-4 pre-amp it all runs nicely.

The ONLY other thing with all equipment is not enough space between RCA sockets, so sometimes the new, heavy RCA plugs are too big to go side-by-side!

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Originally Posted by CarlD

Yeah, and being an audiophile can be a VERY expensive hobby if you go nuts.

But I generally prefer older speakers I can restore, re-foam (very easy) and re-equalize, if necessary. Got some old Advents (including The New Advent--circa 1980), AR2As, B/As, and some others (who was it had the Heil Air Motion transformer? DSS?--got them too).

Then there's cassettes, turntables, amps, tuners, pre-amps, etc...

Tube/solid state, Class A, B, C, etc....

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There's some great stuff that was made in the days gone by. Some of the older drivers are really top quality. It may be true that some of the voicing of the older speakers may not be fully to someones liking...but in a different speaker/crossover system...the voicing could be quite different. The picture in the previous post is a DIY design using JBL, Fane and TAD drivers.

I've been looking for some Heils to play around with too...one of these days ;) The largest problem my wife has with the audio hobby is that I don't get rid of stuff :p

here's another DIY speaker...and my system in it's room below that...

http://home.comcast.net/~gone.fishin/Altecsmall.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~gone.fishin/system_small.jpg

dan

Carl, my first amp was a Dynaco ST-120. I bought it with a dead channel at a garage sale when I was 14 and fixed it. (Yeah, yeah it was one of the transistor dynacos everybody hates but I loved it....)

Waterbear, I've got a Dual 1019 with a V15 Type 3 sitting in my livingroom right now. :D If I had any decent albums left I'd look into fixing that drive wheel.....

Philbo, I love that video! It's amazing what a few million worth of carbon will do for your speed. :p

Well I took the easy way out.:o I run a linux file server in house hooked to a wireless access point so I have access to my mp3 files wireless. I took an old lap top hooked to a decent pair of speakers and tossed in a wireless network card so now I have access to the mp3 files on the server. I build a play list, start it, and go jump in the pool. I need to build a weather proof storage for it so I don’t have to drag it in and out each time. I guess I may add a universal remote and hack the ir port on the back of the laptop so I can be truely lazy and not have to get out of the pool to adjust the volume and play list.:D
Steve

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The largest problem my wife has with the audio hobby is that I don't get rid of stuff :p

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Ain't THAT the truth! :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by sailork

Carl, my first amp was a Dynaco ST-120. I bought it with a dead channel at a garage sale when I was 14 and fixed it. (Yeah, yeah it was one of the transistor dynacos everybody hates but I loved it....)

Waterbear, I've got a Dual 1019 with a V15 Type 3 sitting in my livingroom right now. :D If I had any decent albums left I'd look into fixing that drive wheel.....

Philbo, I love that video! It's amazing what a few million worth of carbon will do for your speed. :p

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sailork: I've got a number of ST-120s including a couple that are still brand-new unbuilt kits. The S/S stuff gets a bad rap, but it's a particular sound. The REAL rap on the ST-120s is the earlier ones had poor power supply circuits that blew and were difficult to repair. Somewhere, I have articles on how to upgrade them to the later versions. The ST-80s were a little more reliable, and were combined with the PAT-4 preamp into the SCA-80 and SCA-80Q, integrated amps. The Q stood for quad--using Dynaco's simple but fairly effective phasing trick.

Dynaco made a whole range of S/S power amps, from the ST-80, ST-120, ST-150, and the monster ST400 series (there are some others including if I remember correctly, the ST-300--4 75wpch amps for true quad sound.). They only made 3 integrated amps, the SCA-80, SCA-50 (extremely rare) and the SCA-35--the little tube amp.

I bought an SCA-35 on eBay just to see what the hoopla was about. I wasn't impressed. Then I dug in and found a bad resistor, and a bad cap, and WOW! what a fantastic sound that little 17.5wpch amp had!

The S/S stuff has a little colder sound than the tube stuff-I can hear it and prefer the tubes, but while the audiophiles would have you think the gap is a chasm, it's really very slight.

Curiously, for some reason, in my house, digital tuners work very poorly and the old analogs do better. The tube-based Dynaco FM-1 may have been the ugliest component ever built, and the FM-3 was only slightly better in brushed aluminum--but they work really well.

Consequently, I am also partial to Tivoli radios because they work in m house. Same guy, Kloss, designed them as designed the AR3A speakers, the original Advent speakers, the original KLH speakers and stereo (the Tivoli tuner mech is STRAIGHT off the KLH compact stereo from 40 years ago!) and I don't know what else!

I just haven't messed with the stuff in a couple of years. I used to love to sit and analyze, diagnose, and solder, solder, solder!

you gus are geeks... lets talk about sailboats :D :D

I deleted part of my post because I thought I was going on and on and on. I had written that I was in an Electronics Explorer post and one of the guys had the ST-300. By then Quadrophenia was the only reference left to quadraphonics.

I believe my ST-120 was made in the very late 70's or early 80's. I had one heck of a time cobling together a 51 volt zener diode to replace the one that had blown. (along with a 2035 transistor in the final drive and one in the powersuppy for good measure.) It really was a great sounding amp. I think the tube stuff only sounds better because the distortion harmonics are interpreted differently by the brain. The new amps are so clean that you generally won't hear it at all. Since I was listening to Led Zeppelin and Jimi I wasn't really going to hear "nuance" anyway.

The last pair of speakers I built used a pair of Madisound 6 1/2 inch woofers above and below a cloth domed Peerless tweeter. The design was 100% budget driven but the efficiency was outsanding. They'll still make your ears ring for a week if you aren't careful. Not exactly deep bass, but then I wasn't listening to Rap or Mozart. I think you could almost smell the lighter fluid on Jimi's guitar.

"you gus are geeks... lets talk about sailboats"

Sounds great Phillbo, if Mod Carl doesn't chide us for going off topic.. :D

As can probably be surmized from my screen name I'm a sailboat junky. Virtually all of my time on sailboats has been either "beer and burger run" sailing on Galveston bay or racing on the bay and the Gulf. Since the average crew age seems to be just less than 90 around here I tend to fill in the "yank on things" side of racing. I fly (and generally hoist) the chute. I yank the jib. On most wednesday nights I sail on a Capri 22 on Clear Lake. PHRF Non-spin. I weigh 240 so the boat tends to lean in my direction.. :o

My main ride is my Dad's J/105. That's where the speakers live that I was talking about earlier in this thread. We play a fair amount of Kinky Friedman on board and I suspect everyone on the crew is going to vote for him for Gov'ner. I just can't figure out why he didn't make "Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed" his campaign theme...

(I edited out a more offensive Kinky Friedman song title believe or don't.)

Oh My Gosh, we are going way to far back. Waterbear, my first system in the 60's sounds a lot like yours. I raised my kids on the Beatles and Stones, ect.ect. I mentioned daughter number two was working at Henson studios. I did not mention, in the last year and a half, she has worked with the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney. Keith gave her a huge bunch of roses and Paul a big hug. She just did her first side job, third engineer on a Randy Jackson project. This month the first two CD's are being released with her name in the credits. One of her best friends was the drummer for Zappa for many years. She worked an entire week on the sound track that Ozborn used to lip sink opening night of Monday Night Football last year. I just gave her my 500 plus collection of albums. She has carted half of them away and is coming back for the second half. She has become the hit of the studio with this collection.

Carl, the sail boat fits my budget but where would you install the speakers?

Actualy, I would like an inflatable that I could slap a 250 Merc on and use for bass fishing. Any ideas?

I have never been in a thread and so far off topic with a mod. It's fun sometimes and I hope it's OK.:)

Here's to good sounds, in the pool or on the boat. Dennis