Vintage HiFi. Sounds great, looks cool, costs peanuts
Restoring equipment can be as simple as replacing missing wires, as was the case with my B&W 600i speakers (£2 at a car boot sale). At the other extreme is the Garrard Zero 100SB turntable (£45 e bay) I’m currently restoring to health. This needs hours of work, including a motor re build.
I have half a dozen recording devices to connect. Unfortunately my Mission Cyrus amplifier only has provision for one tape recorder. To solve this problem I built This.
My Main HiFi System is mainly concerned with playing vinyl, but it can also do that modern streaming thing and lots of other formats. The equipment to do this was produced over a range of five decades. So let’s take a trip back in time from the newest component to the oldest.
You don’t say! That’s what it says on the tin. But what’s inside?
I do like the clean simplicity of the aesthetics of my Mission Cyrus One amplifier. However a nice big pair of mechanical VU meters also looks good. So, I built this.
I bought this at the boot sale because it was Denon and cheap. It turned out to be ideal for my needs. First it needed some attention.
My Mission Cyrus One amplifier is great, but it doesn’t have a headphone socket. I now use an external headphone amplifier, driven from the tape out RCA sockets. Before I made that investment I got great results from this modified speaker switch box.
Vinyl after dark denied because my Mission Cyrus amplifier has no headphone output. I need something to connect to the tape out RCA sockets. I considered DIY, but it would have cost as much as a bought one to make anything that looked half decent. Research showed that a valve amp could be had for …
In 1984 the Dual CS505-2 was the go to budget turntable for the HiFi enthusiast. I treated myself to the standard version for the princely sum of £80.