Guy, what kind of hobbies do you have?

[crfriend]

Jack -- The art-deco look on some of those old radios can't be beat; they just don't make them like that any more! That's a very nice collection.

The shot of the Windwoes setup left me a bit cold, but I can identify with the valve! Perhaps I'll get down my register module with eight of those puppies atop it for a quick photo-shoot later today. If I'm really feeling my oats, I'll put up some shots of my real kit running -- and none of this mamby-pamby microcomputer stuff either!

Zizkov -- That little pocket-V8 looks sweet. I've seen fours with that sort of displacement; how'd the 8 do for fuel economy?

[zizkov]

I never worried about fuel consumption. I live up in the Pennines and streamlining does not help when you are lugging up steep hills, best not to know how bad it was! However on a run down the motorway the streamlining came into its own and you could get 26mpg at 90mph. BUT that hardly ever happened as with 2 twin choke carburettors and a lot of plumbing it was sure to spring a leak somewhere or other

[Jack Williams]

Well, I thought the microcomputer was pretty antique in the world of computers with its mere half a gig of RAM and forty of hard drive. LH button inactive so added mouse. Wont run more than one thing off its USB, so for the USB2 card I have to plug in an external 5v power pack to run the camera etc.
Cobbled up, it gets me there.

[Jack Williams]

It will be good to see your photos of the valve computer gear Carl.
That photo is really about dresses. The lady sets up a stall in the local shopping arcade on Sundays and has Summer dresses on display at this time of year. While I was in the queue at the supermarket (behind me in the photo) I thought, with the raging hot windstorm outside, the light was good for a photograph. Wile I waited for a break in the passersby (the arcade was actually very busy) the little girl came walking really fast (she was MOTORING!) into the scene and really made the picture. Sometimes one can get really lucky with photos.
Something I have always been really interested in is model steam engines. But an engine is an engine and should be driving something. A friend for instance has made a radio controlled model steamboat.
There is also a movement called "Steampunk", which is not necessarily about steam engines, but incorporating steam era stuff into modern things such as fashion etc.
A bloke however has made a steam driven record player (http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/1 ... layer.html) which is not a serious turntable in the HiFi sense. But as I am big on audio, vinyl and reel-to-reel recording (is that another hobby?!) I thought i would build a more serious steam driven turntable. I have this heavy Callaro platter and a good Garrard bearing, which a friend with access to a big lathe is converting to belt drive and marrying to the bearing. I have a heavy intermediate flywheel (from an old radio tuning drive, what else!) to go between the belt from the engine and the belt to the platter. That should ensure a smooth drive, and with a good pickup arm, should rival some really expensive HiFi models. I have discovered a really nice British spirit boiler, and a nice Aussie donkey engine kit, so I will put up more photos as the project progresses.

[Kirbstone]

Jack, Quite apart from your vintage radios and IT set-up I'm totally amazed at your knowledge and dedication to build the ultimate turntable for vinyl LPs.
In Hi-Fi matters I'm totally non DIY, but way back in the '80s I was encouraged to buy a Michell Engineering Transcriptor Hydraulic Reference turntable with a cut-out and an SME arm with the best Shure cartridge money could buy. I still use it to play my vinyl collection and have only replaced cartridges in that time. When in operation it looks fascinating with the gold-plated cylindrical weights whirring round. Very pretty as turntables go. They are belt drive with a lever dragging in a circular bath of hydrostatic fluid under the platter, so one can get the strobe just right, speed-wise. They can also play 45s as well.

Tom K.

[Big and Bashful]

As far as analogue gear goes, I have, for many years, had a Rega Planar 3 turntable, Shure V15 cartridge, can't remember what the arm is just now. Speakers are Celestion Ditton SL662 floor standing monsters. Amps are Rotel RB971's in bridge mode with a Rotel RC972 pre-amp. Cassette deck is an Aiwa F770, brilliant in it's day but today it takes a while to stoke up, the clutches are playing up.
These days the cassette hardly sees any use and the turntable isn't connected, I spend most of my music time with either CDs or using a PC full of CDs ripped onto Itunes, (So many CDs I gave up trying to keep them in the lounge).
I have to admit, most of my leisure time in the house is at the other end of the front room, with the 50" plasma Panasonic TV and a rather pleasant surround sound system, trying to catch up on what the Sky box has recorded, with an ever growing collection of DVDs I can't find time to watch!

[Jack Williams]

Love it. Yeah, well it may not be the ultimate in HiFi analogue, more of a send-up, in that a "Steampunk" steam job can rival the best serious ones!

[Kirbstone]

My ! a 50" plasma is quite a lump, B&B. We went the projector route and have a little room with 5:1 surround sound and a HD projector & 6' square screen, so it will happily show old 4:3 movies, too.

I still like the sound of a good vinyl LP record. It's warm, and a lot of choral stuff to which I refer is in my old 33 rpm collection.
It's a great idea to strip your favourites off and shove 'em into your I-pod. Makes sense for the 'Wee Boat', for instance.

Yes Jack, the Mitchell Engineering turntable solution came at a fraction of the cost of some of the co-axial jobs of the period.

[Big and Bashful]

Kirby,
Much as I like the analog sound of that big piece of rotating vinyl, I have always preferred the much greater dynamic range of a CD. Also I like the crisper cleaner sound. I always found that the finishing track on a LP, often an epic closer, always suffered from the reduced speed of the vinyl near the centre of the record, there is a definite reduction in quality towards the end of the side playing.
I have one attempt to get round the problem. An English group called The Enid produced an album, which is split across 2 discs, which play at 45 r.p.m. to increase the quality of the reproduction. Still not CD quality though.
When I first switched to CDs, the Pink Floyd album A Momentary Lapse of Reason had just been released, I had bought it on LP, then when I bought my first CD deck I bought it again on CD. At a friend's house we did a comparison, he had a system completely geared to playing vinyl, I took my CD deck (Philips CD650, very good in its day). We did a comparison, I think that was the only time I actually preferred the vinyl version, even with the surface noise and occasional clicks (Only the second play of that disc). His system just wasn't well matched to the sound of a CD. The tailing off of quality was still evident towards the end of a side with vinyl, even on that system.
What really converted me to CD was listening to Love Over Gold by Dire Straits, LOUD on a system which had a similar CD to my player, the Celestion speakers I now own, a Rotel RA 1412 amp (Incredible monster amp, wish I could get it repaired). Love over Gold was a true showcase for a good system. I still love it, must play it tonight I think!
Vinyl just has too many compromises, the dynamic range has to be compressed, the frequency response is also squeezed somewhat and you have the noise from the vinyl as well.

OK, that's just my opinion, also different types of music will favour different technologies I suppose. Right, now to finish off my pizza dough, toppings etc and christen my new pizza oven thing.

[Jack Williams]

Yes I think there is something to that, that some music suits one mode of recording and some another. I do have a "souped up" Garrard side-pushing record changer, and that is supurb on stacks of the 12" 45 rpm discs, which do have room for a much bigger dynamic range than LP. It does come down to the joker on the mixing desk a lot. Some are asleep at the wheel! I have to admit I have been sucked in by music DVDs though. It is really good to spot the performers, audience etc. I get the impression the sound on DVD is better than CD, but hard to beat a well engineered 12" vinyl 45. I recently got a genuine American made "Oppo" brand DVD player, and British "Musical Fidelity" "V-DAC" digital to analogue converter for which I built a power supply with a 200 watt transformer. THEN I got some decent bass out of digital to rival that from 12" 45s.

[Jack Williams]

See below.

[Jack Williams]

I noticed that the link to the steam-powered record player the bloke in Auckland here made didn't work, so I have updated it and it now does in fact work!
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/1 ... layer.html

[Kirbstone]

B&B,
I'll quote Michael Flanders on this one: I never-did-care for Music much....It's the HI-FIDELITEEEEE !! All of what you say is, of course, true, and when the wife isn't around I like to play music DVDs up at decent concert volume, too.
I do, however have perhaps a lower volume tolerance than most, and at big parties and some dances I will vacate the hall or room when the volume becomes for me intolerable.
I suspect that a lot of young performers nowadays acquire a degree of deafness early on.

As I said in my post, I retain my turntable in order to refer to music stored on vinyl, not to defend their quality of reproduction in the face of later technologies, which are, frankly mind blowing in some cases. My absolute best sound experience has been between two really nice big muffler earphones. Beats all other systems out of court, but has the disadvantage that it's all just for one person at a time.

[Jack Williams]

Yes, "Dire Straights" are the perfect example of "Hi-Fideliteeee"! I do have but one 12" 45 of them. I think it is called "Sultans of Swing".
Most of my classical music is live broadcast concerts captured on my tweeked Ferrograph Series 7 reel-to-reel. A 7" 1800' tape, at seven-and-a-half inches per second, some 3/4 hour a side, is the perfect length for an average concert. I have collected over 100 equivalent concerts on those, and to me they certainly rival the sound of CD.

[crfriend]

Yes, "Dire Straights" are the perfect example of "Hi-Fideliteeee"! I do have but one 12" 45 of them. I think it is called "Sultans of Swing".

Dire Straits are, indeed, one of the better bands to really put a test to any audio rig, especially with the way that Knopfler can make his guitar sing; however, don't knock Pink Floyd as some of their better stuff was being done before CDs were introduced and when vinyl was pretty much at the peak of its perfection. Some of the sonic detail in The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon is mindblowing.

Most of my classical music is live broadcast concerts captured on my tweeked Ferrograph Series 7 reel-to-reel. A 7" 1800' tape, at seven-and-a-half inches per second, some 3/4 hour a side, is the perfect length for an average concert.

Ah, reel-to-reel -- quite possibly the ultimate expression of the analogue age. Not only do they sound wonderful and have remarkable frequency-response and dynamic range but they just plain look good in operation. I've got 4-track Akai GX-630D-SS with 10.5" reels that's a wonder. Just to see how far I could push the envelope, a number of years ago I bought a dbx compander and tried it with the deck; if everything is set just right, it can outperform CDs for dynamic range and get very close in frequency response. Where the dbx unit really shone, though, was in conjunction with my old U-Matic VCR (which is currently inop and in bad need of a full restoration).

As an aside, does anybody know where to get Laserdisc players? My Pioneer gave up the ghost a couple of years ago and I've got some LD stuff that I'd really like to see again and, face it, DVD just does not cut it for video quality. Blu-ray, maybe, but typical MPEG stuff on DVDs leaves me cold.