Pete's Audio Adventure

Hifi and nostalgia, I honestly wouldn't know where to start, have always loved and had music in my life so hifi in some shape or form was always there and it didn't take me long to be drawn to kit, drooling over all manner of stuf that was unobtainable to a regular young wide eyed lad, from very humble beginnings/background.

Music made life great, made me feel alive, hifi made me dream. I told myself that when I got older I'd have a system/set up and I've had something to play my tunes on, pretty much since my teenage years.

When lady Gong and I got together and then bought the house we've currently been in for the past 21 years, I vowed at the time that I would have and put together a proper decent system, and here I am, still at it haven't done too bad so far, not done yet - Hifi and music will be a part of me til my very last day on this here particular physical plain and realm   

Yep, and Daley Thompson track and field, all based around how quickly you can bang 2 keys on that rubber keyboard.  

Thinking back to my first proper system and how great it was, and how much enjoyment it gave me.

THE SR222 Mk2 was a great lump of blackness with a perspex dust cover, very un-Danette like. To show it was real hifi you had to manually put the stylus on the record and manually lift the arm at the end of the record, singles were great, LPs were better. The way the Sansui A60 jumped into life with its flashing LED levels, and the velcro just didn't quite hold the foam onto the front of the AR18s. Fantastic stuff. 

One or two of my mates had a 'hifi' system and record swapping became the norm.

Then I went to university, should I take my hifi or leave it at home. I thought leave it, I had heard about all the goings on at university and hifi should not be involved. So there I was, going away to live with a lot of future mates, leaving all my music behind, having instead a Saisho personal tape player, walkman type thing, but it was massive, you would need those spanner trousers if it was to fit in a pocket. To this I had wired up a pair of car speakers. This with a box of cassettes was all I needed!

Course, when you get there a few people have hifi so it crept down at some point. When I was in a Hall of Residence that time of the evening when everyone was listening to different music was quite memorable. Sitting on a window sill, window open, advertising your favourite sounds.

And there was some weird stuff there. I remember some guy, with a Catweazle beard, who had a record deck that automatically worked out where to drop the arm between tracks, you could tell it track 3 by pressing the 3 button, and it crused across and completely failed to find track 3. Seems it had a laser or something else that did not work, to always play the exact track you had not chosen to hear.

Then the guy who made his own speakers. So large they seem to be made out of doors. Crammed into his tiny room, hardly space left for a bed, no chance to get a desk in, and you needed a desk for your Sinclair Spectrum, to play Manic Miner! Posh students had a BBC micro, one lad from far away- Jersey- had an Atari, wow - not hifi related though so no space for it here.

Back home my brother was working in an electrical shop and flying through different hifi stuff, which led to my next upgrade, A60 to NAD 3020A, bought second hand from him, probably bit of a sideways move. Looked the part though and great little thud through the speakers when turning it on, I remember it vividly, as I still have it upstairs connected to a Dual CS505, with Ortofon 10 cartridge, classic early 80s system.

Holiday jobs paid of the debts, debts no where near todays levels. Remember student grants and no course fees. I even had a little money left for further upgrades, and as I left university I had replaced the lot and had a Systemdek 11x manual, again with the Nagoka MP11, this time with a boron cantilever, the NAD 3020A and a pair of monitor audio 352s, balanced on Linn Kan stands, which were left over from the AR18s. This was sounding much more serious to my ears. Great for parties. Selling my CT200 to a mate gave me funds to buy an Aiwa AD-F660, from my brothers shop, I think I go a pretty special deal that day. This was an amazing machine. I never really knew how amazing it was for a tape deck. I used it up until about 10 years ago, when it suddenly stopped working, and no one was using cassettes so I threw it away!! if only, but we have all done things like that we regret.

Great Installment.

NAD get some stick, but I've never heard something NAD that I didn't like.

Well they aren't considered any better than what you can buy in Richer sounds, but they are really enjoyable bits IME.

Hahaha, "The Dark Side"

These days that's Solidstate and digital.

How times change!

You completely hit the nail on the head there. Instead of listening to what you wanted to, it could become fatiguing, or disappointing and had to go back to the good sounding stuff to check that the stylus was ok, or something had not gone wrong with the set up.

I never got into the Linn Naim Flat Earth dark side.

I remember going to a Naim dem, they played the rhythmic rock thing and it sounded fabulous.
I was reaching for my credit card but I then asked the dem guy to play some classical and the sound just fell apart, it was literally laughable. I could hear exactly how the sound was being manipulated to make rock music sound impressive. It made a concert grand piano sound remarkably like a honky tonk upright. The frequency response was all over the place, but dynamic and imaging colourations were obvious, too.

So, yes, absolutely it took you down the road of a very specific genre and some other types of music just didn't work at all.

Now, if you have gone to the 'dark' side with a LP12, where else is there for you to go.

Do you return or go further, and further down the seductive path.

Heady on the the influence of hifi shows and linn demos, in a weak moment I was distracted by an advert in Radfords window. Ex-dem equipment for sale. I had to investigate so in I went. Within no time I was listening to Naim 90/92. through a pair of Intros. Sounding pretty good I thought. Loads of detail, lots of life and another salesman hopping from one foot to the other. the sound was too much for him, he just couldn't keep still. It was a live sound, great with my sony cd player. I had not mentioned this before, but think I must had picked it up in 1986, Sony CDP something or other. It was convenient, and the future of music. I had started to buy the odd CD for about double the price of vinyl. The cheapest place was a Radio Rentals - remember them. I just checked the price on Kiss me, Kiss me, kiss me, by The Cure. It was £11-99. in 1987. I see my vinyl version, with the orange vinyl bonus 12" can now go for up to £200! 

back to the system... the black Intros have generally been described as coffins, but I continued to enjoy the music. Second hand vinyl was cheap in the early 2000s, new vinyl was expensive, but I still bought it!

I was now at an early 2000s peak system of LP12, Naim 90/92, Naim Intros. Only to be bettered a few years later with a Naim Flatcap power supply, all piled onto my target rack. All was great, for a few years, then I needed a new cartridge.

Tough crowd, Pete.

Naim isn't a brand that seems to be popular here, unless you nip over to Pink Fish Media.

It's mega popular there.

Pete, are you being enticed into listening to other brands when you forums?

I would list it here anyway. We had someone join specifically to buy some bits off a member, so the same could happen again.

Sorry missed out the word 'read', my fingers are not as fast as my brain, not much is really  

My Naim kit was stolen in transit from the uk to Thailand, that's one way to get rid of it, have you got anything in mind or would you rather keep it under your hat at present?

At the start of the noughties I didn't realise that it was peak time for buying second hand vinyl. Who would have thought that it would rise again as the media of audiophile choice, or at least something that looks good on the wall.  Even though I bought some great stuff second hand then, I think back to all the other great bargains that I passed on. I remember a complete collection of 70s Pink Floyd, in excellent condition for £20. I bagged a mint first press of Stand Up by Jethro Tull, with the pop up sleeve, for a couple of quid. Beatles vinyl was always collectable, but I rarely paid in more that £10 for rarities.  When I look at the value of stuff from the 80s that was pence then, now is £20-£30.  Second hand bargains are still to be found, but then, everything was a bargain. Looking at pressings from the late 90s and early 2000, they are massive money now. I ended up selling all my early Oasis,  because the sound quality was so poor, and I didn't listen to them, for a stupid amount of money.

I was mainly focussing on listening to music and enjoying, after a tough day at work. By 2010 a mate of mine had been having a conversation about Jukeboxes with me, one night after too many beers... ! What resulted was both of us travelling up the M5, in his knackered van, to collect the Bal Ami G80, in need of restoration. We hadn't though how heavy a 1950s Jukebox is. The bloke selling it pleaded injury, so Mike and I did our best, but it was stupid heavy. That group of young lads could never of dreamed that they would be shouted at by some mad bloke to come and help lift a massive jukebox into his van.  I couldn't believe that they just joined in and had a go. After no injured fingers (unbelievable) and only a few bashes of shins it was hauled into the back of his van to rest comfortably, on a blanket, for the journey home.  And when I got it home, with the help of a couple of neighbours, we got it into the house - I quickly discovered the casters were knackered. So there it was, sitting quietly, just being a light, when the wife came home!! Couldn't really disguise it.

Over months I got to understand the manual and got my self organised to get it working. Rewiring and cleaning ensued, I had a go at coaxing all of it to life, but passed the valve amp onto some guy to have a go at. He was amazing, bringing this rusty 1955 hulk back to full value gloriousness. After 6 months is was all back together. Not looking mint, but looking the best part of 60 years old, with 60 years of patination, just like it should be. Fantastic thing. On the front, across the glass, it shouts 'Multi Horn Hi-fidelity' in red lettering. It has horn speakers, and in its day, it was the pinnacle of hi-fidelity. It goes bloody loud, from about a 20W amp, and it sounds amazing.