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Old 04-30-2009, 05:44 PM   #1
Cash68
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Default Ultimate Vintage Technics System

Behold.

Click the image to open in full size.

I've spent the last few years collecting, planning, and building what I would refer to as the ultimate vintage Technics system, using almost exclusively technics components from the mid to late 70s. It all started innocently enough, I had a pioneer home theater in a box system, and I really missed the big sound that only larger systems can provide. I started occasionally browsing ebay and craigslist for vintage receivers, and decided I'd like to get one. I was also originally planning on building a set of speakers to be powered by some 70s tank, when I stumbled upon an ad on craigslist selling a 'vintage stereo', with a rather small fuzzy picture of a few aluminum looking components with some rather large dark speakers, 4 of them. After talking to the guy and making sure the stuff wasn't junk, I went to pick it all up for a cool $150.

This was the beginning. For that $150, I received the biggest, baddest quadraphonic receiver technics ever made, the SA-8500X. At 22.5" wide and 6.25" tall, it was massive, and it weighed almost 70lbs. It also came with an equally wide but shorter quadraphonic 8 track player, the RS-858US. On top of that, it came with an amazing cool looking oscilliscope display, a Technics/Panasonic SH-3433. It's a visualizer of sorts, able to display both waveforms and 4 channels of sound at the same time from a top down perspective. However, the real score in my opinion were the 4 large dark speakers. I wasn't originally really interested in them, as I was bent on building my own, but upon putting them in the car, when the guy walked away, I popped off the grills just to see what they looked like:

Click the image to open in full size.

Wow. Pretty amazing looking drivers, and dome midranges? They had L-pads to adjust the tweeter and the mid, and their backsides sported 6 high quality terminals with a **** to adjust something. Huh.

Upon getting home, I discovered these were Panasonic SB-550s, some of the highest quality speakers Panasonic sold at the time, and that goofy **** and terminals on the back meant you could bi-amp or tri-amp them, if you wanted. Wow. I set everything up on my dining room table (much to the annoyance of my wife), and hooked everything up for a quick listen.

Holy. Crap. I heard things in songs I had never heard before, that I'd listened to a billion times. It was absolutely amazing. And this was just the beginning. One top of the fact that all the equipment was in A+++++ condition, I received the original manuals for EVERYTHING, along with the original receipts, schematics, and other misc accessories.

Over the next 10 months, I spent a lot of time scouring ebay, craigslist, and designing a desk/cabinet to hold all this equipment. This is the culmination of my efforts, thus far:

Click the image to open in full size.

I built the desk myself over the summer in my school's woodshop, using 7 layer plywood with a baltic birch veneer. The details are anodized aluminum tubing, stainless cap screws, and I used my spraygun to put on about 4 coats of satin polycrylic. I gave my TV away, and replaced it with a 24" iMac, which has been great so far. I can watch tv, record shows, play games, watch DVDs, listen to CDs, mp3s, whatever, all feeding via optical audio to a technics SHA-500 dolby digital/DTS decoder. It feeds the 4 main surrounds into the SA-8500X quadraphonic receiver, which powers the amazing SB-550s. I wound up buying two almost identical amps, an SU-7300, and an SU-7700. The main difference is wattage, one pushes a bit harder than the other. I have the SU-7700 driving 4 bass shakers installed on the bottom of my couch and loveseat, which really makes low frequencies amazing. The SU-7300 powers a 10" subwoofer that I built for about $50 total, using a dayton DVC shielded sub. I also picked up an extremely extremely rare 'quadraphonic stereo amplifier', a Technics SU-3404. How is it quad and stereo? Well it only amplifies 2 channels, but you can hook up another 2 channel amp to this thing, and it will control that amp also. It's very bizarre. I'm currently only using one channel of that, to drive a center channel I also built myself, for around $60.

Pics:
SB-550s:
Click the image to open in full size.
Click the image to open in full size.
WOODEN grills. How bizarre.
Click the image to open in full size.
Click the image to open in full size.
VU meters are sexy. This is the SA-8500x monster.
Click the image to open in full size.
Aura Pro Bass shakers installed, the couch is suspended on 1" rubber blocks to allow it to really move.
Here's the center channel I designed and built myself, for about $60. The rounded back parts of the cabinet are all thermoformed.
Click the image to open in full size.
Click the image to open in full size.
Here are a few process shots of the subwoofer... I made a budget of $50, and came in at $48.92, total. One of the unique things about this sub is that the entire cabinet is rubberized with black, spray on plasti-dip to fight any resonance.
Click the image to open in full size.
Click the image to open in full size.
and finally, another shot of the desk with all the components:
Click the image to open in full size.

The desk cost me about $300 in materials, but was well worth it. I designed it around my system, which had to be done, there currently are not any A/V cabinets that will house 22" wide components. My total investment has been about $750, excluding the iMac, but I simply cannot describe how amazing this system is. It can rattle my walls, if I want it to, but the clarity and sound quality is what really sets it apart. My plans for the future include building a set of drawers for the desk, along with a bigger, super badass subwoofer, and possibly another SA-8500X to bi-amp my SB-550s. We'll see, but right now this is just totally ridiculous in it's current state. I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoy it daily.
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Old 04-30-2009, 06:03 PM   #2
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that's mighty impressive. nice job!
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Old 05-04-2009, 02:55 AM   #3
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Is it an optical illusion that the main desk surface looks bowed in the middle?
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Old 05-27-2009, 10:42 PM   #4
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It isn't bowed, because I didn't know how to get a consistent curve that huge, but it does have a flat area near the center, then angles back a few degrees about 3 ft from the sides.
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Old 05-27-2009, 10:42 PM
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7300, 8500x, amps, knob, meter, sa, sa8500x, sb5000, sbs4, speakers, stereo, su, technics, ultimate, vintage, vu



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