Probably the best-value purchase I have ever made for £9

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Don’t you just hate the people who go around ‘plugged in’. You say hello to a neighbour walking their dog and it takes five minutes for them to unplug themselves and respond.

Meanwhile at the opposite end of the value spectrum I found a Sennheiser RMS1 at the back of the church audio cupboard. >£70. It is a plastic lump providing a button and led on the end of a 2.5mm jack. Plugs into the wireless remote microphone. Probably costs £2 to make.

[peak4]

On peak4 Said:

…
I bought a Leak 2000 tuner amp in the end, but did listen to a pair of Quad valve amps driving four stacked Quad electrostatic speakers, as two pairs.
I’d never heard anything so clear before, or since probably; certainly a world different to the AR LSTs I paired with the amp, and a Thorens 160 + Transcriptors Reference arm.

…

Bill

I recall going to visit a friend who had just installed Quad speakers and amps – to my totally untutored ear, they sounded pretty good. When I realised that they had cost more than my recently purchased car, I nearly fell off my chair…

[Andrew TinsleyParticipant @andrewtinsley63637]

On the subject of Hi Fi, I wanted a Garrard 301 deck, so a visit to Tottenham Court Road was in order. No 301 decks, all sold out and now only the new Garrard 401 was on sale, which AFIK was about £17. Got it home, opened the box to check the contents, put the receipt in box and resealed it and stored it in a warm place.

Things did not pan out as I had hoped and the box is still where I put it near 50 years ago. A friend of mine who is a fanatic Hi Fi person, was taken aback when I told him. I was equally dumbfounded when he told me what a NIB Garrard 401 was likely to fetch! Must be the best Hi Fi buy I have ever made.

Andrew.

[VicParticipant @vic]

Just to say, I’m using the Sony Bluetooth corded ear buds. The sound is good, the battery lasts ages and having a cord between the two buds means you can’t loose them so easily! 😉

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

As this Topic started with a modern headphone adapter, and has understandably drifted to nostalgia for the wonderful days of old … Did anyone else buy the Wharfedale Isodynamic Headphones when they were launched ?

I am evidently not alone in believing they were rather good:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/wharfedale-isodynamic-headphones.380283/

MichaelG.

I had a pair and they were brilliant for many years. The only reason for giving up on them was that the leatherette or whatever the covering was and the foam underneath it eventually died horribly. These days I’d probably reupholster them and carry on using them.

[Andrew Tinsley]

On Andrew Tinsley Said:

On the subject of Hi Fi, I wanted a Garrard 301 deck, so a visit to Tottenham Court Road was in order. No 301 decks, all sold out and now only the new Garrard 401 was on sale, which AFIK was about £17. Got it home, opened the box to check the contents, put the receipt in box and resealed it and stored it in a warm place.

Things did not pan out as I had hoped and the box is still where I put it near 50 years ago. A friend of mine who is a fanatic Hi Fi person, was taken aback when I told him. I was equally dumbfounded when he told me what a NIB Garrard 401 was likely to fetch! Must be the best Hi Fi buy I have ever made.

Andrew.

I have a 401, plus the less-common big brother of the SME 3009 arm, the 3012. Neither of that much use for listening to music in the workshop…

[Mark Rand]

On Mark Rand Said:

… the leatherette or whatever the covering was …

Oddly enough, Mark … I happen to know how that material is built

In the summer vacation between School and Uni. I worked at a fabric manufacturer in Lancaster; in their prototype Lab.

My major task there was preparing samples of the stuff.

I never got to see any  production machines, but I presume they would just use a continuous version of the Lab process:

A synthetic Velvet is first produced, with the fibres all standing erect [none of your Arty ‘crushed velvet’ effects here] and, in the Lab, put into basically a screen-printing frame.

A polyurethane miix is then spread over it in a thin layer … which adheres to the tips of the fibres, and then sets as a skin.

It’s the fact that the portion of the fibres below the skin and above the base weave can flex which gives the finished material its drape and feel.

The better samples came very close to simulating the look & feel of soft natural leather.

MichaelG.

 

 

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