Winter in Toronto.

Surprising JBL630s

That's what they call them, no space between the letters and numbers. These are from the early eighties, and sound quite nice, very JBL. They use two 6.5" woofers and a titanium laminate dome tweeter in a wide, narrow rear ported, very solid cabinet. They're sounding very punchy (but not the last word in detail) driven by the Mission Cyrus One.

I'm not only interested in Mission gear, but the last Argonauts are speakers I've been anxious to hear since I first heard the 770 Freedom 4 years ago.

Friday Update.

  I haven't done an update like this in a while.
  The SAE 3022 amp left this week. It's super serious blackness isn't for everybody, but it's a very good amplifier.
  I'm embarrassed to tell you that I blew a channel of the Mission Cyrus One amp about a month ago, my fault. The amp only accepts banana plugs for speaker connections, and my proper terminated cables were on loan. I used screw on bananas on another set of cables, and because the holes are so closely spaced, and because one tiny strand of wire wasn't securely screwed down, positive touched negative, and poof! I took the amp to Joe my new service guy, and discovered a lot about this particular example:
  1) I blew a perfectly good channel. The other side had been repaired at least 20 years earlier, with below spec parts, and I was lucky it functioned at all.
  2) There were a number of dried out capacitors. As nice as I thought the amp sounded (I didn't push it very hard), I haven't heard what it's really capable of.
  3) The heatsink and outputs belong on a Cyrus Two! This struck me as odd, until a friend with extensive audio industry experience filled me in. In production runs of this sort, it's not uncommon

to upgrade parts when the specified ones run out or are unavailable...no one is going to complain because their amp is better than specified, as mine, apparently, is. Joe has replaced all outputs and drivers with correct ones, and recapped a lot of the amp. It will be back soon, and it's going to be awesome! The Ortofon 445 speakers left this week as well. The person who took them away has owned a pair of 443s, their smaller brothers, since 1976, and was thrilled to have found them. On final listen, I think I described them well when I said that if you love Dynaco A-25s, you'll love these.

The Walkervilles.

Friday Update

  I've said it before, but I really am sorry that I haven't been posting recently (Lance Armstrong didn't count). I can't use the work excuse. The time I would ordinarily spend pursuing equipment to play with, photograph and write about has been spent listening to music on a system that's stayed pretty stable for weeks. The Marantz 1200 left the system briefly so I could check out the Sony TA-F6B (which is here and as good as I'd hoped). It's back (after having the relay replaced, the only component that hadn't been restored) and excellent. The Sony & the Marantz are both amps I could live with happily for a long time. The Technics SL-1400 has been reliable, rock solid and trouble free, and the SAE high output moving coil cartridge has continued to sound better (after the break in period of 40 hours, a friend told me I'd hear another improvement at around 150 hours, and he was right). I've been mostly listening to my Mission Argonaut Reference speakers, and taking my time deciding what might be next. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.

I took down Lance because I got tired of looking at his smug face. I'll have new equipment to tell you about soon, I think.

Ortofon 445s first photo.

  I've learned more about these wonderful speakers. They were top of the line when introduced (sometime between 1975 & 1977) in North America, and cost a staggering $700/pair back then (adjusting for inflation, they'd be over $2,500 today!). The woofers are aperiodically vented. The crossover and all drivers are by Scanspeak. The speakers were available in walnut or rosewood veneer. These are rosewood. Most file photos and descriptions I found suggest that the front baffles are simulated woodgrain. This pair has real rosewood veneer front baffles.   These are much nicer than yesterday's file photo, and sound very good.

Just revived! Mission 780s circa 2001

  I described and raved about these speakers last year, when I installed new woofers in a friend's pair.
  There was one huge problem with this speaker line when released. According to Frank Fabian at The Speaker Shop, the Keraform woofers were assembled with a poorly chosen adhesive that actually corrodes copper (leads and voice coils). The woofers had failed before I bought them, and if yours haven't, rest assured, they will! After much searching (and some blind luck) I found the correct replacements, made in 2011 with silver wiring, and heavier magnets. They're brand new, and sound fantastic.

The Sony TA-F6B is here!

Updated with better photo.    It sounds great. My pictures don't do it justice today (very flat light). It's a beautiful piece. Dark silver, with lighter machined aluminum knobs (all with set screws) and engraved white lettering. The VU meters work perfectly (everything works perfectly), but need bulbs (which, if they're the same type as in the TA-F5, will be very hard to find).
  This is a much beefier amp than the TA-F5, and quite heavy, despite the lightweight pulse power supply. I'm very happy.

   The Vintage Knob link here.

I've been looking for one of these since I had the TA-F5 in 2009, and the TA-F4 in 2011. In pictures, I don't find it as beautiful as the lower powered ones, with their centred VU meters, and silver faceplates, but it should sound even better than they do, and that's saying a lot!