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Quad current dumping amplifiers

Robert said:
Didn't know that - had an old Teleton as a kid. I remember a wooden sleeve, square silver pushbuttons and sliders :)
Oh and ceramic as well as magnetic phono inputs.
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Teleton GA-202 possibly. Somewhere I have a 70's test on budget amps, the GA-202 came out very well despite it's very low price.

From memory, I think Teleton rated the GA-202 at 15 W RMS per channel. On test it gave something like 20 W RMS per channel and distortion was very low compared with other amps tested (including a Pioneer).

Teleton seemed to underrate their amps on power quite often.

Pic of GA-202 ( I preferred the look of the SAQ206B) on top of a Sanyo tuner-amp:

http://images2.hiboox.com/images/4108/b7fd65312064125e3fcc16898bf38748.jpg
 
By co-incidence, I have 'upgrading' a friends 405-2 this morning, putting in proper speaker binding posts / banana sockets in it is it.

DS
 
One of my best customers has continued to enjoy his passion for buying hifi he could not afford when young and has just bought a 33/303/FM3. He is bringing it over on Friday to setup/try out. I have a pair of ESL57s that we will try them with so it should be a fun day. Most likely the amps will need servicing. I am fine to recap them but Quad amps are out of my comfort zone. From reading the above and particularly in combo with my 57s it seems like for like replacement, at least in uF and voltage rating, seems the thing to do.

Do Quad still service these as it seems their pricing is much cheaper than the likes of Naim?

Thanks
CJ
 
CJ1045 said:
One of my best customers has continued to enjoy his passion for buying hifi he could not afford when young and has just bought a 33/303/FM3. He is bringing it over on Friday to setup/try out. I have a pair of ESL57s that we will try them with so it should be a fun day. Most likely the amps will need servicing. I am fine to recap them but Quad amps are out of my comfort zone. From reading the above and particularly in combo with my 57s it seems like for like replacement, at least in uF and voltage rating, seems the thing to do.

Do Quad still service these as it seems their pricing is much cheaper than the likes of Naim?

Thanks
CJ
Click to expand...

Quad still service 303's
 
CJ1045 said:
One of my best customers has continued to enjoy his passion for buying hifi he could not afford when young and has just bought a 33/303/FM3. He is bringing it over on Friday to setup/try out. I have a pair of ESL57s that we will try them with so it should be a fun day. Most likely the amps will need servicing. I am fine to recap them but Quad amps are out of my comfort zone. From reading the above and particularly in combo with my 57s it seems like for like replacement, at least in uF and voltage rating, seems the thing to do.

Do Quad still service these as it seems their pricing is much cheaper than the likes of Naim?

Thanks
CJ
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Netaudio do good kits for servicing/upgrading the 303. just reading the website will give you most of what you need.

Quad service department are alive and well.
 
CJ, recap and bias setting is really easy, these amps were designed for long service life and working on them is a doddle. Can send you a copy of the service manual (or you can find it on the internet).

There is a bloke on ebay who sells cap kits at quite reasonable prices - replace amp board electrolytics with ELNA "ROD" Stargets, output _caps_ with 10000uF 63V BCs (current wisdom would also bypass them with films around 0.1uF), power supply electrolytics with 4700uF 80V+.

Have also recapped a 33 with Stargets, still does the classic 33 "puffy clouds of music" thing but a lot more accurate with it.
 
Radfordman said:
Teleton GA-202 possibly. Somewhere I have a 70's test on budget amps, the GA-202 came out very well despite it's very low price.

From memory, I think Teleton rated the GA-202 at 15 W RMS per channel. On test it gave something like 20 W RMS per channel and distortion was very low compared with other amps tested (including a Pioneer).

Teleton seemed to underrate their amps on power quite often.

Pic of GA-202 ( I preferred the look of the SAQ206B) on top of a Sanyo tuner-amp:

http://images2.hiboox.com/images/4108/b7fd65312064125e3fcc16898bf38748.jpg
Click to expand...

That's the one! :)

Ah..... memories...... ;)
 
Dowser said:
Radfordman - I think full pictures of your house/audio museum are required :)

Richard
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Stuff distributed through two houses in several rooms - a mess. I have more speakers than anything else, but still a fair amount of amps, tuners, cassette decks, turntables and two reel to reels (only Akai 4000 DS II and GX4000DB).

The speakers I have already listed, some amps are:

Williamson with Rogers pre amp built in the Rogers factory (early days)
Rogers Master (EL34) power and pre amp
Rogers Cadet III
Radford STA25 III/ SC22
Radford ZD50
Radford SPA50
Quad II/22
Quad 405-2
Quad 303 x4
Quad 33
Quad 44
EMI 1515
Technics SU-V303
Luxman L-200
Pioneer SA-410 x 2
A&R Cambridge A60 x3
NAD 3130
Albany House AM208 (virtually same as Teleton SAQ206B)
Leak stereo 70 x2
Leak Stereo 30 x3
Several Japanese tuner amps as well, nothing special
 
Just an update. I sent the 405-2 back and got a refund so I'm still none the wiser about the sound. However, I've decided that I don't like the lack an on/off switch. Currently trying to decide between a 306 and a 606 and a suitably neutral preamp.
 
mudlark said:
I have tried a 32.5 into both 405 and 405-2. The connection requires a special cable as the 4pin DIN naim is a different arrangement to the 4pin Quad.

The standard 405 is too noisy and has too high a gain for a 32.5, but my altered 405-2 with reduced input gain works OK. these comments are about the system connected to quite high sensitivity speakers.
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(sorry, been away from this thread for a while).

Was aware of the different interconnect requirement; wasn't aware of the gain 'feature', thanks for the heads-up. At least it can be addressed. I'll keep my eyes peeled for a bargain 303. could be looking a while, though.

cheers
 
Hi, im quite new to the forum and have read through the quad threads with great interest and i am surprised in the popularity and was wondering if there would be any interest in a bit of a different take on the 303's where as they would be modified and updated according to the different upgrades that are available but they would be sprayed matt or satin black including the face plate that will look similar to the net audio one with the new binding posts, phono sockets on/off switch etc.

regards

chris
 
reddish75 said:
Hi, im quite new to the forum and have read through the quad threads with great interest and i am surprised in the popularity and was wondering if there would be any interest in a bit of a different take on the 303's where as they would be modified and updated according to the different upgrades that are available but they would be sprayed matt or satin black including the face plate that will look similar to the net audio one with the new binding posts, phono sockets on/off switch etc.

regards

chris
Click to expand...
most people's attitude falls into three camps.

1. those that want the amps original.
2. those that like the looks , but enjoy adding useful bits that make them more usable in the era of phono connections.
3. those that like to pimp them up.

i fall, as you may have guessed, into the middle group. the third group are possibly 1% of the total quad 303 users.

i have seen chromed 303s and quad2s. In my considered opinion these people should be strung up by their nadgers.

A great part of the joy of early quad stuff is their looks are clearly 50s/60s/70s , but they all possess some degree of timelessness.

At the end of the day there were thousands made and having fun trying different colours isn't actually a crime against history. All i would ask you to do is mess with scruffy examples rather than with A1 examples.
 
I'm for originality... on the outside at least. The old Quad gear generally has very clever industrial design - pimping them up would be equivalent to tarting up an original Apple iMac - or like turning a rolls Royce into a street rod.

That of course begs the question... what is the audio equivalent of a Ford Cortina?
 
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