Prime Time

I had the good fortune to meet and photograph Prime for the current NFL Sunday ticket campaign.  Everyone involved in the project just seemed to get it and things went so smoothly, I actually switched my TV service back to satellite.

I thankfully survived the hurricane without issues and it was a non-event for me.  I do find some of the sympathy mass emails of goodwill a little too self serving.

DTV cared

My bank also cared.

I could go on about the virtual support offered by the man but I would rather suggest they send people rather than email out to actually help.  Sadly, the folks sent out would be unpaid interns armed with silver spoons to clean up this mess suffered by a fellow audio junkie.

Wire

A delivery truck left this sitting in the middle of my driveway.

It was 120 pounds of copper on two spools.

For scale, here is a single 10 pound spool

The scary part is in a week the wire will be gone and all we will have to show for it is 8 field coil compression drivers.

On another note, in my attempt to win "father of the year" I recently took the boys to see grandma in Wisconsin.  The oldest was dead tired on the return and was falling asleep on anything he could.  We were on one of the moving walkways and he was asleep.  As we neared the end I had two choices.  Wake him or film it.

Dang it, Mayer!

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I had all these tube box pictures lined up for a rainy day and you go and start a tube box blog thread!!... dang it!... AND you start with the best ever, the RCA world boxes.... double dang it! ok... ok... you win... but here is one I like...




I actually really like their classic logo as seen at the bottom... the "Heintz_HK_Kaufman"... very classic.. but this wild electric HK and Gammatron in black, white, and orange is just phenomenal... one of my favorites...

an affordable field coil driver?

we all know the economy of scale and that the title of the post is an oxymoron.  Since we are a bit slow on the uptake and always love a challenge here are a few pics of an oem driver that will be on the AASOA table at RMAF.

Summer Vacation....

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school has started back... so productivity has picked up again... but I already miss summer... I like summer.. who doesn't? but the crazy memphis heat and humidity does eventually get to you.. the kids get a little stir crazy.. so we have taken to crashing at Lenny's under the guise of "working on his HiFi".. really just getting up in altitude.. dropping twenty to forty degrees.. and getting in some porch time..

so how about a few pictures?

JP, my youngest, chillin' on a rock...



the HiFi we were working on... this is the "social system"... it has to sound good in the kitchen, in the living room, and most importantly, on the porch!

amp tweaking was actually easy.. it turns out the driver stage in his PT Barnum amp could not even clip the output stage, so a quick change and it actually sounded dynamic.. before the changes the volume knob acted a bit more like a compressor/tone control... ahh.. much better now..



there was a lot of talk about gardens.. but God's gardens just can't be bettered:



on teh way to the best hikes.. probably around 5000 feet...



yep.. so a crazy setup until you think it through.... Altec 416 in a big cabinet... original Goto cast horn and Goto alnico 555 (their first product) in conga drum shells up firing... time alignment was actually pretty close.. I measured all of this stuff... and TAD 4001's, with rear covers removed and domes up firing as tweeters..



and more of one of the hikes.. what I once again wish I could convey over a computer is the smell... man, oh man!



when we first set it up, it just was not really blending well.. so I asked for some scrap cardboard to try out some reflectors... this is what I got in return! probably should not show Goto-San... or maybe he would share a cold PBR on the porch with us? do you think he would dig the Richard Johnston and Elmore James?



and what a swimming hole! waterfall.. cold refreshing water.. just perfect... far from the 105 with ninety percent humidity that is Memphis... far, far away...



now back to work... with Elmore James in my brain!

Peace,
Me

Special K

Lets start at the beginning and a cool pic from one of Papa's trips to Korea

It just kills me how small that 16A in the background looks which just goes to show how insane this system is.   The owner of the system is Mr. K who happens to run a very large Korean cable manufacturer.  The reason this is important is because when the pair of silver autoformers were put in the new silbatone silver signature 300B (come to RMAF and hear it) it became clear that more silver wire that I had on hand was needed.

As it turns out, about a year ago  Mr. K's company bought one of the larger US magnet wire manufacturers and the request was made.  Unfortunately they could not produce the wire but a few days later I was told 5 kilos of silver was headed my way from a third party with help from K.

This box showed up the other day via ground service on the big brown truck.  The funniest part of it was no signature was required and it was sitting on my doorstep with this sticker clearly placed on the outside of the box.

Only in Korea kids.  Only in Korea.

ZEN I/V

Van Halen called the other day and said it was time for transformer zen.

 

The back story is covered on my forum and gasp... it uses those three legged sand devices.

At least this approach gets some capacitors out of the picture and takes advantage of AC summing and DC offsetting so stay tuned.

Music.

No audiophile BS here,  just some boob-toob videos and some fun.  JJ sent me a link to the video below and while it is all warm and fuzzy it isn't growing on me yet.



as I clicked on this, something else was spinning in the background that had much more power and meaning to me so I went to the boob to watch the video. 




then the rabbit hole hit me with one of the first songs that HIT me with lyrics and music and made me happy about the future.



Now one that brings me to tears about the past.



and one final one... boob tube is now commercial so apologies if there is an ad.

Robert's rules of order.

The boys were reading their bedtime books and the younger one was out.  I challenged the older one to quiz me on his new star wars book.  I was humbled when the guy who wore the brown hood wasn't obi wan.  I was perplexed when it wasn't lord vader with the black hood.  I quickly looked for revisionist history and the lack of official info in the front of the book had me thinking Rod Serling would be stepping out with an unfiltered camel in hand to bring things back to reality.

Fortunately, legos can only be manipulated in positive ways so I present you the $100  armrest from the land of...

What are these?

Every once in a while you need to do something different so I spun these upon request for a friend.  Some of you might be saying crossover inductors, others that know me better may be thinking super tweeter field coil or cartridge electromagnet.  Maybe showing the rest of the parts will let you in on the secret.

All joking aside, here they are assembled and ready to be installed under the cathode of a filament biased 104D. 

We should be able to listen to them this weekend in the land of walter and I will report back.  With an amp of current they drop 6.2V and hit a whopping temperature of 170F.  Funny thing is the first pair got so hot the bondcoat on the wire cut loose which is why a bit of aluminum and brass heatsinking was used.

Just when I had cleared some space in the shop....

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these crates arrived... but I am honestly very excited. It is extremely difficult to find a professional cabinet maker these days. This guy worked form my CAD drawings.. sent revisions... stain samples... can use whatever wood I specify.. timely.. just totally professional...


these were made to be "espresso".. always yummy in my book... and the wood is super high quality birch... very low voids... pre-veneered so that the veneer never peels away..


the corners are all mitered at 45's on a CNC so that it all fits together perfectly and the grain wraps around the cabinet.. a super nice touch...

bracing is set in with dado joints... very stiff and strong... all in all, I am very pleased...


oh, what goes in it? yes, I guess I should mention that.. basically just a generic woofer cabinet... designed around the Altec 604 and the Altec 416... these guys make great bass in all but the largest rooms... and some people just do not want nine foot straight basshorns... finally a nice option...

finished photos and plots soon...

Me

The First Strain Gauge?

On a recent trip to NYC, Frank (the guy who suspends a broomstick from a piece of fishing line and calls it a tonearm) brought me a very special gift from the Pfanstiehl Chemical Company of Waukegan, Illinois.  Inside this box is to date the earliest sample I have seen of a strain gauge phono cartridge and matching power supply.

For one year in 1946 Capehart used a Pfanstiehl strain gauge cartridge in one of their high end 78 record changers before switching to a GE variable reluctance cartridge.

Since the phan-Tone is a flip-over cartridge (with two individual gauges) that can play both 78's and 33/45's it must date a few years after the Capehart misfire so there still may be earlier ones out there.   This one is still a very cool vintage mono cartridge with a sapphire stylus on either side that tracks at a mere 7 grams and I want to thank my brother for the wonderful gift.

Western Electric 9A Receiver

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no.. not really like the NAD, Pioneer, or even Marantz receivers from back in the day... this one is WAY older...


super thanks to my friends from the "other South" for this fine specimen to scan and model... it really helps in getting it *just* right...


so what material do you think we should use? Bronze? Bronze sounds good, right? and this piece has to be strong - so Aluminum will just not do... and steel is out because it really should be non-magnetic when this close to the driver.. so, yeah.. let's cast this beautiful object in Bronze..


which gives away what I was doing in Hope, Arkansas at the Klipsch Museum.. taking some detailed measurements... PWK had one of these, too...


Peace,
Me

My Aida

 I love honest passion.

The audiophile nearfield version.

It rocked to Boston... or was it Journey... I get confused.

Apparently the "reallyreal deal" took too many D cells and was a bear to carry so we heard the box in the first pic with LED's pegged as a compromise.

At least one passionate person got it.

He inspired me.