The largest problem my wife has with the audio hobby is that I don't get rid of stuff
Ain't THAT the truth!

Quote 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. 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.
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!