Sansui 2000X Receiver -

This was the first cap-coupled receiver I ever owned.  I bought it from a collector locally, when I was having my Citation 11 preamp serviced.  When I put it into my system, I was smitten by the luxuriously smooth captivating sound.  Similar to my wonderful Sansui 551 which is a quasi-complimentary amp but with a mellower midrange and more robust bass.  

I used this in my system for several years, and took advantage of the preamp outputs to use it as a preamp/tuner, a roll in which it excelled.   

This  receiver  is  rated at  39 watts  per channel, and  putting  out  considerably more on a test bench, this receiver had more that  enough power for most  contemporary speakers  of the day.   With  the  flood of today’s inefficient dynamic speakers, one will not have to worry. The amp is up to the task.  

Living in the Chicago area, I use my FM tuner often.  There is a Friday evening Jazz station in Joliet, and WDCB in Chicago.  The tuner will pull in stations all across the dial with ease.

Excellent tone controls, for adjusting bass and treble on some older recordings that need a little help.  I’ve never heard a bad phone stage on a Sansui, and this one was outstanding!  I have a couple of stand alone outboard phone preamps, (a couple are quiet expensive), and they pale in comparison to the Sansui.  Lush, is a good word to describe the sound.  

After using this for a few years, I replaced it with a Sansui 9090DB, which I will cover in another post. While I enjoyed the 9090DB immensely, there is just a certain ‘magic’ with these lower powered cap-coupled amps that kept me thinking about it.  Since I had given it to my daughter, I looked for another and came across the feature ladened Sansui 3300 and would switch between that and the 9090DB when I felt the urge to hear that lush, luxurious sound.  

Make no mistake, this little receiver will play your favorite Led Zeppelin LP’s with authority!  There isn’t any genre’ that this amp doesn’t excel at reproducing.  

My unit was completely original and had never been serviced.  Taking it to my tech, I instructed him don’t recap or swap out anything unless it is needed.  He tested the receiver and it exceeded every advertised spec.  Even though he recommended I recap the unit, I told him to leave it alone.  I didn’t want to alter the magic I was hearing. 

Beautifully made, handsome walnut cabinets and solid aluminum knobs and face plate.  A quick Google search confirms what I was hearing.  This is one of those Special receivers.  Find a clean one and enjoy a receiver that absolutely is absolutely superior to most anything you can purchase today. Very highly recommend! 

Sanusui AU-777 Integrated Amplifier -

I really enjoy the idea of an integrated amplifier.  Basic, simple and like a receiver, just one unit. To date I have owned nine different ones that I can think of.  High power, low power, lots of features, no features.  Loved them all.  

I have  discovered that I especially enjoy listening to low powered early transistor amplifiers, ones that are capacitor coupled.  They have such rich tone, with a silky midrange and robust but accurate bass.  The highs are super smooth and not harsh.  I think that this is because in the early transistor days, manufacturers paid attention to ‘voicing’ their amplifiers.  Especially Japanese manufacturers.  

The Japanese are music fanatics.  It’s such an intregal part of their lives.  Plays, musicals, concerts, and today the many Jazz Kissa coffee shops and pubs.  Music is in the streets and literally into every retail space you go.  I am not talking about MUZAK here, but real music being selected, played and enjoyed by all and usually in the analog format.  

One of the finest listening experiences I’ve ever enjoyed has come from my Sansui AU-777.

The AU-777 is Sansui’s first transistor amplifier, coming right after the all tubed Sansui AU-111.  

Rated at 25 watts per channel into an 8 ohm load, it has plenty of power to drive most any speaker system to an uncomfortable level.  It’s true, that 90% of the time we listen we use little more than maybe 10-12 watts per channel.  The AU-777 is a masterpiece of design and execution.  This amp is loaded with character.  It’s sonic bliss, and soupy sweet.  The amp throws a deep, wide and coherent sound stage, with precise placement of instruments.  Female vocals are especially pleasant.  Jazz trios are live in your living room.  Solo guitar and piano pieces can fool you into thinking you’re at a live event, with its three dimensional tone. 

The build quality is superlative.  I have included some shots of the switching gear and tone controls.  Yes, those are all individual resistors wired in. 

The elegant black front face is engraved and painted in Sansui green, off-white and pure white.  Delicate, intricate and beautiful.  You just don’t see details like this anymore.

These amps come up for sale on occasions, but this one here is from 1967 and has been kept in exceptional condition.  I had the unit recapped by hi-fi guru Nabeel in Crest Hill Illinois.  His talents for restoring audio equipment is unmatched.  

I recommend this amplifier without hesitation.  Unquestionably one of the finest amps I’ve ever owned, and sonically nearly identical to the Sansui AU-111.  Obviously these were ‘voiced’ by the same engineering team.  Sansui later continued this with the AU-777A, with triple tone controls.  Also an excellent sounding unit, but some of the later ones have standard pots and controls.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but they don’t have the same tactile feel that the AU-777 has.  

Just a joy to own and listen to.  Another amp I kick myself for selling for all the reasons listed above.  More to come!  

SONY TC-377 Reel to Reel Tape Recorder -

SONY really made its mark in the tape recorder market during the 60’s.  Their machines are easy to use, sounded great and though expensive, were less money than the US competition from Roberts, Ampex, Concertone, and Viking.  

All of these companies had consumer and prosumer machines, with mechanical transports and single motor designs.  Viking and Ampex also offered two head machines, capable of making good though not excellent recordings which allowed the stereo enthusiast to enter the tape field without spending a months salary on a machine.  

Many opted for the two head machines just to play the wide variety of popular open real music tapes available from the top recording companies of the day.  You could find any contemporary, jazz, classical, pop and rock albums on open reel tape, for not much more money than the standard LP.  

The SONY TC-250 from about 1966 was sold in large numbers to the home stereo lover for just that purpose.  It also allowed them to record their favorite LP’s and play them back in full length without having to flip the record every 20minutes.  

The SONY TC-350 (the TC-250 with three heads) was SONY”s entry level deck featuring three heads.  Single motor transport, the machine was crude even for a mechanical single motor deck, but offered incredible sound for the money.

The SONY TC-355 was a definite step up and many of these machines are still in service today.  I had a 355 and it was an excellent machine.  Which is why when I seen an add for a one owner TC-377 for $90.00 I snapped it up.  I figured that it is always nice to have a second or third deck for dubbing or switching out when servicing whatever happens to be in the stereo stand at the moment.  

My TC-377 was placed in an oversized breakfast cereal box, actually two cut and taped together.  It was just barely the same size as the machine, and then shipped through the US post office from North Carolina to the Chicago area.  I had requested that the unit be double boxed with additional packing materials and offered to pay extra for this.  My request was ignored by the seller and the machine arrived about three weeks after purchase.  An entire corner of the box was missing, and the machine was exposed.  Absolutely no packing material were used at all, and it was evident that the deck was thrown around repeatedly.  The righthand spindle was bent almost in half.  I was able to slowly bend it back in place, and I can’t believe it didn’t break off in the process.

At any rate, whenever I purchase something like this, I always do a clean and mild service before using.  I opened it up and lubed all the necessary areas, and I believe I was the first to ever oil the capstan.  After cleaning the heads, demagnetizing, and treating the pinch roller with several applications of Fedron rubber revitalizer I fired the old girl up.  Purred like a kitten.  All controls were smooth and operated properly.  I put on a tape I knew all and the machine sounded wonderful.  

That was ten years ago.  Since then I have regularly used the SONY at my office, in my home system and alternate it out with my Akai 4000 from time to time.  The SONY has excellent Ferrite & Ferrite head stack, which means even after all these years the head look and perform as new.  

The TC-377 is often considered an alternative to the Akai 4000DS.  Both share many similarities.  Single motor mechanical transport, robust design and multiple speeds.  Both have sound on sound and sound with sound capability for the home recordist.  The SONY is a bit larger and heavier and has some advantages for the end user.  All of SONY’s mechanical transports feature a single lever action for play, record, fast forward and rewind.  The Akai uses two.  The SONY has three speeds and adjustment are made by rotating a speed selector for the desired speed.  With the Akai, only two speeds are available and one must unscrew a capstan sleeve to mechanically change the speed.  Not nearly as convenient as the SONY.  The SONY is also easier to thread.  Just take the tape from the supply reel on, under the head stack to the take up reel and you’re done.  You have to do the same with the Akai, but you must also thread under the tape tensioner arm near the take up spool.  Both machines feature automatic shut off, but with the Akai you must then be sure to use the play lever and move it to ‘stop’ to disengage the pinch roller.  With the SONY, everything disengages automatically.  

Both decks can be used in the vertical or horizontal positions, but the SONY has a slight tilt to it in the vertical position.  This actually make is a bit more pleasant to use.  Further, to use in the horizontal position you  remove four screws on the sides and rotate the machine 180 degrees in the case.  Here the deck now has a slight angle to it making is easier to use in this position as well.  

One can see why this machine was so popular.  It also had better wow and flutter, frequency repose and signal to noise ratio than the Akai 4000.  I can tell you, without question the machine is capable of superb recordings.  I never felt the need for any type of noise reduction system for either of these decks.  While I personally favor the Akai, I could just as easily live with the SONY TC-377 without feeling the need to have any other machine.  My love for the Akai, is the sound and the size of the machine,  but the SONY is easier to use and sounds just as good.  

I have several three motor machines and I can tell you quite honestly that these mechanical single motor transport decks from Akai, SONY, Ampex, Tandberg, and Roberts are just indestructible and perform so well.  I have never had a mechanical issue with a single motor mechanical transport machine.  Not ever.  That’s something I can't say for their more elaborate counterparts.

I highly recommend the SONY TC-377, and if you pick one up that needs serving I have a SONY expert in Indiana I can steer you too.  Find a clean one, and buy it.  You will not be disappointed.  

Soon I will talk about another favorite SONY of mine.  The TC-755.  More to come. 

Nakamichi 1000 Tri-Tracer Stereo Cassette Deck -

This is my Nakamichi 1000 cassette deck.  When this deck was introduced it knocked the audio world completely off its feet.  (I sincerely apologize for the crummy ancient camera phone shots of my Nakamichi 1000 from 2007.)

Nakamichi had been building cassette decks for several years and also  built some very respected reel to reel tape decks.  A boutique company who found footing working with ADVENT Corporation.  Nakamichi was building the ADVENT 200 cassette deck with Dolby noise reduction.  They built the transport and ADVENT supplied the electronics.  It was a production disaster.  The ADVENT 200 was release with great fanfare, and when it was working properly was the finest cassette deck in the world at that time.  Soon after shipping, customers were lining up to return the decks with broken transports.

So many were returned and sent back to Nakamichi that audio stores were afraid to sell them.  ADVENT ended up engineering a fix for the weak transports and rebuilt nearly everyone they sold in-house.  The ADVENT electronics were a marvel, the Nakamichi built transports were fragile.  This is when Henry Kloss went looking for the most industrial, bullet proof transport he could find, and find it he did.  3M Wollensak built an industrial cassette deck transport that was used commercially in the broadcast and educational field.  This was the transport used for the ADVENT 201, which became an audio legend.  (This transport was also famously used by NEAL, HeathKit, Wollensak, and Bell & Howell.  While the decks all had similar appearance, only the NEAL came close to the ADVENT in performance specifications.  We will address the ADVENT in a later post.)

So you can imagine the surprise in the audio world when Nakamichi introduced the 1000.  This from a company that just two years earlier couldn’t build a basic cassette deck transport to last more than a few months.  Here, everything was Nakamichi.  The design, the electronics, and motors.  

When this deck was introduced the ADVENT 201 was the undisputed king of high end cassette decks.  The pain-in-the-neck to operate Wollensak transport was indestructible.  The ADVENT could make recordings virtually indistinguishable from the source material so this was Nakamichi’s target.  The ADVENT 201 was an expensive machine at $399.00.  The world was stunned when Nakamichi’s retail price was $1100.00.  We’re talking 1973 dollars here when the average household income was around $9500.00  Today that would be a $7560.00 machine.

 

Mechanical controls were the norm for tape transports during this period, especially cassette decks.  Nakamichi used soft touch solenoid controls.  Two head cassette decks were also the norm and a three head design was thought to be impossible due to the restraints of the cassette housing itself.  Nakamichi had three heads, three discreet heads, with user azimuth adjustments.  Unbelievable.  Nakamichi was still reeling over the ADVENT 200 reliability issues, so this machine was tested in every imaginable environment.  They were making a statement that they were capable of building the finest cassette deck in the world.  They also went one further.  A properly set up ADVENT cassette deck had an incredible frequency response of 31-15000hz which rivaled some reel to reel machines.

Nakamachi set their sites a bit higher, achieving a first ever perfectly flat unweighted frequency response of 20-20000hz and a weighted frequency response of 35-20000hz +/- 3db.  There are reel to reel machines that can’t achieve that spec, and Nakamichi did it with a cassette deck.

The rest is history.  They were the king of the hill.  Every audiophile wanted one.  They would go on to introduce lesser machines, all outstanding and typically outclassing their competition.  The line included the  1000 Tri-Tracer three head deck, the 700  Tri-Tracer three head deck, the 600 Dual-Tracer two head deck, and the 500 Dual-Tracer two head deck.  The entire line of machines were extremely well made, reliable with better performance than most anything else on the market and due to the success of the 1000, the entire line of machines had something no other manufacture could offer - panache.  It was a statement to own a Nakamichi.  This continued for nearly a decade as others tried to catch up. 

My deck was a transitional machine, having the record calibration controls moved from the back of the machine right up front for chrome and normal bias tape where the blend mic input jack sat on the original model.  The serial number places mine to early 1976.  Mid 1976, is when the Nakamichi 1000II would be introduced. Along with the calibration controls being moved, the new machine also sported a new cassette door with a window to see tape travel.  Now priced at over $1650.00 US, and still the deck to have today if you can find one.

I purchased my 1000 from the original owner, who seldom used it.  Everything functioned perfectly.  The sound rivaled any of my reel to reel machines, except maybe the half/track Pioneer RT1050 at 15ips.  Maybe.  That’s how good the deck was.  I used it for maybe  6 months.   The machine is big, and 19” wide without the case, so it could be rack mounted in a standard professional EIA Equipment rack.  Many studios did just that.

Things I didn’t like about the machine was the necessary azimuth and bias adjustments to dial the deck in every time you wanted to record.  I missed the set it once and forget it appeal that the ADVENT 201 and Nakamichi 500 had.  Both of these could be calibrated with adjustment pots found in the rear and underneath the machines.  I basically always used either Maxell UD or UDXLII, so they were both set up for those tapes.  Additionally, you could calibrate the Dolby processing on both of those decks as well.  Once set, you’re done.  I also used TDK SA cassettes, and found the settings used for the Maxell XLII more than acceptable and within .5db. 

As impressive as the 1000 was, I really didn’t need a  machine that can site a 20-20,000hz spec, there is very little if any program material that goes below say 40hz or above 13,000hz.  So, I came to realize that my ADVENT and Nak 500/600 could make recordings remarkably close to that of the 1000.  Many would be owners found the same when auditioning the Nakamichi 500 and 600 Dual-Tracer machines.  Yes, there are audible difference, but they are very small.

Still if you wanted the no-holds-barred best machine ever, this was the deck to have.  I really liked it, but didn’t love using it, so sold it off to a collector who loved it more.  Highly recommended. Of all the machines I have owned, NOTHING was built like the 1000, NOTHING sounded like the 1000, not even the mighty ReVox B-215 (a nightmare I will talk about in a later post).  Possibly the finest cassette deck every made and infinitely more reliable than any Nakamichi built after 1980.