Planetarium

 .

 

 

so Justin talked us into doing this again... he did not have to twist our arms too hard.. it is a truly wonderful and special thing... a few people told me it was one of the best experiences of their lives - and one said THE best day of their life... seriously!

 

 

bring everything you need to get comfy... lie down... eye mask on... lights off... and set off on a journey.. see where and when it takes you... you truly never know... 

 

beginning of setup

 

nearly there

serious and deep gratitude to the performers and attendees... Aurora Hilal and Rena and Arji and Laraaji.. and Justin!  "it takes a village".. oh, and Joey Llanos for being the muscle during load in... when he was at Paradise Garage, at least the system did not have to be moved for each event! 

 

the system was all silver EM/IA... sounded insane... a big room can just be magic sometimes... giant and effortless... and even with Aurora's bass bombs hitting over 105dB at the back of the room, we used the globe 50 tubes.. two watts per channel... yep.. two watts.....

 

Gaia front

note slots where the six 18" subs exit at floor 

 

 

rear

 

close up of components

 

we even snuck in The Manipulator (EQ)

 

and two Garrard 301's in our plinths with Schick arms and Dave tampered Denon cartridges

 

if you have two turntables, then you obviously need two silver moving coil transformers and two silver RIAA Correctors

 

 

you know, we wanted to use the original 300B's that we have, but the globe 50 just sounded better

 

so... two watts per channel.. spend money on speaker power... overkill is your friend with speakers.. but amplifiers?  the laws of physics say that it is just easier and cheaper to make a high quality low powered amplifier when compared to a high powered amplifier.. to me, this makes sense - a loudspeaker only passes along what it is being fed.. so feed it nickel and triodes!  and make crazy efficient speakers that allow for beautiful small amplifiers... 

 

and then the deep listening session was over... Larraji and Arji sent us on our way on Sunday morning.. they are wonderful.. I just smile knowing that they are out there in the world, laughing all the way... 

peace,

me
 

 

 

Denuding a 103….Texas Style

 in dallas for the southwest audiofest and had to do some work on a 103 with the tools at hand.

anyone ever seen one of these?

This looks like a 71A in a 50 bottle from the front and becomes a completely different beast when you move to the side.  

 

More Teasin'

can one ever have enough 80% nickel? 

which one arrived first?

 Sun Ra did not use the term "birthday" - he referred to "arrival day"... 

so which of the following "arrived" first?

the Western Electric 555...

or Marshall Allen?

the answer below the scroll..

Marshall Allen arrived first! ... in 1924... 

the first 555 drivers were made in the BTL lab in 1926....

fwiw, the two go well together... 

(and see, Iain, I can post!)

peace,

me

(the other one)

work in progress tease

 something that is creeping from the back of my mind into reality....  more to come (and at the rate we add content here....)

Why nickel is so yummy.

 Here is a simple set of low frequency plots of steel (red) vs. nickel (blue) with applied signal levels.

This clearly shows that for low level low frequency information retrieval, steel takes a certain amount of energy to "turn on".

Sequerra Auction

 Up for auction is the last system Dick Sequerra built and was listening to when he passed away a year ago.   No connection other than he was a friend and I am trying to help the estate.  Please spread the word.

https://www.auctionninja.com/hamilton-grp/sales/details/sequerra-audio-system-stamford-home-furnishings-collectibles-more-16.html?Page=1#items

Your Brain on Reggae

 Matisyahu.  Born Jewish... rebelled... followed phish.... found reggae... became Hasidic...  released "Youth".... went off my radar.... just resurfaced to me...

My favorite line of his came in an interview asking if he had ever performed on the Sabbath.  His response was along the lines  that he did a show on a Friday night in Alaska.  He then added since it was summer, technically the sun never went down.

Happy Birthday!

 

Twenty-seven years ago today this little 8lb 14oz baby was born.

Dick Sequerra's last speaker.

 Here is a cell phone pic of what Dick was working on before he passed last fall. 

fry baby fry

 A friend asked me the best way to use his Hagerman Fry Baby  to burn in his tonearm cables.  After a few minutes of thought I figured an old denon 103 body would be a safe approach since it will secure the delicate cartridge wires in place and greatly reduce the chances of a possible "Oops" 

I had the thought to put the plastic body back on but we all know that denuded 103's sound better.

Herculean DIY Autoformer wiring.

 They say a picture is worth 1000 words... well how about how about around 180 wires and 820 solder connections?  Brad from the Boston contingency wired 6 of the 28 position autoformers up for Caroll's home theater system.  I often joke that more than half of the $200 autoformers I have sold sit partially wired in a box on a shelf and this picture might explain why.

blink blink blink

 I mentioned the Feral Eye a number of years ago and the fate it met from Hurricane Sandy.  It  was brought back to life by steve berger as a PP 10 amp with a 49% nickel phase splitter and last night I got to hear it with a quad of mesh 10's from 1929.  

I'll be he first to admit that historically  I have not been a fan of either push pull or 10's and these days my daily drives are PP 300B's direct feeding stacked quad 57's and last night has me considering revisiting the 10.

The days events were to listen to cartridge variations and the mesh came in at the end of the evening as a treat for a hard days work.

Another Early Strain Gauge

 I came across this cart on the 'bay and it is from an Admial 6F10

One interesting thing about it is the way the cantilever and stylus appear to be formed from a single piece of bent metal.

The other quirk is that it has three terminals with rather high resistances.

The end to end resistance is 150kΩ and the center pin is 100kΩ and  50kΩ to the outers. "Tweaking" the stylus makes the resistance change by 1-10kΩ+ so it really seems to be a strain gauge  and with a date of "Pre-1952" that would make it an early one.  The idea that the three terminals all seem to be connected to gauges has me puzzled an I haven't fully digested the schematic so have at it.

Autoformer Frequency Response

 Had a customer ask for details about the frequency response of the autoformers and while I honestly believe a picture is worth 1000 words,  I'll add a few comments.  My general statement about the high frequency behavior is they behave to 100kHz without the need of any sort of loading network.  I like to show plots that cover the areas where a device misbehaves so a pattern of behavior can be identified.  Lots of people will just show a random well behaved sweep and call the device perfect.  I want you to see the squirrels.  Unfortunately plotting around 50 steps in 1dB increments creates an incredible mess so I picked a random sampling to get these plots.

Around 20 years ago I showed a similar set of plots from a step up transformer to Frank Schröder and he commented how the behavior was unacceptable @ 20kHz to which I replied "check the scale" at which point he realized he read 200kHz as 20kHz and his opinion changed. 

The other set of plots that shows important behavior involve the low frequency end of the spectrum and for this it helps to pick the worst case scenario with the +7dB gain setting of the remote autoformer.

The above plot shows the +7dB setting driven from 100Ω, 500Ω, 750Ω, 1000Ω and 1500Ω.  This represents the worst case situation for the low frequency response an with a 1500Ω source the -1dB @ 20Hz is borderline.  It is also interesting to see how the top end extension is also compromised in the +7dB position with the 1500Ω source but if you then move down to the +4dB position things look better and from unity and below all is well. I could have simply showed the Red sweep above from 20Hz-100kHz and called the device perfect but alas perfect transformers do not exist.

Unsafe At Any Speed

Apologies in advance to Ralph Nader for a wee bit of appropriation.