My Hi-Fi background begins as a kid with lot's of curiosity as the son of a broadcast engineer and ham radio operator..
There were always scads of parts laying around to "mess" with. The first TV I saw, was built by my father and a peg-legged man in Edenton, NC. It consisted of a tuner with some sweep circuitry, tied to an oscilloscope. I remember watching a ball game and remembering the ghostly trace of the ball through the air due to the high "persistence" factor of the phosphors in the scope. Dad built his own amlifiers and even the speakers. I remember the "Sweet Sixteen speakers that we built about the time "stereo" appeared on the scene. They were big flat boxes, about 3.5 ft square with sixteen norelco speakers (about 4 or 5") wired series/parallel, with whizzer cones and a smallish Calrad tweeter. We thought they were awesome sounding. If I remember correctly, the amps were 6L6 push-pull units. Dad even built the first FM tuner that I can remember...on a little bent up aluminum chassis with no sides and having a seperate power supply. Enoch Light and the Light Brigade was a big seller in the stereo LP market, with those great LP's; "Pervocative Percussion" and other titles placeing everything on either the left or the right channel and very little in between. Those were heady days, indeed!
While in the U.S. Air Force, in the early 60's, and teaching electronics, I decided to build some Dynaco gear. I ended up building a number of
ST-70's and Pas-3x's for the guys in the barracks. I still have my Acoustic Research AR-2ax speakers and use them at my shop. In the late 70's,
I thought that I was slipping behind the times, sonically, and traded my Dyna stuff in for the modern Solid State NAD receiver. I figured that I
was moving ahead technologically. Funny thing......... It was about that time that my interest in listening to good music at home waned !!!
A few years ago, something peaked my interest in going back to tube powered equipment. After researching the playing field, I settled on a
Welborne Labs V-35 stereo amp kit (now discontinued) with p/p EL-34's. I ordered the kit and put it together over the weekend. What a treat!. This thing ate the NAD amp for lunch ! Now I was again enjoying music. The next purchase was a pair of Infinity Composition Prelude PFR, full range speakers. These guys have a vertical tower arangement... just under 6" in width and a side firing active woofer. These have been replaced by the single driver, Voigt pipes with AER drivers from Bert Doppenberg. Next came the Audio Alchemy DTI-Pro32, and DDE-3 Digital stuff with all the hot rod mods and an MPS monolithic power supply. The transport is also AA. The entire AA digital package has now (June, 2001) been replaced by a single Njoe Ah Tjoeb 4000 tubed CD transport/player. At present the preamp duties are served by a Home Headroom headphone amp. The "cans" are Sennheiser 580's. Finally (sure), the new speakers were constructed/
