Edgar

Wasn't that a song by Marty Robbins? Seriously, I gather that the Dynaco output transformers were highly respected.

I believe that would be The Blues Brothers.

I wish I'd known about that when I lived in Syracuse. Meanwhile, there's another near Saint Louis: https://tnmot.org

https://stlouis.craigslist.org/ele/d/saint-louis-dynakit-st-70-tube-amplifier/7527129996.html Looks complete, but not working. For someone who feels comfortable troubleshooting. No affiliation.

Is that for playing your Black Sabbath LPs? 🙂

https://www.amazon.com/Milty-5036694022153-Zerostat-Anti-Static-Blue/dp/B0033SHDSS $99! I still have mine from the 1970s.

If you don't mind push-pull and PC boards, the PC board used by Audio Note https://ankaudiokits.com/product-category/el84-amps/ and tubes4hifi http://www.tubes4hifi.com/ST35.htm is available as a bare board https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256801585807617.html.

And the belt-drive table never had enough torque, so we helped it along with a finger pushing on the record label.

Not quite the same as running the Diskwasher Discwasher brush over the platter, but it counts. EDIT: spelling

I miss manual transmissions, too. It's a sure sign that you're getting old -- missing the good ol' days that were never really all that good.

Just fired-up my ancient reel-to-reel tape deck -- wanted to see what, if anything, was on some old tapes. Threading the tape over the heads, through the pinch roller, and onto the takeup reel brought back memories of the rituals that we used to go through with R2R. Playing vinyl has similar rituals. Audio used to be participatory. Remember? Watching the reels turn is mesmerizing.

Exactly how does it do that? Once information is lost, it is lost forever, and increasing the bit rate does not increase the information content.

No argument with that, except possibly for the file size, because storage has become so cheap. I was on the MPEG1 Audio committee in the early 1990s, and had a hand in its development. At the time, storage was limited and bandwidth was expensive. We never foresaw an age when teraBytes and gigabits per second would be available for anything less than a king's ransom, let alone at Best Buy. How times change. BTW, I was once involved in a blind listening test with MPEG Audio Layer 1 at 384 kbps and Layer 2 at 256 kbps. A track with which I was very familiar was played, sometimes original CD, sometimes MP1, sometimes MP2. My job was to determine whether the particular version being played was CD or not CD. In eleven trials, I was correct eleven times. MP3 uses better compression than MP1 or MP2, and encoding techniques have improved in the last thirty years, so I probably could not duplicate the feat. Still, it was a gratifying experience for me.

CD data rate is 1411.2 kbps. So 384 kbps is a compression ratio of 3.675:1. FLAC can get you 2:1 without losing any information. So why bother with MP3 at 384 kbps?

FWIW, I remember reading about exactly what you described in a magazine or journal at the time. Might have been Journal of the Audio Engineering Society; I simply don't remember. Maybe in a patent application?

My experience has been similar. I have a couple of vintage amps (G.A.S. Son of Ampzilla and Grandson) that finally died. I discarded all of the original amplifier parts and kept only the linear power supplies; added TPA3255 boards from 3E Audio. Absolutely amazing at bass frequencies, but only adequate at higher frequencies.

Amps are the last to be turned on and the first to be turned off. Never break or make a connection with the amps powered. Never run a tube amp without a load.

One of the documents says William C. Fischer, Jr.

Sheesh. I am old enough to remember when my father bought his first transistor amp. We looked at it like it was something that came out of a ship from Mars, and were amazed that it actually produced sound despite having no tubes.

A couple of detail shots of Big Boy when it came through St. Louis last year.

Yes, tube amps can be a unique platform for artistic expression: Big Red. (There are 18 photos there.)

There are places where nylon bolts really make a difference.

Apologies for resurrecting an ancient thread, but this just arrived in my email today.

Really good point, @babadono. I hadn't considered that.