Still playing with Quad gear after all these years !
- Thread starter Ianp
- Start date
Missed that this was old…
Very much so! A working pair are worth that, serviced should cost a good bit more.
Zombie
pfm Member
Too expensive, Sombetsky charges 250 euros, I think, Quad Germany 285. You can also trade in old shot panels. I bought a bunch cheaply and used them as part payment
Those prices have come right down then, it used to be £500 a speaker as a typical service and repair.
Zombie
pfm Member
You wrote "panels". That's what I was referring to.
Yes it is, and £700 is a great price.
I have a small system upstairs using a 303. I use a small passive rca input selector and a simple passive volume control which I think is very good vfm. I have kept connecting cables as short as possible. Sounds good to me.
Mini Stereo Passive Preamp Amplifier/Computer Speaker Lossless Volume Control | eBay
Has no gain, can match power amplifiers, active speakers and some monitor audio devices very well with lossless sound quality. With high precision adjustment, adopting Japan ALPS27/16 potentiometer. Using pure copper gold-plated RCA for lossless transmission Mini size with exquisite appearance...
www.ebay.co.uk
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
herb
brain's right hemisphere
Pardon my ignorance but why did it matter about the input to the 33? I am not convinced and why did Walker not mention this back in the day? It sounded awful in 1983 as did many CD players in many systems I heard back then. This in a then common 33/303/ESL system.
Tony L
Administrator
It is a level thing. The 33 Radio input was designed for a Quad tuner which output a few hundred mV, a CD player is 2V, so it clips the tuner input resulting in the harshness (distortion) you describe. The work around was to use the Tape input which could, via the screw level settings on the plug in board, be set for the typically higher output of a high-speed reel to reel of the time. This input was far more suited to CD than the Radio ones.
chartz
If it’s broke fix it!
Yes, back then many people didn’t realise how good CD was because of inadequately adapted preamplifiers. Also, cartridges being a bit on the dull side back then, many were shocked when they heard proper, extended bandwidth.
CD was found to sound bad but it wasn’t inherently so. Listening to a first generation player now is painless. Those Philips players are even a bit soft actually! I have several of those: a CD100, a 104, a 202, a 300, a Beogram CDX. They all sound the same, a bit fluffy, even restored, a bit 2D, but boy can they play music.
My turntable sounds a bit brighter, but that’s more the cartridge’s doing.
Quad 33/303/ESL here too.
CD was found to sound bad but it wasn’t inherently so. Listening to a first generation player now is painless. Those Philips players are even a bit soft actually! I have several of those: a CD100, a 104, a 202, a 300, a Beogram CDX. They all sound the same, a bit fluffy, even restored, a bit 2D, but boy can they play music.
My turntable sounds a bit brighter, but that’s more the cartridge’s doing.
Quad 33/303/ESL here too.
Last edited: