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Unfairly forgotten classics

Arkless Electronics

Trade: Amp design and repairs.
That thread I started on Leak Stereo 70's etc got me thinking that there is quite a bit of gear out there which although of decent quality one barely ever hears about any more... and more rarely still is it ever suggested as a classic purchase.

I guess a classic example of such a scenario reversing would be old Japanese kit. Once you couldn't give it away but now it's suddenly desirable and fetching good money.

here's a few as a starter from me then:

1/ Leak solid state kit. It was expensive and well reviewed in it's day. The gems IMO are the Stereofetic tuner and the Delta 75 receiver. Stereofetic just as good as Quad FM3 and from same era. 2000 series amps to be avoided but tuners very good. Last 3000 series IIRC badge engineered Rotel. Stereo 30 plus, Stereo 70 and Delta 30 and 70 amps not bad but not that brilliant either. Fine for garage system etc and very cheap way of going retro. Delta stuff totally re-styled versions of earlier gear, made after Rank takeover. Look VERY different from earlier stuff but same internally.

2/ Armstrong 600 series. A range of amps and receivers and tuners in semi "slim line" cabinets. Not actually that slim but styling makes it look that way... Tuners are very good and the amps and receivers pretty good as well. Power amp and PSU section prone to faults BUT always one of 3-4 "stock faults" and easily repaired. A well sorted 625 receiver would get very close to an A&R A60 with T21 and at a fraction of the price.

3/ Tandberg amps, tuners and receivers. Famed for their tape recorders, Tandberg also made some very good (and very expensive new!) amps and tuners etc. From the Huldra gear to the TR2000 series and on to the last high end 3000 kit all very good indeed. Not as ignored as stuff above and going up in value...

4/ ReVox amps, tuners and receivers. Again known mainly for R2R recorders their later high end FM tuners were also always sought after but there are models from the 1970's which are very good performers and can be picked up relatively cheap. Try an A50 integrated amp for a pleasant surprise. 40WPC with very good MM phono stage and will blow an A&R A60 out of the water!

5/ Rogers Ravensbourne, A75 and A100 amps and matching tuners. Very good kit once highly recommended but now rarely heard of... Ravensbrook series was entry level and not as good. Personally I do not recommend their valve kit apart from the very rare top of the range stuff.

6/ Sonab and Scan-Dyna. Mainly the Sonab 4000 series and Scan-Dyna 2400 receiver. Very well regarded in its day and for good reasons.

There's loads more out there of course... short lived manufacturers such as Legend and Monogram who made high ish end gear in the UK for example.. or A&R's 200 series pre-power set up...

What have you got?
 
the Armstrong 600 gear was always a must have for looks alone and it sounds great especially compared to a lot of todays offerings
 
What are the earlier generation of Armstrong tube integrated amps and recievers like? They don’t seem to make much cash. The even earlier chunky mono tube power amps are worth very serious money, but one never hears much about what followed.
 
I have never had the pleasure of trying any Armstrong valved gear. There was a mono radiogram chassis they made as well...
I have a germanium transistor FM tuner which IIRC worked pretty good.
 
I’m sorry there hasn’t been a more positive response as I certainly like the idea of giving usable vintage kit a new lease of life. I suspect of the items you list Tandberg may be the best option as a lot of it had a really iconic Scandinavian style and to my mind seems undervalued. Revox too, but that already carries a collector price tag if in decent condition. Armstrong is interesting too, a company I’ve never had on my radar (I went straght to Quad as a first time buyer).
 
Well it's not forgotten but the B&W 801D is rarely mentioned here. Certainly one of the audio highlights for me way back. Would be interesting to hear it again now and re-evaluate.
 
No one likes any "forgotten" classics then?:confused:
Well, I'm keeping an eye on it!

You needed to hype it a bit I think: your approach was, These forgotten things are actually pretty good. Needed to be: This beats the best of today's stuff going for 100 x the price! Buy now!

From your list, if you were to pick out one thing?
 
Sorry Ark, think I'm too young. I mean I can vaguely remember when Bose used to make speakers out of veneered particleboard with halfway decent drivers that were actually OK as omnidirectional designs went rather than injection moulded plastic tat...but I'm not sure that's what you were going for!
 
Everyone's idea of a classic will be different, but I've developed a liking recently for a range of amplifiers introduced around 1970-72 by Pioneer, Trio and Sansui.
All share a very similar set of circuits, all single rail, all produce 10-15wpc, capacitor coupled outputs. All small form factor and super simple designs using a handful of transistors. These are the Pioneer SA-500(A), Trio KA2000 and Sansui AU222.

My favorite is the 500A. Quiet, runs cool, a good bunch of features and inputs, sounds great. Dead easy to service. Built like (mini) tank.
These little units are easily a match for the low powered vintage tube designs IMO, and what little distortion exists (it's usually around 0.1-0.3% THD) is largely low order stuff just like a good tube amp.

I like to see good performance achieved through frugal, efficient design. For example I admire the little SA-500 more than the SA-9800 monster.....

Great solutions if you have sensitive loudspeakers, like the vintage looks and can solder.
 
Reminds me Robert, I must reclaim the Audio Innovations Alto I lent to a friend for a weekend a couple of years ago... it uses a very similar philosophy, capable of c.25-30w though - and sounds really good, out of all proportion to its simple layout / lack of complexity. SE input, bootstrap, and darlington outputs, that's about all. Rather like an underbiased JLHood class A ( 1969 version) with a small floating ccs to firm-up operating conditions a bit. Similarly beguiling to listen to.
 
Well, I'm keeping an eye on it!

You needed to hype it a bit I think: your approach was, These forgotten things are actually pretty good. Needed to be: This beats the best of today's stuff going for 100 x the price! Buy now!

From your list, if you were to pick out one thing?

Oh I don't go for misplaced hype:)

I'd have to give two from my own quickly compiled list, and they would be, for sheer performance, sound quality and technology, the Tandberg TR-2000 series of receivers.

For unfairly forgotten quotient it would have to be the Armstrong 625 receiver. Available for only £30 -50, I have no idea why one so rarely hears about them.

I can only speculate but audiophiles do seem to be VERY conservative (small c) and prone also to "sheeple" mentality... they seem to like to be told what to buy! But not necessarily by anyone who knows what they're talking about:eek: Hence you get certain products/brands being overly hyped to the exclusion of everything else. They don't even need to be genuinely anywhere near being the best at the price but if a popular reviewer or two hypes something it sells. Have you heard some of the things rated as "best buy", "product of the year" or "Five star rated"?...
This is then remembered and if asked "what secondhand amp in X price range should I get" a boringly predictable list will be given... These products then become worth more, and others, some times much better than the "recommended" ones, will go down in value and obscurity awaits..

This paragraph started originally with me giving a few examples of stuff hugely rated and hyped but, IMHO, nowt special. I decided against it to avoid the thread ending up as just people arguing the worth of some specific make and model.... "I've got one of those and you must be cloth eared if you don't rate it!" etc... So it was deleted:D
 
Reminds me Robert, I must reclaim the Audio Innovations Alto I lent to a friend for a weekend a couple of years ago... it uses a very similar philosophy, capable of c.25-30w though - and sounds really good, out of all proportion to its simple layout / lack of complexity. SE input, bootstrap, and darlington outputs, that's about all. Rather like an underbiased JLHood class A ( 1969 version) with a small floating ccs to firm-up operating conditions a bit. Similarly beguiling to listen to.

Kind of what I am planning for the Leak Stereo 70;)
 
What are the earlier generation of Armstrong tube integrated amps and recievers like? They don’t seem to make much cash. The even earlier chunky mono tube power amps are worth very serious money, but one never hears much about what followed.

Tony,

I had an Armstrong 222 integrated back in the late 70s. It was traded into Canterbury Hi-Fi, where I was the saturday boy for a couple of years; Ken Kessler was my boss. I used it for a while, but personally found it all a bit soft and muddy sounding. When I bought my Quad 22/IIs off KK, the 222 was sold rather pronto.

Charlie
 
Without a doubt there was kit made in the past that in some cases better that which is available today. But there seems to be a lot of rose coloured glasses being worn when it comes to other old kit.

I have seen lots of stuff from the past, some of which I owned, praised to the rafters on here yet I couldn’t wait to move them on.

A couple of examples are a Sugden A48/1 amplifier and Ram 200 speakers. I had a Thorens 150. A terrific deck for the price I paid but the LP12 I bought was clearly far superior.
 
Reminds me Robert, I must reclaim the Audio Innovations Alto I lent to a friend for a weekend a couple of years ago... it uses a very similar philosophy, capable of c.25-30w though - and sounds really good, out of all proportion to its simple layout / lack of complexity. SE input, bootstrap, and darlington outputs, that's about all. Rather like an underbiased JLHood class A ( 1969 version) with a small floating ccs to firm-up operating conditions a bit. Similarly beguiling to listen to.

Yes indeed Martin, and I must confess to reading up on the Alto after discovering just how sweet some of those simple capacitor coupled, single rail amplifiers can sound.
The little 500A couples to the load via 2200uf caps just like the Quad 303. Into ESL57s that's a stable, clean 13w RMS amplifier which couples to the Quads with similar synergy as outlined by Jim in his 303/57 article. Impossible to arc the Quads and no tantrums at clipping. Sounds great.
 
Without a doubt there was kit made in the past that in some cases better that which is available today. But there seems to be a lot of rose coloured glasses being worn when it comes to other old kit.

I have seen lots of stuff from the past, some of which I owned, praised to the rafters on here yet I couldn’t wait to move them on.

A couple of examples are a Sugden A48/1 amplifier and Ram 200 speakers. I had a Thorens 150. A terrific deck for the price I paid but the LP12 I bought was clearly far superior.

I was never suggesting that old kit is generally better than modern kit. However, there will often be an amp from the '70's available for say £50 second-hand which will beat most modern kit up to say £400. The old amp will often have been more like £800 new when converted into "modern money" though!

The old kit most often recommended tends to be pretty predictable though....Leak Stereo 20, A&R A60, NAD 3020, Quad 303 etc. Now these are all undisputedly classics and worthy of their reputation, but all had many rivals at the time which came close to or equalled their performance but which seem to have completely fallen off the radar since. These are often available for a fraction of the price of the "usual suspects"... hence this thread to get some more suggestions from people.
 
I recall that the Armstrong tuner was the “one to lust after”. Can’t remember the model number (62something).

Then there was (in pre-Sondek days) a Goldring-Lenco TT (GL75?).One of my cousins had one; it was the height of cool. Mere mortals like me had to make do with the *cough* legendary Garrard SP25 Mk.3..............
 


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