I have a pref for Sansui, Akai and some of the earlier early Pioneer stuff.
In the off room, I’ve got an Onkyo turntable, a Sansui 350 headunit, an Akai double cassette player and a couple Boston acoustics speakers. Also a set of Sansui SS-35 studio monitor headphones for when I want to listen in uninterrupted peace and quiet. It all has a nice warm sound to it that I can’t replicate with any of my modern high end stuff. To much digital reprocessing in the modern stuff for me when listening to vinyl or tape.
In my dedicated audio room I run a Sansui 8080db, an Autotechnica turntable (on a granite plinth), a Pioneer tape deck and more vintage Boston Acoustics speakers. Headphones are a set of Pioneer monitor 10 studio headphones. 800watts of power and the neighbors up the street can confirm that. Like the off room stuff, it sounds warm and clear, also un-replicate-able with modern gear. Not that modern gear can’t sound good, its just….different.
There is a sony 5 disc carousel hooked up to the 8080 for the cd era stuff, but I usually prefer vinyl if I have a choice. Feels more “alive” to me…. scratches, pops and all. CD’s are nice and clear, but (to me) they also sound a bit overly “sterilized” compared to vinyl.
All picked up second hand or at yard sales. Some working when purchased, some not. Have lots more stuff up in the storage room, but this stuff is my “go to” when I want nice, relaxing, warm sound.
I also “re-cap” and clean/test/adjust all my vintage equipment before it goes back in to regular service. Nice thing is vintage hifi was made to be serviced and finding factory level service manuals is just a google away. Can’t do that with modern gear and all their surface mount components. They break, you toss it and buy another, or at least thats the oem’s plan.
“Repairable” stereo equipment pretty much disappeared right around the end of the 80’s. Not a big deal as hifi systems hit their high water mark right around the early 80’s, so not much worth buying after then unless you want to spend big bucks on a modern component system. I’ e got a megabuck modern system (along with my vintage stuff) and while it sounds good (and has modern features), it still has an “over processed” sound to it. And, believe it or not, my 8080DB will “out power” it every time.
Mobile cassette players pulled everyone away from dedicated home systems in the 80’s and the discman, ipod etc just made sure the nail was driven good and deep.as audio players got smaller and smaller, they had to shrink down to pieces like surface mount on the boards. You can fix sm boards, but its just not worth the time for oem’s and shops. More affordable to just replace it or tell you it can’t be fixed.
Only bummer with vintage is some of the components are discontinued and modern equivalents have to be sourced. All the caps I replace are always high quality “audio grade” caps, same with resistors. No generic low quality Chinese factory rejects here. Only problem with that is modern components make the vintage stuff sound…well… modern, which somewhat ruins the vibe. My 8080 has modern power transistors (a po blew the originals) and while they sound pretty good (if you hadn’t heard originals, you’d think the modern parts were outstanding) they just aren’t the same sound as the originals. Close and perfectly acceptable sound, its just a little….”off”….compared to an original box. Ah well, that I can keep them running is good enough I guess.
Vinyl collection is probably somewhere around 150-200 albums. Mostly 70’s and 80’s rock and pop. Little bit of late 60’s and classical in there as well.
