RIGID113

Weve all been there. Stuck at a red light trying to enjoy our music in the comfort of our own vehicles. Maybe you play a bit of air guitar, or sing along, whatever your inner child wants, its okay because youre in your car. Your bubble. Your sanctuary. That is, until, the jerk in the three thousand dollar Honda Civic with the grapefruit shooter for a tailpipe rolls up next to you and assaults you with what I can only describe as an amplified fart trapped within a soda can. Sure, hell call it bass. I call it automotive flatulence. That trunk rattling, muffler busting sound isnt bass. Its distortion. Its noise. And if youre one of these peopledo the world a favor, turn it down. The only person youre impressing is yourself which judging by the slapdash way youve snap-tightened your car isnt saying a whole lot.

Wilson Audio Thor's Hammer Subwoofer: With a cabinet measuring 59 H x 20 W x 25.5 D and weighing in at 412 lbs., sound is the only big thing that Thors Hammer from Wilson Audio brings. At its core, Thors Hammer has two 15 woofers with a dual-spider cone design (based on long-throw woofers) that lowers distortions and delivers dynamic audio. It has a generous frequency range of 15Hz-70Hz. An optional outboard crossover means easy integration to your full range system. It can support other popular Wilson Audio components like MAXX version 3, WATT Puppy version 8, and Alexandria loudspeakers with its very capable 93 dB speaker. In addition, Thors Hammer includes an essential and unique Wilson Audio Controller that integrates all this advanced technologies into your whole music system, acting as both a crossover and equalizer. Therefore, you can faultlessly get a hybrid music sound system and home theater system. The Controller even makes it easy to switch between these two modes without quality loss in the process. In fact, it optimizes both based on your specific needs. The Upside: Thankfully, much like its large size, Wilson Audio Thors Hammer is also large in performance for a subwoofer. It can precisely hit 16 Hertz at full volume (equivalent to the lowest note of a pipe organ according to company literature). Even artificially-created audio like synthesizers gain a natural sound. Furthermore, high-definition audio tracks on Blu-ray (DTS Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD) are similarly unbelievably lifelike, and indeed are larger than life. At a price of about $21,000, it is also a PLUS that the Wilson Audio Thors Hammer is solidly built with a luxuriously smooth finish and praiseworthy detail. The Downside: Since Thors Hammer is not a powered subwoofer, it still requires an amplifier to use your audio systems Point 1 channel. This will obviously add an extra cost. However, audiophiles willing to already invest this much probably wont be dissuaded. Conclusion: Committed audiophiles making this big of an investment will get what they paid for with Wilson Audio Thors Hammer. You wont find anything on the market that will deliver high-performance like this.Truly the new KING of subwoofers.

Last month, we visited the Aston Martin dealership in Beverly Hills to get a peek at the Bang & Olufsen 103 Plasma high definition television. They had to schedule the demonstration in a car dealership due to the impressive weight. The massive behemoth of a HDT V weighs 584 pounds (TV only) and over 1200 pounds if the motorized stand is included. It requires five movers to deliver and install the television, only if the houses foundation & structure passes muster from a qualified house inspector. Its no wonder that they needed the flooring support capable of handling the various Aston Martin vehicles in the immediate area. The viewing area was framed by a couple BeoLab 5 speakers on the sides and rear of the room. Should have been KLIPSCH, As we sat down for the demonstration, the TV went in the opposite direction; lifting upwards on the motorized stand as it warms up. The center channel speaker (BeoLab 10) moved toward us as the TV reached the appropriate height for viewing. The lift has a built-in safety mechanism that automatically raises the 584 pound television if an object is in the path of the moving TV. The screen came alive in about 20 seconds and fired up a gorgeous 103 picture. I found myself overwhelmed on the first row (about six feet from the television) and immediately wanted to move. To automate color correction and other settings, the television uses an external camera mounted on a small, robotic arm at the top of the unit. The camera moves forward on the arm and points directly at the screen. A series of black bars appears on the screen and the color temperature is adjusted accordingly. The correction is activated every 100 hours that the TV has been in use (100,000 hour life expectancy). Additionally, a small dome in the top right hand corner of the TV automatically detects changes in lighting conditions and adjusts the brightness / contrast levels to match the exterior lighting. The television has an integrated ATSC tuner for MPEG4 formats in high definition (1920 x 1080). It uses a similar system found in other B&O television models, the Beosystem 3 video platform. The B&O reps fired up a few demonstration clips: a custom video laden with tons of CGI, the car chase scene from Quantum of Solace and the 2 trailers; Kung Fu Panda to show off high-contrast, colorful animation and Transformers to demo the detailed picture quality. When finished with the television, black bars that cover the height of the screen slide to the center from each side. Its very much like a movie theater closing curtains. Theres also nifty keychain integration for those interested in home automation. Imagine walking into our home after a long day at work and hitting your keychain to power up your 103 plasma television. Bang & Olufsen is targeting home installations as well as commercial installs such as board rooms. From the time that the consumer orders the panel, there is a 3 to 4 month wait period to have is installed at the home. There is an extensive checklist for the structural engineer to verify before approving a 1,200 pound television being delivered into a private home; which are transported on heavy duty cargo planes. They can be ordered in five different colors: black, red, silver, blue and grey. The television will put you back a very steep $93,050 plus another $18,755 if you want to include the motorized stand in the package deal.

Four amplifiers from Krell have been recalled due to potential overheating problems. The KAV-1500, KAV-500i, KAV-250a/3, and KAV-250a models have been called in for a recall so that Krell can replace faulty fuses that might cause the units to overheat. Krell will be responsible for the cost of the fuse replacement. Once a certificate of replacement is presented, they will issue a $100 check to whoever did the installation. For any questions, Krell customers are to call Walt Schneider at 203.298.4014 or at service@krellonline.com.

Specifications FREQUENCY RESPONSE 35Hz-20kHz(+-)3dB POWER HANDLING 250 watts maximum continuous (1000 watts peak) SENSITIVITY 100dB @ 1watt/1meter NOMINAL IMPEDANCE 8 ohms TWEETER K-63-KN 2" (5.08cm) Aluminum diaphragm compression driver****** HIGH FREQUENCY HORN 90(o)x60(o) Tractrix® Horn WOOFER Two K-1030-KN 10" (25.4cm) Poly carbon graphite cones ENCLOSURE MATERIAL Medium density fiberboard construction (MDF) ENCLOSURE TYPE Bass reflex via dual front-mounted ports DIMENSIONS 41" (104.14cm) x 17" (43.18cm) x 17" (43.18cm) WEIGHT 102 lbs. (46.27cm) FINISHES Whitewash, Lt. Oak, Med. Oak, Cherry, Walnut, Black Satin BUILT FROM 1994 BUILT UNTIL 1996 part # for the cf3s is k-63-kn 2" compression driver kit $304.18 each and they do have them in stock . I hope this helps, go to contact on this forum and they will lead you in the right direction 1-800-274-5547

Hellovadeal!!!!!

A wealth of information it was!!

Always upgrade variety is the spice of life, get them and have fun, you only live once. Not to mention bigger is always badder !!

Table for you to discuss?

Brac wrote : Do you need a new keyboard? One with an "ENTER" or "RETURN" key? To funny dude LMAO!!!

You 2 channel tube guys can get all nostalgic on this one,have fun.ong before he set down to work on the famous Learjet, William Powell Lear had made a name for himself developing instruments and communications equipment for airplanes. In 1946, Lear Inc. became a licensee of a Chicago-based R&D laboratory called the Armour Research Foundation allowing Bill Lear access to Armour's successful wire recording technology, bits of which made their way into his own design for an endless loop wire recorder . While this machine hardly even made a ripple in the marketplace, it was the genesis of Lear's interest in the endless loop. But Lear's early experiments did not result in a line of investigation that led directly to the 8-track.Instead, Lear dropped the project and subsequently was out of the loop for many years while he concentrated his efforts on aircraft. In the mean time, the focus of endless loop technology shifted from wire to tape and from Lear's Chicago headquarters to Toledo Ohio. There, Bernard Cousino, the owner of an Audio Visual equipment and service company called Cousino Electronics, became interested in endless sound recordings. He won a small contract to build a "point of sale" device-- that is, a store display that played a recorded message over and over endlessly. Cousino, aware of the widespread use of short motion picture film loops for similar purposes, began experimenting with an 8-millimeter endless loop film cartridge marketed by Television Associates, Inc. of New Hampshire (a maker of antennas). When Cousino put 1/4 inch tape (about 7.5 millimeters wide, slightly narrower than the motion picture film) in the cartridges, he found that with more than 30 -45 seconds' worth of tape in the loop the tape would quickly bind up. The problem, as it turns out, was not only friction but static electricity. Cousino invented and patented the use of a "double coated" tape, treated on the back with colloidal graphite, which not only lubricated the tape in the pack but conducted away static (graphite is a conductor). Cousino soon developed a cartridge specially adapted for audio tape that he marketed in 1952 through his company, Cousino Electronics, as the "Audio Vendor" A later, fully enclosed version was called the "Echomatic" The little cart could be used with an ordinary reel-to-reel player--the cart fit over one reel spindle and the exposed loop of tape was fed through the heads. Later Cousino would develop the Echomatic, an advanced two-track cartridge which, like the later 8-track, required a special player. In the mean time, another inventor named George Eash designed and patented a similar cartridge that came to be known as the "Fidelipac". Eash was an inventor whose main claim to fame before the Fidelipac was a patent for a helmet mounted loudspeaker for soldiers. Like Cousino, he was from Toledo and was interested in the burgeoning audio-visual field. He became interested in cartridges after he began to rent a work space in the Cousino Electronics building. Following Cousino's pattern, Eash designed and patented a cartridge with similar specifications, later modifying it to include a more complex reel braking mechanism. But while Cousino had assembled and marketed his own products, Eash chose to licensed his designs to a number of outside manufacturers. One result of this strategy was the widespread adoption of the Eash cartridge standard by a wide range of different companies. Eash's cartridge, although complex internally and prone to sudden failure, was nonetheless the basis of dozens of commercial applications of the endless loop, two of which were particularly successful. The first and most long-lasting was in broadcasting. Radio equipment manufacturers since the end of World War II had been developing equipment to automate radio stations-- the idea was to replace expensive d.j.'s and board operators with machines. Eash's Fidelipac design became the basis of several new recorders adapted for radio station use, with heavy duty mechanisms, automatic starting and stopping features and end-of-tape sensors. Even in the early 1960s, many radio stations had put some or all of their music, spot announcements, and station i.d.'s on carts that could be quickly inserted and played and which could be automatically stopped at the beginning of the recording. The second main commercial application was in the field of auto sound. Earl "Madman" Muntz was a former Kaiser-Frazer automobile dealer who had earned his nickname through his loud, flamboyant television commercials. His motto was "I buy 'em retail and sell 'em wholesale. It's more fun that way!" Already a national celebrity by the 1950s, he soon jumped from auto sales to electronics, opening a chain of television retail outlets. The sets he sold were manufactured by another of his other firm's, Muntz Television Inc., and they were based on a clever design that saved a few bucks on parts and assembly. The TV business had its ups and downs, and Muntz went from riches to rags when he landed in bankruptcy court in 1955,and then back to riches a few years later when the market turned around. When he discovered the Fidelipac in the early 1960s he sold Muntz TV and threw in his lot with the endless loop, never to return to his television business (although in later years he re-entered the TV industry with a line of big screen TV sets). Muntz had inexpensive Fidelipac players custom manufactured in Japan, and licensed the music of several record companies for duplication on carts. Even though the players were intended to be installed in cars, where "hi-fi" hardly mattered, Muntz sought to enhance the appeal of his product by adopting the stereo tape standards established by recorder manufacturers a few years earlier, and his players used the new, mass produced stereo tape heads being made for the home recorder industry. These heads put two stereo programs, a total of four recorded tracks, on a standard 1/4 inch tape. Muntz players caught on quickly, starting an autosound fad in California which then began to spread east. By 1963 Muntz players were to be found stylishly adorning the underdash regions of Frank Sinatra's Riviera, Peter Lawford's Ghia, James Garner's Jaguar, Red Skelton's Rolls Royce, and Lawrence Welk's Dodge convertible, not to mention Barry Goldwater's ride (make unknown). During 1964 and 1965 a number of major labels began issuing new releases and old favorites on 4-track, and the Fidelipac looked like it was going to be the next big thing in consumer audio. A number of home players even appeared. Suddenly Bill Lear appeared on the scene, newly world famous for his spectacularly-successful Learjet business plane, and announced in 1965 that he had developed a cartridge with eight tracks that promised to lower the price of recorded tapes without any sacrifice in music quality. In 1963,he became a distributor for Muntz Electronics, mainly in order to install 4-track units aboard his Learjets. Dissatisfied with the Muntz technology, he contacted two of the leading suppliers of original equipment tape heads, the Nortronics Company and Michigan Magnetics. He specified a head with much thinner "pole-pieces" and a new spacing that would allow two tracks (or one stereo program) to be picked off a quarter-inch tape that held a total of 8-tracks. Although a departure from the Muntz player, the technology of the closely-stacked multi-track head was by the early 1960s well established in fields like data recording. Lear in 1963 developed a new version of the Fidelipac cartridge with somewhat fewer parts and an integral pressure roller. During1964, Lear's aircraft company constructed 100 players for distribution to executives at the auto companies and RCA. Just how Bill Lear got his products under the dashboards of Ford Mustangs and Fairlanes is a little unclear. Certainly Lear had the cachet of his successful business jet project, and had many personal contacts in industry. In a roundabout kind of way, he already had ties to Ford. In the 1930s Lear and Paul Galvin had together built Motorola into a leading manufacturer of car radios, and Motorola was now affiliated with Ford. Lear Radio even manufactured a wire recorder briefly in the late 1940s Whatever the details of Lear's selling job, the keys to its spectacular success seems to have been the backing of both Ford and the recording industry. After getting RCA Victor to commit to the mass production of its catalog on Learjet 8-tracks, Ford agreed to offer the players as optional equipment on 1966 models. The response, in one Ford spokesman's words, "was more than anyone expected." 65,000 of the players were installed that year alone. The machines were initially manufactured Ford's electronics supplier and the firm that had pioneered the "motor victrola" --Motorola. Although the 8-track today is dismissed as a failure, from a contemporary standpoint it was a huge success. It was the first tape format to achieve a true, national mass market. While the projections of the promoters of recorded tape on reel-to-reel had fallen short all during the 1950s and 1960s, cart sales on 4 and 8-track grew spectacularly from the early 1960s through the 1970s. While most of this was due to the 8-track, some labels continued to issue 4-tracks into the 1970s. Meanwhile, a number of new contenders rose up to enjoy fleeting moments of glory. Bernard Cousino, arguably the font of much of our cart technology, rendered a seemingly endless succession of endless loop technologies. He had a measure of success with his Echomatic cartridge in the 1960s as a "point of sale" or educational a-v technology, largely by adopting Eash's strategy of licensing his designs to other firms. In 1965 the success of the Echomatic spurred the Champion Spark Plug company (a subsidiary of Ford) to purchase a controlling interest in the firm. At Champion's insistence, the company became a manufacturer of Lear-style players and was a major supplier for Sears Roebuck. Looking for greener fields, Cousino had in the early 1960s also linked up with Alabama entrepreneur and firebrand John Herbert Orr, whose Orradio Industries tape manufacturing firm had recently been acquired by Ampex and who was preparing to start a new under the name John Herbert Orr Enterprises. Orr and Cousino cooked up a new firm, called Orrtronics, which was to be a company that made a background music system based on the old Echomatic cartridge. While Ford debated the adoption of the Lear cartridge in 1965,Champion Spark Plug funded the development at Orrtronics of a competing system. This was the ill-fated "Orrtronic 8-Track", a better-sounding but commercially unsuccessful response to Lear's cart. The obscure Orrtronics 8-Track. The "horizontal" tape playing surface can be seen as a light gray rectangle at the upper left. The slot just to the right is where the capstan contacted a friction roller to drive the tape. These were the main patentable features of the cartridge. The Orrtronic cartridge had a somewhat different tape path that reduced strain on the tape and allowed better head-to-tape contact, and was somewhat more compact to boot. Nonetheless, no record companies seemed interested, and the idea was stillborn. Cousino continued to patent endless loop devices, such as a miniature cartridge and, in his 90s, submitted a patent for an endless loop videocassette. Endless variations on the endless loop cart appeared during the 1960s and1970s.The best known, of course, was the Playtape, a tiny cart introduced in the fall of 1966 which later re-emerged in slightly modified form as the basis of a Dictaphone Corp. telephone answering machine in the 1970s. Answering machines, in fact, were a major source of new endless loop variations from the 1960s on. The success of the Fidelipac in radio spawned a host of imitators, including both the well known Audiopak, the Aristocart made in Canada, the Marathon made by some Massachusetts firm, and the Tapex. The manufacture of 8-track players shifted almost entirely to Japan between1965 and 1975. There were a few valiant efforts to revive the flagging American industry, but to little avail as the foreign firms cranked players out in huge numbers using cheap labor. Nonetheless Quatron Inc., a Maryland firm, shone brightly for a few years making the (now highly desirable) Model 48 automatic 8-track changer, but its star soon faded. By the time the major record labels stopped offering new releases on 8-track, there were no domestic manufacturers of home or auto players.

I guess that's what they meant by blowing your lid.

I guess that's what they mean by blowing your lid.

My only suggestion in this matter of doubt.KPT-MCM-4-T GRAND

To take care of your F-2 problem: NAD C325bee $200.00 @ The Saturday Audio Exchange opened in 1982 with a pretty simple idea, which was to open a small used audio store a few hours a week. The owner of the store, Andy Zimmerman, had already owned a couple of a hi-fi stores at different times, one down in De Kalb, Illinois when he was a student at NIU, and another in the mid 70's in Chicago. The second one was a store called Hear Again, which is still remembered fondly by a lot of people in Chicago. It was a small used audio store (are we seeing a pattern here?) that bought, sold and traded all sorts of audio stuff, from dumpy 8 Tracks to the high end stuff (Quad 8 tracks?). He later sold his half of the store to his partner and went into a non-stereo business. A few years later he got the bug to be back in the stereo business, but really didn't have the time to open a full time store, so he started Saturday Audio Exchange, a used hi-fi store open only 101/2 hours a week. It seemed like sort of a crazy idea at the time, but here we are, into our 22nd(!) year. Still open on Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons, but now the store is open on Sunday to make life a little more convenient for our customers. What's With The 10½ Hours A Week? There are a lot of benefits to only being open a limited number of hours. One is keeping costs down. Not many people are out buying stereo equipment on a weekday afternoon. So why spend the money on having a fully staffed store open if no one's coming in? We have found it's much more cost effective to have a large part time staff working limited hours. That way we can hire knowledgeable and experienced people that we otherwise could not afford. So you can get a great deal and great help picking the gear you want. And since no one is on commission you can be confident the advice you get isn't biased by somebody's paycheck. Also, since almost everybody here works somewhere else most of the time, we're happy to be here and avoid "Retail Burn-Out." The bottom line is that by running a cost effective store we keep prices down so you can save some bucks on quality gear and still get all the qualified sales advice you want. So What Do We Have? We have changed a lot over the years, and now sell as much new equipment as we do used, from companies like Harman / Kardon, NAD, Denon, Musical Fidelity, Sunfire, NHT, PSB, Sumiko, Grado, Tara Labs, Audioquest and a whole lot more. We are always looking for great buys on new, used, demo and close-out audio gear so we can continue to offer the wide range of gear at great prices that our customers have come to expect. We figure about 75% of our customers are referred to us by previous clients because people appreciate the great gear, assistance and deals we've been offering all these years. So if you're looking to buy, sell or trade some equipment please come on by, give us a call, or send us E-mail. Support Your Local Retailer! A quick editorial piece if you don't mind. As much as we love to do business with everyone, everywhere, if you see something you want locally and the price is reasonable, buy it from them! While getting the lowest price is nice, the only way the audio business can thrive and continue to offer innovative and better sounding gear is to have a large amount of knowledgeable independent audio stores. Developing a good relationship with a local dealer will always provide you with the best chance of getting you the sound you want, even if it costs you a couple of extra bucks. But if you can't find the equipment or help you need locally please don't hesitate to give us a call. Return Policy All new and used units sold with a warranty are allowed a 90 day period in which you are entitled to trade the unit back for full purchase price ( less any shipping charges) towards any other unit we have in stock. Items from the "Deals Page", are excluded from this policy, though we of course will honor the factory warranty. Any unit sold "As Is" is not entitled to the 90 day trade back policy. Any unit which proves to be defective within ten days of delivery may be credited or exchanged for a replacement of the same model. In the event a replacement unit cannot be supplied we will refund the unit's purchase price. Saturday Audio Exchange will pay shipping costs for replacement merchandise. Any non-defective merchandise returned for credit will be subject to a 15% restocking charge, with all shipping charges the responsibility of the buyer. Any other arrangements must be made with us beforehand. Please call us at 1-800-970-HIFI for a return authorization number. No returned merchandise will be accepted without a valid return authorization number on the shipping label. All returned merchandise must be in original carton with all manufacturers included accessories. Missing accessories will result in a reduced credit amount by the actual replacement cost of those items. All warranty cards (if initially provided by the manufacturer) must be left blank. Merchandise initially returned as defective, whose defect cannot be verified, will incur a 15% restocking charge. Merchandise initially shipped 'double-boxed' must be returned to Saturday Audio in the same fashion.