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Do You Miss Knobs and Dials and Switches?

I just hooked up my waxwing phono Stage with RCA to the Yamaha Phono Stage (waxwing gain to 0 and Line out without RIAA)

This way I still get the click and pop removal, all the DSP features and a mono switch but get to use the Very good phono stage in the AS2200.

But the best thing , I get to use the source knob on the Yamaha to switch to Vinyl :D

I know it dumb and unnecessary but still.. these knobs and switches want to be used
 
I have some nice old amps that I wonder if I should try and put some nice class D stuff in. But at the same time some amps are too nice to do that with.
 
Missing?
Not really.
Actually, there are buttons everywhere.

Old fashioned Denon Knobs

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Digital Knobs

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Harman Knobs

HiFi-2473~2.jpg


Modern Knobs

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Few Knobs

HiFi-2709.jpg


Not so much Knobs on Yamaha YSP

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MIXED Knobs

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Before WiiM Ultra

HiFi-6124.jpg
 
Missing?
Not really.
Actually, there are buttons everywhere.

Old fashioned Denon Knobs

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Digital Knobs

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Harman Knobs

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Modern Knobs

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Few Knobs

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Not so much Knobs on Yamaha YSP

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MIXED Knobs

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Before WiiM Ultra

View attachment 455914
What's the device with the orange spectrum display? I'm after something like that.
 
Behringer DEQ 2496
 
nothin' but knob


fairly knobby



rather buttony



kind of in-betweeny

Ah, immediately spotted the Eico!

Reminds me of my lovely refurbished Eico HF81 that I sadly sold a while back. Boy I loved that amp!

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Ah, immediately spotted the Eico!

Reminds me of my lovely refurbished Eico HF81 that I sadly sold a while back. Boy I loved that amp!

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@MattHooper - ahh, "Matt", "Matt", "Matt"... you have triggered me! :)
I am a long, long, long time fan of things EICO. Literally grew up with the stuff.
The AF-4 (SE EL84, a budget product*) seen in the photo I posted has been in my family for its whole life (i.e., much of my life), having belonged to one of my aunts (now deceased), who passed it along to me ca. 2007.

The HF-81 is a nice integrated amplifier. Your HF-81 looks like Kelly Holsten's! He was an early member of the Klipsch forums who talked up these fairly modest PP EL84 stereo amps. He was a fairly early website design guy, and his nice looking HF-81 page started the rush (and price run-up) of these - let's be honest ;) - rather homely-looking little amplifiers. They do clean up rather nicely, though, and his good photos of his nicely rehabbed amp were bait for the emerging tubes 'n' horns market in the '90s. :)

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The price spike in the HF-81's coffin (so to speak ;)) was a retro-review of a restored on in Stereophile in 2006. The price of these fairly skyrocketed thereafter, and is still pretty high for a 12-ish wpc amplifier of modest construction values. ;) Good iron in the HF-81, though, which is probably (arguably) the amp's secret sauce.

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The one that Peter Brueninger reviewed had been restored by a then-revered ;) EICO-whisperer called Sam Kim. @John Atkinson dutifully put the restored (retro-modded?) HF-81 through its paces. :) In some respects, its objective performance is pretty good. In others... well... ;) But the fact remains that it is a reliable amplifier seven decades later with relatively minor attention, and almost all** of its important bits are still readily available. Can't beat that with a stick!

One of my first significant eBAY purchases was a pretty nice HF-81 which I rehabbed myself. Mine's an early version, with OPT taps all of the way to 32 ohms(?!) -- it is roughly the same age as me. The only issue with mine (other than its decidedly drab, as-is cosmetics***) is a little bit of audible hum. So it goes for those of us with 100 dB-ish sensitive loudspeakers! One mW of signal at the loudspeaker is good for 70 dB SPL at 1 meter, you know?

Gary Kaufman https://the-planet.org/, who has one that's dead silent, and I spent a Saturday afternoon tracking it down -- but never did. As my father pointed out to me many years ago, though, one of the problems with troubleshooting somebody else's assembled kit is that it may have never worked properly due to more or less subtle issues related to assembly. Sometimes, sadly, the best recourse is to strip the chassis and patiently re-assemble! :( However, see my footnote*** below.

One known weak spot, especially in the cheaper EICO kits, was the use of barely adequate power transformers. This, coupled with typically higher mains voltage in the US in the modern era, puts the PTs at some risk. Heyboer in Michigan made the power transformer for the HF-81 (and possibly the OPTs as well?). They're still around, and, at least 15 or 20 years ago, were more than happy to build a beefed-up variant of the original PT by request for a very reasonable price. I had 'em do one for me many years ago, which I have in stock for replacement if (when) needed. :)



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source: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ow-wattage-amp-tube.40665/page-6#post-1437954 (and compared to which my current ramblings are distressingly redundant)

_________________
* The "AF" model designation designates its non-hifi level of performance, in fact! The hifi amps have designations starting with "HF". :)
** The tone controls and (if memory serves -- sorry, I am too lazy to check :facepalm:) RIAA networks are the infamous Centralab "PEC" modules. Generally, these are OK and fit for purpose, but replicating their innards with discrete components is, as mathematicians are wont to observe, straightforward. ;)
*** I am, as I have noted many times, nothing if not danged lazy.
 
last weekend i saw this badboy (not the one in the pircture, but that type) in real. This is not hifi, this is a 1956 RCA BC-6B broadcast console with all the knobs and switches how I like it. I know this is not everybody's cup of tea, but for me this is perfect on design.

Off course on sound it's very 1950's, a very coloured sound shaped by tubes and transformators. Not hifi to modern standards. But on looks...

The owner of the one i saw use it as preamp for his mono retro system. He did restore it himself from a wreckage that he bought long ago for almost nothing (100 french francs, which is about 15€). Today collectors pay a small fortune for this kind of pieces in good shape.

1750166243008.png
 
last weekend i saw this badboy (not the one in the pircture, but that type) in real. This is not hifi, this is a 1956 RCA BC-6B broadcast console with all the knobs and switches how I like it. I know this is not everybody's cup of tea, but for me this is perfect on design.

Off course on sound it's very 1950's, a very coloured sound shaped by tubes and transformators. Not hifi to modern standards. But on looks...

The owner of the one i saw use it as preamp for his mono retro system. He did restore it himself from a wreckage that he bought long ago for almost nothing (100 french francs, which is about 15€). Today collectors pay a small fortune for this kind of pieces in good shape.

View attachment 457960
Looks like a BC-6(B)...
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source: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Catalogs/RCA/RCA-Catalog-4-1959.pdf

Somewhere I have a scan of a photo of my father sitting in front of, I think, an RCA "consolette" not unlike the lovely example posted previously -- not that I can find it at the moment. :facepalm:
 
Here my Sennheiser VKS203 with buttons and knobs. It has "beefy" 2x 8 Watt continuos power (LOL). Personally I like easy to use knobs and buttons in contrast to menues and submenues where after a while I don't remember what was where. The picture shows it on my workbench during restoration.
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Matt", "Matt", "Matt"... you have triggered me!
:)


The one that Peter Brueninger reviewed had been restored by a then-revered ;) EICO-whisperer called Sam Kim.

The one I owned was restored by another revered Eico-whisperer: Yves Beauvais, in Montreal. Do you know of him? He was featured in a Stereophile article at one point.

Your admiration for Eico is triggering the following response from me, which is how I came to own the HF81…

(anyone triggered by subjective descriptions is forewarned to skip the following)

Somewhere background 2008 or 2009 I had the idea of turning my two channel listening room, which was the front living room of our house, into doing Home theatre duty as well as two channel.

The only way to do that would be to flip the orientation of all the furniture in the room, so instead of my listening sofa, being against the back wall and facing my speakers and bay windows from that sofa, I’d flip the sofa to toward the bay windows and the speakers would be flipped 180° to where the sofa was.

Well, when I did that experiment the acoustics of my room went to shit.
The sound from my speaker speakers was suddenly thinned out and more shrill.

It was so disheartening that I thought maybe I’d have to give up my two channel listening in order to have a home theatre in the room.

But in the middle of that the Harman Kardon integrated amp I was using at the time died.
And I was using it in place of my Conrad Johnson tube amps which where in the shop.

Wanting to still experiment, I asked my audio buddy if he had a spare amp I could borrow. He said “sure, take this little old tube amplifier that I got in an estate sale, looks like garbage, but should still work.”

It was an Eico HF81. I knew nothing about it. all I cared was that it worked at all.

I hooked up the speakers fired up the same tracks and…oh my gawd! I couldn’t believe it. It was like the sound of my system was back! The sound wasn’t thin or aggravating anymore, but filled out and rich - like my old CJ MV55 with EL34 tubes. And it had some of that “ golden sound” signature that I felt I heard with my CJ gear. But it wasn’t just lush and laid back: it was ballsy and punchy and exciting, with great sparkle in the highs.
It almost felt like a combination of my earlier CJ MV55 and my more powerful Premier 12 6550 - based amps.

Anyway, I was transfixed and couldn’t get my butt out of the chair, listening for hours. And I decided “ no way am I giving up my two channel listening!” so I sort of credit the Eico with “ saving” the hobby somewhat for me :)

That spurred me on to reading up on the Eico… and then of course, coming across the Stereophile review, and purchasing my Eico from Yves.

Shortly after I purchased some MBL Omni stand mounted speakers which are known for being very low sensitivity (82db… and hovering around 4 ohms). I noticed that in his review Peter Brueninger mentioned surprising success driving some MBL speakers with the Eico HF81, so I contacted him about that and he felt they would probably work with mine as well if I didn’t need to play too loud.

And the Eico at a mere 14 (12?) W sure did work great with MBL’s. Even though I also drove the MBL’s with a Bryston amp and my CJ Premier 12s, the pairing with the Eico was my favourite - I got all the MBL attributes I loved in terms of imaging spaciousness and detail, but a bit more lush and filled out, and the Eico seemed just underdamped enough in the bass frequencies on the MBLs to enrich the lows - a perceptual trick making the MBLs sound more full, and larger to my ears.

Eventually, I sold the Eico because I needed to pair down my gear. But I sure enjoyed my time with that amp: it was just the right amp at just the right time for me.
 
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fairly knobby
WooT, I had a Crown IC 150A as the front end for my Phase Linear 700B amp'd based 2ch rig.
Great overall sound quality with thankfully very low noise while driving my La Scala's which was very important then.
 
The "A" was, by all accounts, considerably superior to the unsuffixed IC-150 (shown above). :oops:
Those Crowns were a dump find (although that probably goes without saying).
It probably also goes without saying that, being real "built missionary-tough" Crowns from Elkhart, Indiana (as of course was @Sal1950's IC-150A) -- they worked fine as found (and still do). ;)
 
Knobs are simply better for the task, both objectively and subjectively. Just try comparing adjusting the volume of the RME DAC with the knob or with the remote. The first is like 'oh boy, I'm in control'. The second is like 'My arm doesn't quite reach the knob and I'm comfortable on the chair so I'll play with this cheap thing instead'. This is my desktop stack, full of knobs :D

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