Audio Odyssey Part 2

After World War II I was back at the University finishing my course, complete with a wife and new baby and not much money. In the meantime, my amplifier, speaker and the rest of my sound gear, after four years without me, had become part of my parents’ family entertainment. I was now busy try­ing to pass exams, feed a family and find somewhere to live. So my search for the Golden Fleece of Sound was pretty low on the list of priorities.

About the early 1950s I was starting to think about playing my gramophone records again. Our family had grown and we had our own home, I was slowly earning more money and we needed a decent wireless. So we joined the Radio­gram community: I bought that new piece of very useful furniture, an HMV console radiogram.

Radiograms had been introduced to the Australian market only a few years after the war and were becoming popular, ranging from fairly basic models like ours, to those with wide cabinets, two speakers (not yet stereo), lots of room for re­cords, and decorative veneers. The cabinets were usually well made, polished and trimmed and designed to take their place in the lounge room with the best furniture. Radiograms became a status symbol of sorts. You would be invited to visit friends to view their new acquisition, and I would not be surprised if there had even been “radiogram parties”!

So now I had an effective piece of equipment on which to play my 78s. Our radiogram became a true family member, used by the younger members for listening to the children’s sessions, by my wife for listening to Jack Davey and the quiz shows, and by me and the children to listen to our records.

It was just this versatility that made me begin to think again after a few years about a stand-alone amplifier. A growing family meant more records to be played and more radio sessions to be listened to. While I didn’t actually have to join a queue to play a record, everyone would certainly be happier if we had another source of sound. I realised that I would have to go back to the begin­ning, and fit us up with an amplifier, a speaker, a turntable and pickup, and something to put them in. Someone suggested adding a radio tuner, so I virtually had to build another radiogram.

Without the help I had formerly enjoyed from Eric-next-door, I had to find my­self a suitable amplifier circuit. Fortuitously, the valve manufacturer Mullard had in 1959 published an excellent book giving circuits of a range of audio amplifiers, with photographs, wiring details and descriptive text. I think it even gave a diagram which would help in bending up your own aluminium chassis, showing the holes for valve sockets and the various controls. I chose one called the 5-10 Amplifier as the most suitable for me. It used five valves and had an output of 10 watts. That doesn’t sound much output by today’s method of measurement, but it is ample for the average home.

I first had to buy a sheet of aluminium, cut the holes and bend it up; then I could start wiring the circuit. One of my friends knew a metal-worker who would cut the holes and bend the chassis for me for nothing, so after marking out my sheet of aluminium I handed it over. It came back a few days later, all beautifully bent, the holes for the valve sockets cleanly cut, and ready to go. Except for one thing: I had not marked which way to bend the sheet. Sides which I should have marked to be bent down were, instead, bent up. What I had was thus a mirror-image of the chassis in the book, holes and all. This meant that the de­scriptive photographs in the book had to be viewed in a mirror when I was mounting and wiring the components if they were to be any use.

I went ahead, as there was no real option, and finished the job. I experienced a moment of slight nervousness when I gave the amplifier its first test. Would the music come out of the speaker as some weird sound mirror-image? But all was well. The amplifier served me faithfully for many years and now is out to pas­ture in the Radio Museum at Kurrajong Heights. . Such was the quality of the 5-10 amplifier’s design that it was still used in some ABC studios until recent times.

Although I had considered myself lucky to find a book of amplifier circuits, a trend had begun towards stand-alone components for domestic use, including amplifiers. Speakers came in their own cabinets, or you could get drawings, timber kits and finished enclosures for various brands. I took a big step and bought a Goodmans 12-inch speaker and the timber kit de‑signed for it, and put it together. Some 50 years later, that speaker in that enclosure (later joined by its stereo twin) are still in service, on my veranda, for music in the garden. My neighbour, who trains horses for dressage events, tells me that both she and her horses love hearing it as they go through their training.

Following the Goodmans speaker and its walnut veneer box I bought a turntable and pickup, and built a high quality radio tuner. All I needed was a cabinet to put them in.

As well as “knock down” speaker enclosures, cabinets for turntables and tuners had become available in kit form. So I bought a kit, put it together and oiled the teak veneer. It was well designed and looked really good. Under the lid was space for a turntable and amplifier, with the tuner in the compartment alongside. Below was full-length record-storage in separate compartments behind sliding doors. To me, this could well take its place in any lounge room, let alone my enclosed veranda where it sat with the speaker cabinet.

This group of components served me well for some years, but developments were coming along which offered improved sound from gramophone records. LPs were replacing 78s, and stereo sound was replacing mono.

For me, the introduction of stereo records meant another Goodmans speaker (now much more expensive than the first) and its enclosure, plus a new pickup and another amplifier. So I built a second 5-10 amplifier and found room for it inside the cabinet. By this time I could buy a ready-made sprayed-steel chassis for the 5-10. It did not look as good as the shining aluminium original, but at least it was the right way round. I joined the World Record Club and started building a collection of stereo LP records which is still an important contributor to my listening pleasure.

In 1983 came an event which changed the direction of my odyssey: the drive belt on my turntable broke. I went back to the shop where I had bought it, but no replacement was available. I searched the shops selling turntables with no result—except that someone mentioned a shop in Lane Cove run by a man called Len Wallis.

Len Wallis thought he could get one for me in South America. I thought “This bloke is having me on. South America—they don’t even speak English! Let’s see what he can do”. However, to my delight, a week or so later Wallis phoned to say the belt for my turntable had arrived from South America. Whilst I was collecting the belt I had a look around. Here were high quality speakers of well-known brands, like my Goodmans, installed in beautiful cabinets and ready to go. There were amplifiers, tuners of various brands in their dark grey livery, and rooms where I could listen to them. Why did I have to go on building every­thing? I decided that next time I wanted equipment I would first have a good look at what I could buy.

Having moved house in the early 1980s, I now had a large living room. My Goodmans speakers did not look happy there and seemed to be resented by the other furniture. I was also somewhat confused by the matter of radio vis-a-vis records. For radio I was still using the tuner I had built, and an amplifier which I must also have built but can no longer recall, all feeding into two small speakers in cabinets mounted high on the wall at one end of the room. These speakers were Magnat Sonobulls, made in Germany, and they were excellent quality.

For records I used the two Mullard 5-10 amps that I had built and the Goodmans speakers.

Why I used two separate sound systems I do not know. It may have been be­cause I was busy with my work and took the easy way out—maybe I was in a groove (forgive the pun!).

Because the Goodmans looked uneasy I decided to get new speakers, and tried out a couple of small B&W DM220 speakers on stands. I traded these in after a couple of years on a pair of Richter Harlequin speakers. These, too, I traded back after a couple of years for South Australian Duntech Viscount II speakers. You might say that I couldn’t make up my mind.

Then, about the end of 1995, all this indecision came to an end when Len Wallis offered me a pair of traded-in B&W Matrix 803 speakers. I could trade-in the Duntechs and buy the B&Ws without breaking the bank! Having rearranged the living room furniture, I decided the new speakers would look magnificent on either side of the wood heater—where they were duly installed by Alex, whom I had got to know quite well during numerous delivery and pick-up trips to my home. When we had set up the speakers I opened up the subject worrying me, of my two separate sound systems. I had no doubt that B&Ws would be wonder­fully compatible with the other units of my record-playing equipment, which I had been consistently upgrading. It was all about as good as I could afford at the time and everything worked well together. But I was dividing my musical life in two, using radio as an almost constant background throughout the day but listen­ing to records as something of a special event. Time was set aside for records. I still followed the habits of my youth with our Saturday night sessions: friends arriving, lights dimmed, my mother bringing in the supper at 9 o’clock, and so on. Still using different equipment for radio and for records, I had a half-formed

belief that my top equipment might be demeaned in some way if I used it for radio. Certainly the way I listened to radio was undemanding compared with the concentration and participation involved in listening to classical music on re­cords. But was that a reason not to use the best sound reproduction for both?

Alex had experienced the same dilemma and concluded that if you have the gear, you might as well use it, whether for radio or records. Speakers, probably the most expensive single unit, were not going to wear out by being used every day. In fact it is probably better for them to be working rather than sitting there waiting for something to happen.

I decided to do the same as Alex, a decision made easier by the fact that FM radio had been introduced and ABC FM (now ABC Classic FM) played the same sort of music as I had on my LPs. I sensed that my amplifiers and speakers would happily accept Classic FM sounds because it was what they were accus­tomed to.

So I took the lovely little Sonobulls down from the wall (leaving their connect­ing cables in place—just in case!), moved the Goodman out to the veranda for the horses (and myself), and rearranged the speaker and amplifier connections. Then I sat down to listen. That was in 1995, and the B&Bs have hardly moved since, although I have kept them happy by improving their connecting cables and giving them beautiful music to play.*

In 1985, I joined the audio cassette revolution. I bought a Nakamichi deck for playing pre-recorded tapes and recording material from the radio. Though I bought few pre-recorded tapes I did record, and still do, music and talks off air. In 1990 I added an excellent Harmon Kardon cassette deck for use with my computer. In my opinion, cassette tapes still have a place because of their quality and conven­ience.

In 1990 I managed to build my first CD player (a Marantz) into my existing cabinet, and immediately began buying CDs in place of LPs. My music library now consists of about 100 LPs, a similar number of CDs and many tape cas­settes. I choose the music I want to listen to without worrying about the sound medium. In 2006 I bought my fourth CD player, a C542 from NAD, a company of admirably no-nonsense approach and quality manufacture. The NAD’s three prede­cessors—or at least their lasers—simply wore out.

Since the decision to buy rather than to make, I enjoyed the services of several excellent amplifiers and receivers, all of them solid-state, but in about 1994 1 felt a need to listen to a good valve amplifier again. I now discovered the newly released Micrex P1 power amplifier, made in Western Australia, which gave forth the most exquisite, warm and balanced sound, full of detail and sense of presence. It was irresistible. It needed a separate preamplifier, but as the resul­tant sound was truly excellent I didn’t mind the expense. Not only that, with valves glowing it became a piece of living statuary.

In the previous year, a fine secondhand Rega Planar 2 turntable and pickup had become available at a good price. This gave excellent results from my LPs, and so I reached another sound plateau. Perhaps it was as far as I would want to go.

For the next seven years or so everything in my sound equipment stayed the same, except for me. My deafness was becoming more of a problem and I could see the day coming when my ears could no longer tell me, for example, when the valves in the Micrex would need replacing, or any other part of circuitry for that matter. I worried that, with valve amplifiers running at higher voltages and temperatures than solid state equipment, there could be gradual changes to the sound which I might not perceive.. This concern seems bizarre when I look back at it, but it was very real at the time.

I started looking around for a solid state amplifier of equivalent quality to the Micrex/preamp combination, and found the answer in a Musical Fidelity A3 integrated amp. This I have used and loved since 2001.

The cabinet I had built for my audio equipment in the mid-1970s was, by 2006, overloaded and it screamed at the rest of the furniture. It was due for replace­ment. In its place I now have a Gecko 219 Audio Rack which carries every­thing, including an amplifier for the veranda speakers. Everything, that is, ex­cept the new amplifier, sitting proudly atop an antique chest which actually serves as a record cabinet.

My search for the Golden Fleece of sound has now come to an end. All my au­dio equipment performs well, looks good (at least to my eyes) and will last for years. Quality solid state gear of today has a long life if not overloaded or abused in some way and will probably only be superseded by technology or fashion.

The only item I can think of that may wear out is the turntable drive belt—and if that does break I know where to go for a new one.

 

*This flight of fancy may have a basis in fact.  Many people choose speakers which they consider best suited to their particular kind of music, whether “popular”, jazz or “classical”.