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For Old Timers who experienced the "Golden Age" of Audio of the 60s and 70s.

Having traversed the long span of time and have known the love of Scott, Fisher Dynaco and McIntosh I have now settled into my "sweet spot" between a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls and Vintage Marantz 7 Preamp, DynacoST70 Amp,  Marantz 125 Tuner ,DUAL 1229 Changer and finally achieved "Musical Nirvana". How Sweet it Is!! Robinhood1940.

Please share your experiences!
robinhood1940

Showing 3 responses by bdp24

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bdp24
10,016 posts
 
Don’t forget, the original Quad ESL was available back then, and so were good tube electronics, the Thorens TD-124 turntable, and the Decca cartridge. So a highly transparent, uncolored system was available, though only the audiophiles and early high end shops of the day knew it. Gordon Holt alone was writing about the good stuff in Stereophile (Harry Pearson and his Absolute sound not showing up until many years after Gordon had started publishing Stereophile), which was a subscription only quarterly (in a good year ;-), with a subscriber base of a few thousand. I discovered him and it in ’71, and that’s when my never-ending quest truly began. Prior to that, it was AR, Rectilinear (who remembers them?!), Shure, Dynaco, and McIntosh. I HATED those damn JBL Century L-100’s---unbearably bright, forward, and colored. But on the other side were the soft, dark, recessed, relatively neutral AR’s. Neither were very good! Hearing my first ESL’s (the RTR tweeters, then the Infinity Servo-Static I, then the Quads) was a revelation! Then Audio Research reached the West Coast, and the SP-3, D-75/D-51, bi-amped Magneplanar Tympani I's was IT!
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,016 posts
 
The Infinity 2000A! They had the great RTR ESL tweeters I mentioned above, which blew my young mind. I wanted them SO bad, but had to settle for the lesser 1001 model, without the RTR's. Mel was one of the handful of early high end dealers in the country, and was pals with J.Gordon Holt, who lived in his part of the country, Pennsylvania. I still have some of Mel’s MAS inter-connects.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,016 posts
 

Right bifwynne, it was a cardboard tube as a "transmission-line" in the 2000A. I heard them at Sound Systems in Palo Alto, CA, hooked up to early SAE electronics, which were the hot amps until ARC made it to the West Coast. They also had the speaker ESS was making before Oscar Heil hooked up with them, the Transtatic I. It also had the RTR ESL tweeters (the static part of the model name) and a transmission-line (the trans part), but theirs a real one. In front of the line was a KEF B-139 woofer (the driver Dave Wilson used in pairs in his WAMM speaker), and then a KEF 5" midrange cone. I couldn’t afford their $1200/pr price at the time (or even the $600 for a pair of 2000A’a. The 1001’s were only $139 apiece), but I have a pair now!

That was in ’71, and by the next year they had the Infinity Servo-Statics and Magneplanar Tympani T-I’s in the same (large, obviously) room, running off ARC D-75 and D-51 amps. The guy who owned Sound Systems was kind of obnoxious, and I ended up buying a complete ARC/Tympani/Thorens/Decca/Revox system in ’72 from Walt Davies at Audio Arts in Livermore. Walt went on to develop and is making the Last Record Care product line, and is a great guy.

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