Listening at Golden Age Audio

Last night at Duc’s we had a great evening, visitors included Dave T, Peter N, Peter C, Bryan, Paul, Lou and many more (maybe because of the delicious barbie provided.

Equipment used and on display included: Commonwealth, Garrard 401, Denon and other turntables, Duc’s own arm with a Denon103 in his wood case, and the good sounding EL34 amp originally built by Lucas Cant and upgraded by Duc, and the well known Altec speakers that now use dual 604 bass drivers and 803 horns. Super tweeter as expected was the JBL slot.

Last posts before Christmas?

Wishing all a happy Christmas and an audio new year.

I will be seeing a few people with equipment to demonstrate and sell over the next 2 weeks, hoping to hear a Continuum turnatable on Friday, as well as some interesting speakers.

AVAILABLE:

One only JBL 2470 inc spare aftermarket diaphragms

One Altec 807 8A HF driver, no horn

Gausss 60×120 horns.

Altec 805/288 and Celestion

The desirable Altec compression driver and horn, matched to 18″ Celestions crossing ove at 500Hz. In the centre of the picture you can see the EV crossover and Yamaha 4 channel amp. The speakers (without crossover) are $3000, crossover and amp an extra $500, or we have original Altec crossovers, designed for 8 Ohm drivers at $290.
The Altec 288 is the 16 Ohm original.
Ideal for low power and single ended amplifiers.

More on the Melbourne Audio Club 17 March meeting

Mohan and members of the Audio Guild (Lowther club) demonstrated some of the best sounding equipment we’ve heard recently. Duc’s Commonwealth turntable with Reed arm and Zyx Airy cartridge sounded great using Duc’s Valve phono stage and 2A3 SET amp (2W).
Altec 15″ 416Bs in Onken cabinets, mids Altec 288c with 1005 multicellular horns, and JBL 2495 for high frequencies all creating a highly dynamic sound, not often heard these days.
If you think 2W single ended is not enough power for the Willis room you are right. The sound was fabulous, but the 2W output was struggling on some peaks. The music was chosen to show off the wide dynamic range, one of the highlights was Lighning Hopkins blues recorded in 1963. It makes one wonder why so many modern recordings seem incapable of capturing natural sound!

Melbourne Audio Club and Audio Guild

Wednesday 17 March is a special night at the Melbourne Audio Club. Visitors from the Audio Guild (Lowther club) will be showing off some of the best sounding equipment in Australia. Come and hear Duc’s Commonwealth turntable with Reed arm and Zyx Airy cartridge, Tony’s JFET phono stage and Duc’s Valve phono stage. Amplification by Varkeylabs 41C SET (5W) and Duc’s 2A3 SET amp (2W).
Speakers will be Altec 15″ 416Bs in Onken cabinets, mids Alrec 288c with 1005 multicellular horns, and JBL 2495 for high frequencies!
The meeting is in the Willis room at the Nunawading Civic Centre in Whitehorse Rd, starting at 8pm.
This will be an opportunity to hear some great equipment, visitors and members welcome.

Electrocompaniet ECI-1

Electrocompaniet make one of my favourite product lines, I use their 100 Watt amplifiers and preamplifier, but we had the intergrated ECI-1 available for a while. Magnificent sound, ample power and good looks. We coupled it with CD players from Sony, Arcam and Nakamichi (the Sony worked really well), and used JBLs and big 15 cell Altec horns and vintage alnico drivers.
The Electrocompaniet now lives with Paul, who is trading in some interesting amps and speakers. More in a later post.

Dared 845

The Dared is one of our reference amps, The effortless control it has over  any loudspeaker, especially Quad electrostatics (EL57) is magical. It has been replaced by an amp using 4x 2A3 valves, driving Altec 411 15″ drivers and 811B horns, as the “Voice of the Theatere” speakers, and this is the new reference!

Last Saturday about 8 people just sat and listened to music until we had to close the shop. The power apears to be 6Watts, but the Altecs love it.

Valvemark