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Amazing Troughline, first variant.

First little failure - not serious!

There are two tuning dial lights - tiny little screw-in type bulbs - the likes of which I have never seen before.

One has blown.

If anyone knows what type they are for a Trough-Line first variant, and where new one may be bought, please do let me know.

Thanks from George
 
I guess that they might run on 6.3V, RS Components or Farnell may stock something suitable.

Take one lamp out and see if there are any details on it.

If they are screw in, make sure they have not just come loose.
 
It is a 6.3 volt lamp. Easy to get to, though the holder is easier to take off than take the lamp out in-situ.

RS and Farnell - thanks. I'll replace the pair and buy a spare pair. That should see me - if not the radio - out!

Thanks from George
 
Sunday brought a slight noise to the Trough-Line, and new noises are alarming.

The sound was like the slight surface hiss of an unworn 78 record. Always there and not noticeable except in silences. I suspected some resistor might be breaking down as a first thought - albeit an uninformed guess.

I was not looking forward to having to have the old thing on the repair person's bench. It is my favourite companion these days ...

Well I found the culprit. Not the old tuner at all, but something so simple that it is daft. On Sunday I brought into use another [switched three pin mains] socket in the kitchen for the kettle. I realised that I could hear a faint fifty hertz buzz when it is turned on. Simple solution that worked was to revert to the old socket used and turn off the newly used one.

Thanks be that old radio is firing on all cylinder again. Who would have thought that something so simple as a dicky switch on a mains ring could produce such a result. The job of having a new socket fitted when lockdown eases is much more palatable than the absence of good radio for a fortnight or longer while fault finding and repair went on!

I do have the latest and safest MK [with substantial metal case] consumer unit, fitted only last year [just before the first lockdown], and have every confidence in its safety. Fault finding the sockets after fitting the very sensitive new unit showed just how dodgy some wiring used to be! Apparent the fault on the neutral was there from the start when my place was rewired in the 1990s.

Best wishes from George
 
I have tried like a trooper to get a video [to post on my YouTube channel] to show how nice is the Tough-Line into an ESL and, with a sixteen year old Canon Ixus 750 - cannot stop it being peaky and full of false dynamic correction, ------ so I refrain,


Anyone who wants to hear what late 1950s top-draw tuner could and can still do, would have to visit me while Radio Three is doing its best.

My finale post on PFM was supposed to be about this old and wonderful radio.

To my friends here. Good Bye. George
 
Thanks. Well, seeing a good friend for the first time in over a year yesterday morning, I am now feeling very down. The world has gone mad, and the news is too gloomy to spend very long looking at it. Corrupt government, and it seems they are now so brazen that criticism has no effect, and they just carry on regardless. Covid is not getting any better on the global stage. Seems that Climate Change has been well and truly put on the back-burner. Even football is going into self-destruct mode, though I have zero interest in it. Apparently the powers that be in Cricket want to change the terms for the end of a batsman's innings from fallen wicket or not out.

Work has got my wages wrong and also my P60, which is causing so far insoluble problems ... The weather is nice!

So I'll take a little time out I think. I just want things to become sane again, or more sane.

The Trough-Line does bring some musical magic still. Just about the only pleasure that has not so far been wrecked. I wonder how long before they say Radio Three is too niche and dumb it down ...

Best wishes and keep safe. George
 
Honestly George - the best thing is to largely ignore the 'News'. It is not in the nature of 'News' to report anything nice or happy - those things are not newsworthy. If you ignore the news you may find that most of it is irrelevant to day-to-living, so why stress about it.

Covid has not gone away - but you can now meet with friends and family reasonably well, even if it should be outdoors. We are off to Dorset on a long day trip to see sister and mother this weekend coming - not seen them since a 2 hour lunch last August, and before that Xmas 2019!. Choosing a pub for a nice lunch in the garden.

My local town has several beer gardens open - the pleasure in sitting down for a pint of Landlord (just the one!) on the way back from dog walk on Saturday was very real indeed.
 
I have just found a webpage on a fellow in Canada restoring a first variant Trough-Line - though a very rare late example with the Deco-style facia unlike my slightly earlier pressed metal face-plate.

His observations about the tuner's sensitivity matches my own: Quieting is magnificent, drifting is insignificant, and digging out good quality does not require the use of a huge VHF antenna like some later tuners. His description of the sound is apt in describing it as "crisp" though I would disagree that the result is shy in the bass-lines.

Altogether nice, as his example was also made by John Singer on 2nd April 1958, while the self-same Singer made mine on 18th Nov 1957! Nice that the makers name is put with the date and serial number on a label inside the chassis.

https://sparcradio.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/LeakMk1FMRestoration.pdf

I have now have had the old radio in use, after John Caswell rebuilt it, for over two years. I can say that it is easily the nicest source component I have ever used at home. Much better than my two Trough-Line IIIs [mono variants] or indeed any CD player or turntable.

It does not quite get used daily, as I always make sure that there is something I specifically want to listen to on Radio Three. Occasionally it does duty on Radio Four, but mostly I reserve R4 for a little Sony transistor radio, saving valve hours on the radio and my Quad amp.

The speaker is now five or six years with me since the Huntingdon rebuild, an original ESL also made in 1957. Seeing the threads on Speaker History, and Speaker Holy Grail, my thought is that in my set-up the ESL is my replay grail transducer, and it renders my previous speaker history as valuable experience, but what a shame I would wait most of a lifetime to get where I am with it!

My digital side is still more or less via headphones or a quite nice Sandstroem speaker that accepts USB, Bluetooth and a direct line-in in the analogue domain. Not a patch on the ESL, but full-range and clear. Good enough for recordings.

Best wishes from George.

PS: I cannot make a sensible video of the old radio in use as the microphones in either my mobile phone or my camera are far from fine enough to present the original well ...
 
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Annual update. [Just after the third anniversary of John Caswell's restoration]

One casualty! The Quad II Forty has a failing base under the rectifier valve, So that once it gets warm it goes off! Shift the valve about and it comes back to life. Bloody nuisance. I think Amplabs are at Kempsey, which is not far up the road for me. About half an hour's worth of driving. I have heard good opinions of Amplabs work. Does anyone have any opinion from experience here? I could still take it to Quad HQ at Huntingdon, but is a hundred and thirty-five miles each way, times two as they would certainly want to soak test the amp after a repair. I am less keen than ever on long drives these days, so four times 135 miles is hardly something I would relish.

So the ESL is currently silent, and resting in the other room.

But this means that the Trough-Line is feeding my Sandstrom speaker that does regular duties on DVDs, YouTube, and iTunes. Perhaps it should be no real surprise that it makes the quite inexpensive Sandstrom sound rather fine. If the Leak is not shown up by an ESL, then it probably is just so, but it is curious that comparing the digital feed for Radio Three with the VHF/FM send on the Trough-Line it really is amazing how much finer the now 65 year old radio is! Spoken voice has that natural balance, and without sibilant emphasis. Music is wonderful balanced, and seeming just as detailed as the digital send, but also seeming to be more placed in a hall or studio, as compared to the digital send, which sounds sometimes disembodied.

There is an artificial edge to the digital send that can make sibilants shine too bright on both spoken and sung voice and that is quite wrong. I always assumed that superior quality of the Leak was due to using the ESL, but on the same speaker as my digital side, it becomes blindingly obvious that, at least with this veteran tuner, VHF/FM is still steps ahead of BBC Sounds. I do not mind that VHF does have a degree of compression dynamically. I find that not only useful [in terms of not annoying my neighbours], but also deals well with the simple fact that ambient domestic back-ground noise is obviously more than that that of a good concert hall.

I suppose that to get the digital side optimised I really one day need to get a really first rate DAC. Currently I use the headphone out of my Mac mini, though used to have Audiolab mDAC. To be honest, I don't think the mDAC was discernibly different from what the Mini does with the D to A conversion.

The Trough-Line is surely the equal best piece of replay equipment I have ever had - alongside my ESL.

Best wishes from George

PS: This is the [active] speaker in question:

Sandstrom_SCBTS17_grande.jpg


Fifteen inches wide, and seven and half high and deep. Amazing, and, of course, discontinued.
 
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George,
I have had several Quad Items (303, FM3, 2x44's, 405, FM4, & several years ago a Leak Troughline) serviced by Amplabs, and I recommend Robert Beales (AmpLabs) without hesitation. is a gentleman to deal with, and his charges are quite reasonable.
However, sometimes his work load results in exteded 'turn around times', but I would suggest telephoning him regarding your problem and to ascertain the current situation.
Regards
Mike Kelshaw
 
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I was recently given a Rotel 850AL tuner, so as to make a high quality radio set for the bedroom. I have a pair of miniature Maudant Short speakers and a Denon [full sized] integrated amp.

However I set the newly acquired tuner up on the same front room set as I am using the Trough-Line.

IMG_8547 by George Johnson, on Flickr

It is a truly fascinating comparison. The Rotel is a very fine "bread and butter" tuner that would cause most people to be entirely happy with it. I had one more than a decade ago, and really liked it.

But playing the two side by side on live Radio Three [several times] is giving a clear idea of the fairly small differences [assuming using the Rotel in mono]. They are far more similar than different, and both share a beautiful rounded treble that makes the spoken and sung voice sound natural. The differences that are apparent are in the deep bass as shown up on Choral Evensong and orchestra music. On the orchestra the Rotel manages to be just as clear and convincing as the Trough-Line without being better. While on Choral Evensong the often somewhat distant organ bass is deeper and correctly defined by the older tuner in a way that would not matter unless you heard the difference. Just more real ...

There is another difference, important in these days of mobile phones and WiFi hotspots working on the mobile phone network: The Trough-Line is immune to the comms sounds of a phone making or receiving a call, whereas the Rotel makes them obvious.

As I get and make very few phone calls this is not a big thing, but it is fascinating as the Trough-Line is immune and designed long before mobile phones were a pipe dream.

Also I would say that the back-ground hiss often found in sub-optimal VHF/FM radio is absent on the Trough-Line. Tuning is a act requiring great precision, but on station there is no discernible hiss or fuzz, but the Rotel has something that can be heard on the quietest music.

Of course this is an unfair comparison as they were marketed at different price sectors in their times, but ultimately the Rotel will make a very pleasant quiet listening device, and the Trough-Line could probably live in the very best company [of later years] with the most un-forgiving speakers and amplification even now.

A bit like the ESL, it does make a person wonder how far we have come in sixty years. Of course, relatively speaking, very nice quality is much less expensive than it once was. Even my old Nokia phone gets very fine VHF/FM reception with ear buds.

Best wishes from George
 
Years ago I was lent one of these, or a very similar model, by my local dealer for the weekend. It coincided with a live performance of Porgy and Bess from the BBC which I recorded. Unfortunately this showed the tuner to have very poor pilot tone suppression which caused a beat with the recorder's bias oscillator. I also began to notice it in straight listening - I was much younger then and could hear 19kHz. The Rotel went back and I ultimately bought the Audiolab 8000T when it first came out - a very fine tuner, but in this era of streaming it now sits in a cupboard.
 
It is years since John Casswell rebuilt my Trough-Line, and yet it is a daily faithful servant of music from Radio Three.

Today I decided to play R4's The World At One in posh quality! Yikes, I had forgotten how fine spoken voice can be with a good radio!

I still have not managed to scrape together the necessary spare money to have the Quad II Forty serviced. I am not destitute, but it is more important to pay the basics and have a bit spare for the unforeseen things that happen. So the ESL is still silent, and the Sandstroem seems to show the old mantra of source first is not entirely wrong, if you cannot keep the quality of the source right through the chain.

One thing that continues to surprise is that the Trough-Line has a lovely balance with bright qualities for the percussion in music all the way down to the profound organ pedals, but such a quiet noise ratio that at reasonable levels it it seems not obviously inferior to a digital recording on CD. Quite an achievement for a now sixty-six year old wireless.

Best wishes from George
 
George J said:
Today I collected a Troughline of the first version [ie. prior to the Troughline II, III etc].

Here is a link to my Flickr page. Hope that works:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/146183770@N06/with/46578917072/

More in a follow up post.

ATB from George
Click to expand...
Five years on the Trough-Line is still used daily, and is just as fine as ever.

It is one of those remarkable source components that is only impressive if listen for it. Otherwise it is the least conspicuous piece of replay equipment that I ever had. Just splendid and no need to show off.

It does have a couple of foibles. Firstly it needs to be very precisely tuned, and this is easy given the low gearing of the tuning control compared to the variable capacitor bank. Once tuned it is stable. The only time I tune it is changing back and forward from BBC R£ and R4. Secondly it really does not like the power supply in my 2012 Mac mini. If the computer is on it ruins the background silence of the tuner to a degree to spoil quiet parts of the music, even if it does not tend to matter on Radio Four.

Any that is a quick update. I still have the single ESL and Quad II Forty amplifier, which was recently fixed for a dry joint on the rectifier valve base. Otherwise it has been faultless for seven years since I moved here. Before that I had a few issues with damage from valve faults, but Quad HQ at Huntingdon sorted that out for me very nicely.

Best wishes from George
 
Well after all this time, I have managed to catch the Radio set really doing its best on a live broadcast. Only three minutes of music, being the Coda to Haydn's Oratorio, "Creation."

I tend to listen in subdued light, so the picture won't make much sense, but as the applause and final announcement come along you get the sense of occasion very well.

What you get here is a sense of the clear but full choral sound of a top flight choir and the balance of an orchestra on top of it game. Most speakers really cannot deal well with massed choirs, and have a peculiar sort of false emphasis on the upper partials, and while this is not apparent on the ESL, the result is as bright as a natural button. Hardly steam age radio reproduction for sure. The sense of scale [even in mono] is palpable, and only the iPhone doing a bit of occasional compression really compromises the effect.


The music means a huge amount too me. I have played it in orchestras almost as often as Messiah, and it was my last paid performance in the orchestra for the Birminghamm Festival Choral Society.

I hope those who can stomach an eighteenth century oratory will enjoy it as music making, and others may simply be surprised at the natural weightiness of a single sixty seven year old ESL.

Best wishes from George
 
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