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What's the oldest piece of gear in your system?

This site is here for the buying and selling of Audio equipment. This causes me to wonder if most of us have relatively new equipment. If most of it is new, what is the oldest piece of equipment still in use, and why are you still using it?

My oldest piece is a Sota Star Sapphire, but it has been upgraded. It was originally purchased as a Sapphire in the 80's, but was upgraded to a Star Sapphire about two or three years ago.

What's your story?
128x128nrchy
newbee
4,768 posts
 
ARC SP10II Preamp - 20 years old.
Accuphase 101 Tuner - 27(?) years old.

Everything else is between 6 and 10 years old. I don't change my stuff much - guess I aught to give up on this hobby now and just listen to music :-)
tubegroover
2,320 posts
 
JVC 1050 CD player used as a transport, 14 years.

Larryi I also have a Yamaha DSP-1 unit that has been in the box for the past 12 years.
shventus
77 posts
 
My oldest gear, but not currently in use, is a 1975 Nakamichi 350 tape deck (purchased along with my SAE preamp/amp, and ESS speakers). My oldest, that is still in my system, are my 1989 Mirage M1 speakers.
nrchy's avatar
nrchy OP
2,124 posts
 
Albert those speakers are that old and still sound that good! No wonder you kept them.
bright_star_audio
179 posts
 
I have a McIntosh MI 3 that was made in the early 1960s. It is called a Maximum Performance Indicator. It has a small oscilloscope built into the front panel. You would connect this unit to a MacIntosh tuner (although I believe that you could use it with other tuners as well). The oscilloscope would show the amount of multipath present in the signal so you could rotate your antenna (many people who owned this unit had a motorized antenna that could go up and down and around) and optimize the antenna's position for minimum multipath distortion. It's pretty cool to see the 'scope present the signal.

Barry Kohan
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