Cal Blacksmith

Thanks for the reply. I fix most everything else but I have never been inside this amp. Thanks for the link to mouser, it has been a very nice amp and they are still selling on Audiogon for around $1200 give or take a little, so it really is worth taking care of this issue. Funny, I have no problem working with steel at 2000F but a little electric inside the amp and I am looking to have the work done[:S] I guess I will open it up this weekend, it isn't like it is a long weekend with nothing to do but listen to music! I am guessing that the filter cap is likely a surface mount al can type mounted somewhere close to the input Xformer, am I even close?

As my new room thread pointed out, I have reset up my room and I have been enjoying the 2 ch more than I have been in a long time. Last night, I turned the system on then left the room for a few minutes, well about 10 but that shouldn't have been a big deal. When I went back in the room, there was a fricking 60 cycle hum out of both speakers! I have never had one before and I have an isolation transformer and power filter on both the amp and the preamp so there should be nothing but clean power going in. I turned off everything but the amp and I still had a hum though I did not disconnect from the transformer. I will do so tonight but I am pretty sure I have a filter cap going bad on my power amp. A Sonic Frontiers Power 1, 55 wpc push / pull 6550 tube amp. It was made in the late '90s to early '00s if I remember right. Stuff happens for sure but dag nabbit, I never expected an issue with this amp. I have an email out to a service tech in Burbank (near L.A.) as I really don't want to send the unit x country to Craig but it may come to that. This guy has worked on some nice gear if his repair photos are real, more Gutiar amps than Stereo but then there are a lot more of them than tube home stereo units out there. What ball park should this recap/ tune up run? Also, anyone know anything about this guy? Good tech? Hard or easy to work with?? http://glasssoundlab.com/

Just to avoid another post of the same pic. This is a 11 x 13 bedroom, speakers are on the 11 foot wall, about 2.5 feet out from wall and about 1.5 foot from the side walls. There is room to walk and sit down in the chair, what more do you need?[] http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/t/166937.aspx

Timely chart, I just had to replace my wire in the HT to get it under the carpet, I had to go to ultra thin, 18 ga, my longest run is about 20feet to a side speaker (H2). I used to have 12 ga and was bummin about it, it looks on the chart like I will be OK with the longest run, not ideal but OK for a back side spreaker.

Glad you cought it, I just had the same thing happen to me cept it was my R ch cornwall. After much futzting with things, it turned out to be a bad patch cord that I used when I added a component. Little things like this can run you crazy!

No, the camera is OK, it is just a phone camera, at night, low light, no flash and then compressed to not take long to load. Nice result but a PITA to get through [:S]

High quality sound is always better regardless of the over all volume. 800 sf isn't so bad to fill in a HT situation, placement is a big part of it.

The only dimention that you will notice that is smaller on the Heresy is the height but then you will need to put them on risers to bring the mid/high up to the level of your ears so you are really in the same boat when it comes to size, just my opinion and is likely worth less than the $0.02 post people ask for with opinion posts![:S]

The "boss" really dosn't care about what I do in there, she just closes the door when it is too loud..... in the other side of the house [:$] It all came out very nice but there were some scarry moments to be sure. We came home from shopping and the first step in the front door went SQUISH and I knew it wasn't a good thing! I USED to have wires on the ground, multiple outlet bars on the floor etc, the water was the level of the top of the carpet so all the connections were above the "water line" but not by much. Not only was the 2 ch room affected, the TV room was too and I got very lucky that NOTHING electrical was damaged. I did have some delam on the vanier on the risers of the Cornwalls, the bottom inch or so of the riser was sitting in water but the speakers themselves were safe. The risers dried out fairly fast but like I said, I had a littl gluing to do where I had delam. We must have had 200+ gallons of water in the house, the bottom foot of most walls were removed so that the heaters/dehumidifiers could dry them out then everything had to be replaced so it was a fairly long process. We have GREAT insurance and they covered 100% of replacement costs but like I said, we added hard wood to most of the house except for this room, one bedroom and the HT, which all got new carpet. This is the same room that the Cornwalls used to be in when Larry came to visit but there is a LOT less stuff in there. I have a feeling that this is a GREAT time to donate to Goodwill etc all the stuff that works but I have not used for a long time. Like most people we have a lot of stuff pile up over the years and though I had been intending to go through it "someday" our hand was forced and in the long run, we will be better off by having my lazy butt forced to go through this stuff. Anyone want a really nice commercial L shaped desk made by Hon? To members of the board, it is free for the hauling away, it is NOT going back into the room!

LOL yes it is clean now but I must have 100 boxes to put away! The ins paid for most of the repairs. I upgraded to hardwood floors in most of the house so we had some out of pocket. I don't advise a home remodel this way1

I never found Fort'e 1s to be bass shy but I was able to space them nicely. You already own great speakers so why replace them? Just add a sub with what you have and like the mids and highs from?

In truth the CD player is DJ gear but it does a GREAT job, it is a solid bit of kit and has features such as pitch adjustments etc that I will never use. It is supposed to be able to auto switch between the two players also, if it is setup properly. All in all, it is a new start with the same old gear and it is bringing a smile to the face every time I turn it on!

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We had a pipe break in the bathroom and it flooded all but the master bed and bath room so we have new floors through the whole house now, as well as new paint etc, etc! This room used to be a mixed use room but as nearly everything we owned was boxed up and placed in storage until the repairs were done, it was a good time to convert the room to a 2 ch room only! There still isn't any artwork on the walls etc but you can see the bones of the room now. It is 11 x 13 x 8 with the closet located behind and to the right of the chair. Most of the gear is the same as I have had for a while but I did score a good deal on the dual CD player, a new in OEM box, old stock, rack mount CD player. I had a choice of a single unit for $45 or this one for $75 (yes there are more!) The single unit has XLR and RCA outs while this one is RCA only but I do not have a XLR input to the preamp so there wasn't a great loss there. I had a new problem though as the CD player has two outputs and I only had 1 input on the Preamp, I bought a passive, 4 ch stereo splitter/combiner with reostats for each channel. I have always wanted to drop the output of the preamp to the amp as this match was a little hot and I was never able to turn the preamp up over about 0 to 30% of total available output. This splitter/combiner also can be used to adjust each ch independent from each other so I used Ch 1 to drop the output of the preamp to the amp and used Ch 3 and 4 to combine the outputs of the CD player. A very nice and easy solution to both problems and low cost to boot from Parts Express, about $85 total with adapter cables. As the room is now 2ch only, the Cornwalls are moved out a bit more into the room to give them air and it makes a huge improvement! I have spent more time in this room in the last week than I have in the last year and I have enjoyed the room more than I have for years! Well more room treatments ect will follow but it is nice to just sit and listen now...... again!

You really dont need tons of power. My AVR runs about 120 wpc (so it says it will) but I have split off my mains from it and pwer them with a For'te 1 power amp ( 50 wpc @ 4 ohm, Class A ) and there is way more power than I need in the remaining 5 speakers.

I don't see the reason to dump the RF7s![:|] I have a slightly SMALLER room and have Cornwalls in it, the RFs are much smaller![*-)]

Well, it has been 8 years and I still have the VTL. It has proven to be a very well designed unit, one that I am still deeply enjoying though it is now driving a Sonic Frontiers Power 1 and a pair of Cornwall 2s. There has not been a need for service in any way with this unit, it is still quite happy running on the tubes that were in it the last time I posted to this thread. I know this thread goes back a ways and has been lost to the sands of time here, but I was doing a search on my preamp and this thread came up near the top of the Google list of links. At least for me, it turned out to be a wise investment to spend the most I could at the time on a quality used pre amp. The $/time factor is very low indeed and I am still enjoying the sound. How many here can say the same thing? I wonder, it would be fun to find out! It was also fun to see some names I have not seen for a long time, such as Guy. He was the driving force behind me gtetting this preamp and I am very thankfull to him for the great advice![]

I changed the mids on my F1s without modding the crossover and I really like the results. YMMV! EDIT; I also changed them on my cornwalls and my sons KG5.5s

I seem to remember paying something like $250 for two of them with a center speaker. The cabs had started to come unglued and they rattled with bass. I glued some 1x1 strips around the inside of the cabs and all was well with the world again.

Sheesh, Boxx... have you never heard his slide guitar? Pretty amazing talent. Bruce I agree, a great talent... I threw out the Dale Evans name to see if anyone would catch it. That was the first thought that came to mind with me, I guess that shows how old I am [:|]

I would bet they are Fort'e 1s, the 4 vs 8 ohm thing... at what freq? There is as good as no difference really between them I have a pair of F1s and run them at 8 ohm with no problems. I have run them on my tube 2ch tube setup as both 4 and 8 ohm and there was no difference to my ears. My HT setup is all SS, not tube. Quartets make a great match also for the Acadmey, likely better than the F1s. I have cycled the quartets and the F1s through the HT and I kept the Quartets in the system. The Fort'e 1s are in the TV room with a SC1 center which I think makes a better sonic match to the Fort'e 1s.

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