JUNE 2006—Listening to Vintage Equipment
In Issue 161 of the Absolute Sound, Sue Kraft writes about her experiences listening
to a thirty-year old Harmon Kardon Citation 16 Power Amplifier.
She really liked this amp once she got it repaired and working properly. Interestingly,
the original TAS review from 1976 did not think much of it at all. As she points out in
her article, modern speakers and new parts make it a different amp than it was
originally.
The whole question of vintage equipment sound quality is an intriguing one. My
interest in improving the Eico that I have written about arises from a curiosity as to
just what sort of sound quality is it capable of, given good quality modern parts.
Determining the sound quality of vintage equipment begins with the inherent dilemma
that any piece of audio equipment this old, or older, has had parts replaced or needs
parts replaced so it can’t sound like it did when it was new. Even if you could find a
pristine, never-used item, its capacitors will have changed value due entirely to time.
New parts, even non-audiophile parts, are higher quality and better toleranced than
those available years ago. Just getting this Citation amp repaired and working will
have upgraded it slightly, unavoidably, potentially making it sound better today than
it did originally. It’s rare, also, in making repairs that you can just replace a part or
two. At minimum, you end up replacing the same part in both channels even when
one channel is working just so the parts are of the same value. Since any piece of
equipment is also a system, replacing Part A affects Part B, which affects Parts C, D,
and Q as well. As I mentioned in Part 1 of the Eico article, there was really no good
stopping point once I started replacing parts. You have to replace them all. Leaving
a 46-year old resistor in the circuit while replacing everything else is insanity. That
resistor will either end up failing as soon as you fire the amp up or will cause so much
noise that it will negate all the other work that has been done. Repairing a piece of
vintage equipment becomes almost synonymous with restoring it. Sorry, I’m
digressing here.
While I absolutely agree that new parts and better speakers matter, I think there is
another source for the sonic improvement Ms. Kraft heard.
And that is the vastly higher quality of today’s interconnects and speaker cables.
Even the least expensive cabling in a manufacturer’s product line is light years better
than the stuff that was used by most of us prior to the late 1980s. I didn’t buy what
would be considered decent quality interconnects until about 1990. What were
reviewers using earlier and can we still trust anything they wrote about what they
heard?
I have never met Harry Pearson but one question I have wanted to ask him is just
what he used for interconnects and speaker wiring with the equipment he reviewed in
the 1970s and 80s. I suspect he was using the same stuff the rest of us were—the
free cables that come with each product, the stuff sold at Radio Shack, or something
we made from whatever wire we had around the house. Impedance? Capacitance?
Inductance? These weren’t terms I had any familiarity with. Knowing what we know
today about cable interactions you almost have to conclude that much of the bad
sound was probably bad cable interactions and the good sound may have just been
good luck.
I have no intention of hooking up the Eico HF-81 to 99-cent cables after all the time I
have spent working on it just to hear it more “originally.” I want to hear everything
that it can do and assess just what, if anything, I have accomplished. What makes
playing with older equipment like this so much fun is discovering how good much of it
sounds as it interacts with modern equipment. A lot of this equipment is being
rediscovered by audio enthusiasts as we find it makes music better than any of us
had ever suspected. There is an irony in this, though, in that the best sounding
tubes for most of our equipment were new when the equipment was also new.
Old equipment, new parts, new cables, with old tubes can easily equal musical
enjoyment. And for those of us who don’t do this sort of work for a living, the process
of getting this equipment working again can also offer a lot of fulfillment.
Speaking of the Eico, I think I finally have everything sorted out with it and Part 2 is
not far off. There has been some wandering in the wilderness but I think it has all
been sorted out.
I am also working on my experiences with the Infinity Primus 360s. Since I am using
them to listen to the Eico, it’s really impossible to discuss either component
completely independently. I am doing some tube rolling at the moment that I hope
will tell me more about the resolution, potential, and limitations of both amp and
speakers. I hope you’ll find it interesting.
Kent Johnson
May 31, 2006
In Issue 161 of the Absolute Sound, Sue Kraft writes about her experiences listening
to a thirty-year old Harmon Kardon Citation 16 Power Amplifier.
She really liked this amp once she got it repaired and working properly. Interestingly,
the original TAS review from 1976 did not think much of it at all. As she points out in
her article, modern speakers and new parts make it a different amp than it was
originally.
The whole question of vintage equipment sound quality is an intriguing one. My
interest in improving the Eico that I have written about arises from a curiosity as to
just what sort of sound quality is it capable of, given good quality modern parts.
Determining the sound quality of vintage equipment begins with the inherent dilemma
that any piece of audio equipment this old, or older, has had parts replaced or needs
parts replaced so it can’t sound like it did when it was new. Even if you could find a
pristine, never-used item, its capacitors will have changed value due entirely to time.
New parts, even non-audiophile parts, are higher quality and better toleranced than
those available years ago. Just getting this Citation amp repaired and working will
have upgraded it slightly, unavoidably, potentially making it sound better today than
it did originally. It’s rare, also, in making repairs that you can just replace a part or
two. At minimum, you end up replacing the same part in both channels even when
one channel is working just so the parts are of the same value. Since any piece of
equipment is also a system, replacing Part A affects Part B, which affects Parts C, D,
and Q as well. As I mentioned in Part 1 of the Eico article, there was really no good
stopping point once I started replacing parts. You have to replace them all. Leaving
a 46-year old resistor in the circuit while replacing everything else is insanity. That
resistor will either end up failing as soon as you fire the amp up or will cause so much
noise that it will negate all the other work that has been done. Repairing a piece of
vintage equipment becomes almost synonymous with restoring it. Sorry, I’m
digressing here.
While I absolutely agree that new parts and better speakers matter, I think there is
another source for the sonic improvement Ms. Kraft heard.
And that is the vastly higher quality of today’s interconnects and speaker cables.
Even the least expensive cabling in a manufacturer’s product line is light years better
than the stuff that was used by most of us prior to the late 1980s. I didn’t buy what
would be considered decent quality interconnects until about 1990. What were
reviewers using earlier and can we still trust anything they wrote about what they
heard?
I have never met Harry Pearson but one question I have wanted to ask him is just
what he used for interconnects and speaker wiring with the equipment he reviewed in
the 1970s and 80s. I suspect he was using the same stuff the rest of us were—the
free cables that come with each product, the stuff sold at Radio Shack, or something
we made from whatever wire we had around the house. Impedance? Capacitance?
Inductance? These weren’t terms I had any familiarity with. Knowing what we know
today about cable interactions you almost have to conclude that much of the bad
sound was probably bad cable interactions and the good sound may have just been
good luck.
I have no intention of hooking up the Eico HF-81 to 99-cent cables after all the time I
have spent working on it just to hear it more “originally.” I want to hear everything
that it can do and assess just what, if anything, I have accomplished. What makes
playing with older equipment like this so much fun is discovering how good much of it
sounds as it interacts with modern equipment. A lot of this equipment is being
rediscovered by audio enthusiasts as we find it makes music better than any of us
had ever suspected. There is an irony in this, though, in that the best sounding
tubes for most of our equipment were new when the equipment was also new.
Old equipment, new parts, new cables, with old tubes can easily equal musical
enjoyment. And for those of us who don’t do this sort of work for a living, the process
of getting this equipment working again can also offer a lot of fulfillment.
Speaking of the Eico, I think I finally have everything sorted out with it and Part 2 is
not far off. There has been some wandering in the wilderness but I think it has all
been sorted out.
I am also working on my experiences with the Infinity Primus 360s. Since I am using
them to listen to the Eico, it’s really impossible to discuss either component
completely independently. I am doing some tube rolling at the moment that I hope
will tell me more about the resolution, potential, and limitations of both amp and
speakers. I hope you’ll find it interesting.
Kent Johnson
May 31, 2006
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