The Allure of Vintage Audio Gear

+1 Harmon Kardan 730, my receiver for 40 years.

Never had the bug to upgrade until it died. Now I split the duty between a Cayin tube receiver and Accuphase SS preamp and Class A amp.

I’m having way more fun collecting and restoring vintage gear than my main modern system. I think many people hear vintage and think they are all overly warm sounding, but from my experiance thats a good indication there is old caps and componets in them that needed replacment probably long ago.

In my experiance vintage can compete with moddern systems at similar costs when restored. No a $2000 restored vintage peice wont compete with a $10000 piece nore should it. But doller for doller i’d take a vintage system over a modern system in the $1500-$2000 range, as what i have into them. I really dont know may speaker in that price range that can come close. 

Example my Vintage ADS L910 speakers (restored) from the late 70’s sound very good and very musical. not overly warm or lacking detail. In many ways i prefer them to modern speakers. no they dont have quite the details level or sound stage level but close enough that what they do right makes them very enjoyable.

I was exclusively into vintage gear until 3 years ago. My only tech retired and I decided to go modern. Except for my speakers. I love my JBL 4311s and built my new system around them. I'm still in the process but it's going well. The 4311s, like most JBL have volume control for mid and tweets that allows me to tweak the sound as I change components. 

Over the past 3 years I've listened to 6 other speakers and nothing comes close. I'm still looking at new ones, but replacing these with something I like more will probably cost upwards of $15k. I paid $600 for my JBLs. 

High quality gear is high quality gear, no matter when it was built. 

For me Vintage gear is where it's at. I like the build quality, the looks, and most importantly how it sounds. I like analog music, vintage will give you that, without all the add ons of today's gear. 

For me, when I see new gear, I have to turn the knobs, or switches. Unless it is very high end gear, all the knobs, and switches feel cheap. Most are not even real, all digital on the back end. The stuff that does feel good, is so far out of my price range. 

Right now, my main 2ch is all vintage, sans a streamer (need something from this century) & my TT. The TT is only new, as it's been tough to get the vintage piece I've been looking for. The sound is warm, analog, clean, open, with 200 old school watts, plenty of power to drive my vintage Forte II's. 

As far as reliability goes, almost nothing is reliable anymore. My HT system is all new, my expensive Marantz receiver bit the dust 2 mo ago, out of warranty, no one wants to work on it. Forced me to buy a brand new Marantz receiver. With my vintage gear, once I year, I take it all apart, blow out anything inside, clean all the pots & switches. Look for any swelling caps, button it all back up. I do believe my vintage gear will outlast all my new gear. Best of all the vintage stuff can all be fixed. 

Right now I’m listening to rebuilt stacked Quad 57’s with added Enigma Sopranino super tweeters, the latter not being vintage, powered by just serviced Futterman H3-AA amps. The panels are wired in series, the tweeters straight off the amps in parallel. WOW! Being a professional musician, I can attest that this is superior to my Focal Stella Utopias, except for bass slam? It’s a lush sound that wraps around me in gorgeous tonality. Not bad for mid 50’s speakers! Whenever I switch out to my modern systems, I feel withdrawal from losing the magic.