Davecv41

Surplus Sales of Nebraska has a good sized listing of those old bathtub-style cans on their site. FWIW, earlier this year, I replaced a bathtub style cap in a piece of equipment at work. It looked identical to the caps I replaced in my Type A crossovers. I should have kept the box that the new one came in.

When I bought a 27" Sony TV some 35yrs ago, I kept the box for repacking it for moving. It didn't take long for the termites to find it.

I kept the old Aerovox, Sprague, and Astron metal capacitors when I updated them in my Khorn's type A crossovers a few years ago. The recent availability of Klipsch approved replacement caps thru JEM got me thinking about keeping the crossovers original, by removing the old capacitor's guts and restuffing them with new plastic caps. Has anyone ever tried this with a square metal capacitor? I've done it on old radios before, but a Gaggle search only comes up with doing it to round electrolytics. Any idea what's inside these square cans?

I thought B&O was out of business, until I saw a B&O showroom while walking thru SoHo in Manhattan in 2018. The most memorable device there was a round bluetooth speaker the size of a snare drum, mounted at a 45 degree angle on a tripod, for $2700. I was not impressed by the sound. It filled a space with mood music, but that's about all it did.

I use a 4PDT toggle switch mounted on the side of my stereo cabinet to switch my Khorns between a Sony HT receiver or a 2 channel tube amp.

Anyone got an estimate what these sold for new in 1979? I spent plenty on stereo stuff back then, and just speculating how things would have been different if I had bought a Heresy pair instead of the no-name wheezers I had.

I happen to like the older solid state receivers, I wish I still had my old Pioneer receivers from the late 70s. SX-680, SX-780, and SX-1080. My sister and ex-bro in law got the 1080 when I was in the navy, I found out he threw it out when one of the channels quit. I hope he hurt his back lifting it.

I crashed an after-hours customer appreciation party at their store in SOHO a couple winters ago. Until I saw the store, I thought they had gone out of business.

I got introduced to sniping by a coworker who said that he wouldn't be bidding if he didn't intend to win the auction. That reasoning made sense to me.

My wife ordered a Swiss Army watch for me for Christmas a few years back. She tracked it to the UPS main HQ in town, where it sat, and sat, and sat. Evidently, one of the seasonal help temps they hired got it. UPS paid up since it never left their facility.

Details have faded over the last 20+ years, but I don't feel this schematic was well designed. I got about 30 minutes out of it connected to a pair of HIIs when the high voltage winding in the power transformer opened. It had been over a year since I ordered it from Antique Electronic Supply, so well out of warranty. I wrote a letter with a copy of the schematic to AES explaining what happened, and got a reply from Mr DeFir, the owner. He analyzed the circuit, and said one winding was overloaded, but the other was not, so he felt the transformer was good in the circuit. (I was in the Persian Gulf at the time, he had been a tron chaser in the navy in WWII, and his son was still on active duty, so it was a nice letter.) I ordered another transformer and replaced it, and got it going again. I have 1967 Khorns, and while the sound was clear, it was not a strong amp, which I partly blame on having to run the high voltage winding thru a resistance to drop it. (The gold ones in the picture are in series, so there was no fighting between unmatched parallel parts.) After several years of listening, it developed a hum, so I shelved it, not wanting to invest the calories in it. When Maynard put out his Lil Sweetie schematic, I took the amp apart, reusing just the aluminum chassis and the Hammond 1615 output transformers. There's probably a couple hours of work left before it's ready to fire up. There are now two mono amps on the chassis. I am not put off by the 45 tube in the least, in fact, I'm still looking for a better schematic. This amp sounded good.

My former 45 amp, built on a mounting bracket from a used shipboard keyboard in 1997, schematic was from an article in Glass Audio. The power transformer burned out once, I replaced it, then stripped it when Maynard came out with the Lil Sweetie schematic. Not the best layout here, the parts had to fit the available space.

Unless you're building in an old Lincoln or Hobart cabinet, it's difficult to get a 57 1/8" long printed circuit board to fit. Much easier to figure 8 the wire, and tie wrap it in the middle.

Measure it's resistance, and the resistance of the midrange on the other speaker. What is the resistance, are they both measuring the same? That's a starting point.

Beer wasn't sold in mass quantities back then, besides, handing off a pallet of 3.2 to a kid on a newspaper bike would have attracted too much unwanted attention. We took what we could get; a 6-pack of Mickey's if the beer gods were smiling, cans of Coors if they weren't. Quarts of Miller were considered a score, especially on the way to a drive-in movie.

When ordering away from home, I always ask the server what's local that they serve. I prefer a bottle then so that I can read the label. Life's too short to drink the mass produced stuff we drank in junior high school when we got lucky enough to persuade a stranger to buy us a six pack at 7-Eleven.

I've gotten a couple variacs at swap meets. One was in a homemade power supply. People don't know what they are, or what they cost new.

Since you're doing it yourself, Crites' price for Sonicaps are identical to prices on the Sonic Craft website.

Yes, it does have taps. But all the wires on T2A are soldered onto the lugs. A PITA for checking which tap you prefer, but doable, especially after you gain normal access to the backs of those speakers.

What would moving do to the wife's retirement plan? Would she lose much, or all, by relocating, and having to start over, needing to work xx number of years before becoming vested in the local school's plan?

I've heard for the last 3 decades the "they don't build them like they used to" about couches and chairs. My wife liked our stuff, which varied between 25-65 years old, but thought the colors were outdated. They had good construction, so we kept them. She now wants to have my favorite stuffed chair redone, which is also 65 years old. I've found my preference in cushions has changed as I've gotten older, now the firmer the better. The couches and loveseat got updated with firmer cushions.

I was just spouting my opinion on drivers. Amps, preamps, and CD players ( with digital to analog converters) are all analog electronics. Every component affects every other component in an analog circuit. Cables? That's for another thread.

Having worked in the semiconductor industry for a time, I learned that if you can smell it, you can measure it. Particles that go past your olfactory nerve and tell your brain that there's something there, also can go past a sensor and get measured and analyzed. A sound wave, which is energy, goes into your ear and tells your brain that there's something there, should also be able to be measured, and analyzed, and determination made that if it wasn't there initially, why is it there 300 hours later? Or if the measurements didn't change, but your ears think they did, then why? I understand that materials loosen up and take a set after a while, but I'm still not convinced yet.

I had 2 chairs, couch, and loveseat reupholstered not long ago. The fabric shops have craftspeople they use, so ask them, as they'd know who does better work than anyone else in town. Especially with leather.

Lots of good points, including things I hadn't thought about before, like @joessportster comment about needing to start the breakin process all over if a speaker hasn't been used in a long time. But, I'm still skeptical about breaking in. Speakers are make from components, which are designed to specifications, then tested after manufacture to ensure they meet those specs. Since that is measurable, is there anyone doing before and after measurements on drivers after xx number of hours, to see if those numbers have changed? Is that something that PWK would have thought of and documented during his long career?