CaptnBob

Well, I sold my Valencias (Flamencos, actually, same thing, different grillwork) to buy Cornwalls, but that was 1974...

What was quite common for these volume controls in the C-26, and the tuner preamps based on it, was for the potentiometer to lose linearity - that is, one channel gets louder faster than the other, the balance changes while you're listening, that sort of thing. I don't know if replacements are available - the "on-off" feature is kind of a sticking point. On the MX-112 I had, the potentiomer went bad, and the only replacement my shop could find had a "linear taper" instead of an "audio taper." It behaved much like you are describing. Dynaco PAS-3s had an unusual "taper," which meant there was a minimal amount of gain from 7 o'clock to 10 o'clock, a real rapid rise between 10 and 12, and then a gradual increase after that. I was told the idea was to let you have the most control at high and low levels. Have you read Roger Russell's page about the C-26? You might enjoy it.

Hey, Dave, Do you know the serial number on yours, off hand? The picture is kinda blurry... If I didn't already have a pair, I'd be on these like white on rice. A coat of black paint and they'd look really good.

Someone may have covered this, but I didn't see it. The Bose 901 family is reasonably efficient in the midrange. However, the equalization, which boosts the top and bottom ends considerably, requires vast amounts of power. It's one of the selling techniques an old Bose dealer told me about - if you A-B a pair of Bose 901s against most other speakers, the 901 will sound louder and more dynamic. Level the volumes, and things don't sound so glossy.

Wow! You could make your Mac meters Bastid Amber, or Dark Red or anything! I mentioned elsewhere my friend in school who put blue Roscolene behind the meters on his Bose amp to make it seem more Mac-esque. Didn't help the sound any, though.

They look almost like ... Dahlquist subwoofers?

Both the 275 and the VRDs are taller than the 2505 in the picture, so you've got a bit less room for ventilation. As mentioned above, cutting some slots in the upper shelf might help. My big concern is weight. I don't know about the VRDs, but the 275 is well over seventy pounds. Are you sure the shelf can support that much? Bob "still has the scars from catching a Teac 4010GSL when the bookcase it was in energetically disassembled" A.

I understand Lustrons are pretty easy to move, too. Not too sure about that combination clotheswasher/dishwasher, though.

Nice work! Now you just need a "Lustron Home" to put it all in.

Well, that's the combination I had. If one of the amber meters has a small crack by the pivot point, and the serial number begins with "2-," I might finally know what became of mine. The bank did say I could get a second mortgage...

I was going to say, any one else notice the Cornwalls? Whoever put this together, one must admire his or her taste.

Well, first off, remember, it was the early seventies, and tube electronics were decidedly "un-hip," readily available, and really cheap. I got the first pair of 2s - the ones with the yellow meters - while visiting a friend in Boston. After his father introduced me to Shorthorns-powered by a Sherwood tubed integrated in a huge livingroom, he took me over to the Music Box in Wellesley. The Music box was one of those stores you don't see much of any more. The front had greeting cards. In the middle, records, and finally, in the back, Bill Bell held court surrounded by Klipschorns and McIntosh. It was an experience that warped me for life. Anyway, the back window had all the things Mr. Bell had taken in on trade. It was a rotating history lesson of Hi-Fi. On my first visit in the back were the 2s - $60 each. Remember, $60 was close to a week's wages for a college boy in 1972, but once my friend volunteered to drive them out when he came back to school in the fall, my last ounce of resistance fled. I started using them from the preamp outputs from my Nivico 5020 receiver - a marked improvement over the built in amp. The next year, a transfer student saw my amps and said, "I've got a pair of those." He'd been given them, along with a 7 preamp and a Scott 330-D tuner with a Marantz faceplate, as payment for building a Heathkit receiver, Since he wanted less to carry up the stairs, I traded him a McIntosh MX-110 and a Mc-225 I'd bought through the want ads. I still have the tuner and preamp. I got the 1s and 6 on a second trip to the Music Box. The other stuff I picked up here and there. Sorry for the meandering trip down memory lane...

Actually, I do remember them quite well. The volume and balance controls on mine were silky and smooth as could be. Mine had the aluminum knobs, although they were a darker gold than the ones in the picture. The older units with bakelite knobs may have been different. The little side car had a stepped volume control, so you did have to "two hands" that once in a while. Mine had never been rebuilt, but they were "only" twenty years old at the time. They were fine preamps. But to me, the 7 sounded better - more open, more detail, more "there" there, with a better top end. When the dismal day came that I had to sell something, and it came down to the 7 and the 1s, the 7 stayed. Sure wish I'd kept them, though - and the four Marantz 2s I sold at the same time, and the two 8bs. I think I'll go sit in a dark room now.

You can run the preamp off a Marantz 8, if you have a mind to - they have the octal socket in the back. Note - it's one of the things Marantz dropped when they went to the 8B. More to the point, although they look way cool, have incredibly smooth turning controls, and have the panache of being fifty years old, there are a lot of preamps that will sound loads better - Juicy Music's efforts come to mind - with a great deal of money left over for music. Mine always sounded kind of dark, without the detail of the 7. It wasn't close. They had a definite personality, though.

It's a very fine amp - and, to me, one of the better looking pieces they've made over the years, too. Don't know about the meter fading. I'd call McIntosh. Their service department is most helpful. It could be something as simple as some lighting gel slipping out of place. I had a friend with a Bose amp who put some blue Roscolux gel inside the meters to make it look more "Mac-esque."

I once had an antique tall case time piece. It was the original teak tock...

Rudy Bozak was big on vertical bi-amping. The theory was you would avoid any discontinuities in the sound from the amplifiers being different, plus, since the bass makes the heaviest demands on the power supply, the bass channel would be able to produce more power than it would if it had to share. In addition, there's no potential for crosstalk. Bozak speakers crossed over fairly high - 400 hz or 800 hz in the three ways - so all three problems were issues. Having your crossover at line level gives you several advantages - chief among them that the amplifiers are connected directly to the speakers, which allows for better damping and less phase shift. Also, depending on the crossover, some designs can absorb up to half your power. Rudy B. said bi-amping would add 3 dB to the speaker's efficiency, effectively doubling the amp's output. It should be mentioned PWK thought the above was pretty much unnecessary in a home environment, and could introduce other problems. Also you do want some kind of protection for your tweeters - things can go ugly real quickly if you don't. A minor turn on thump for a woofer would be devastating to a tweeter. I hope this is coherent. The new puppy is keeping me up (and o-u-t) at night...

The Shorthorns I've got are about 12" or so from the back of the front panel to the rear wall. The RP-201, according to Jensen literature is 14" long. You could hook it up and set it on top to see if you liked it before doing any surgery on the cabinet. If you do, you could probably cut a hole in the back of the cabinet and let the rear of the driver stick out a couple of inches. I don't think it would affect the loading of the woofer that much.

According to PWK, your ear perceives the highest level of distortion as the level of distortion for the system. As the ported Cornwall's bass distortion is supposedly much higher than the horn-loaded LaScalas, and the LaScala's efficiency matches that of the corner horn, the LS should be the better match. So much for logic. I've used both a CW and a LS for a center speaker, and liked the Cornwall better - simply because the LaScala had a more "in your face" presentation and a narrower sweet spot. The Cornwall was less agressive and seemed to blend in better. Plus, it takes up less room, which, unless your listening room is baronial, becomes an issue when you start talking about several cubic feet of loudspeaker. I'd probably go with the Cornwalls, all else being equal.

I don't think they would fit. I'll check tonight.

I found one of our auditorium's LaScalas with a woofer that had complete tears around the surround and about an inch out from the dust cap, and radial shatter tears coming out from the center. Evidently someone - who wisely hid his or her identity from me - had turned on the power amp first and the Radford pre-amp second. What the guys are saying is true. Turning the amp on last and off first will preserve your system and keep those turn on and off thumps from disemboweling your speakers. Note too, some components, notably Audio Research tube preamps and Marantz 10b tuners, have a succession of turn on thumps as they warm up and stabilize.

My wife took an extremely strong dislike to the JBL Paragon I brought home once. I mean, who could dislike 700 pounds and 9 feet of aggressively Danish Modern furniture? More than once she mentioned Viking funerals, with me lashed to it while it floated down the Mississippi, while she stood on the shore shooting flaming arrows into it. She does like the Shorthorns, though. One of the saddest things I've ever heard was on this forum. I forget the details, but the gist of it was a fellow found a like new 1960's dream system stacked in a closet after his father died. Evidently the father hadn't "consulted" on buying the stereo, and so had locked it away after the initial battles, never to use it again.

What Dave said. The Music Box, venerated Boston Klipsch dealer almost from the very beginning, sold Sherwoods to their clients who couldn't spring for McIntosh or Marantz. Styling is a bit dated, compared to the Scotts, but the sound and build quality should be on a par. Paint tends to wear off around control knobs, and the plastic tends to yellow, but these are strictly cosmetic issues. Will most likely need "refreshing" and a good cleaning, as the chassis seem prone to rust, much more so than contemporary Scotts and H-Ks.

Hey, it got a lot of people to look at it!

The big Bozaks would fit in there pretty well. Probably sound pretty good too. Or they could stack about 53 Bose jewel cubes on each side.