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Golden Age of Japanese Audio

BigVU's

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Or perhaps rob a bank an get a new Technics SR-R1 for a mere 12,999
Reference_Class_SE-R1_Stereo_Power_Amplifier_1_web.jpg

Plus of course the preamp SU-R1 for just over half of that ( 6,999)


A man can dream right?
I for one am happy that Technics/Panasonic are making these again!

See that is classical sexy to me. Where have these gone for the layman to afford!
 

BigVU's

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BTW, I also like the 'naked' power-amps Pioneer made in the 70s, like the M-25
Pioneer_M_25-2.jpg

It's just classy somehow.

Yeah! These do look super cool too! Good conversation piece. If I had the spot, time, money, I build a wall of vintage to share with friends. Nice.
 

Tool

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Hi, My father i 80s bought couple of Good Jap Staff:
Nakamichi CR-7E
1566065276517.png


Denon POA-8000


1566065371331.png


denon pra 6000


1566065448629.png


Stax SR-Lambda Pro headphones

1566065774231.png


And one last thing he was really proud about:

Micro Seiki SX-1500 FVG :

1566065872924.png


Thats a picture from some facebook, our arm was diffrent:

Sme V but not V-12 only V

1566065961008.png




Sorry for long post heheh;)
 

Tool

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Besiede it He bought one of the best radios you could buy:

Marantz St 8

1566066275648.png


And To finish all of it Speakers:

JBL Ti250
1566066361524.png
 

Eirikur

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Yikes!!! At least the Hitachi seller posted photos of the inside with the listing... I am not sure I would be stable if I bought sight unseen to find this inside! Wow!
The company posting these pictures (very informative on repairs - all in German) managed to repair it but also explained why this happens.

In many countries like Germany and the Netherlands we used to have 220V/AC, but European harmonization gradually increased this to 230V/AC starting from 1988 until 2004.
When those big buffer elco's are operated close to nominal value as was the case here (88V for 90V nominal), the 5% increased input voltage actually pushed it beyond spec!

Chances are therefore that many pre-1988 amplifiers suffer from this problem, depending on how tight the headroom was.
 

Eirikur

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Fork over € 229,000 to audioscope.net and be the proud owner of this great Technics set - you could own this today! It certainly looks the part.
technics_se-a1_su-a2_sb-10000_rs-1800_sl-1000_mk2-1.jpg

Link to the SE-A1 power amplifier
Link to the SU-A2 pre-amplifier
Link to the SB-10000 speakers
Link to the RS-1500u, the little brother of the RS-1800u open reel tape deck on sale here
Link to the SL-1000mk2, which apparently is an SP-10MK2 placed in the SH-10B3 obsidian plinth, with the same outboard SH-10E power-supply and the all-time-best EPA-100 tonearm.

Finally, the EPC-100Cmk3 cartridge alone would set you back € 1,890 as NOS
 
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Sal1950

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Guys this is a happy fun thread , lets not spend a bunch of time bitchin about how crap hifi mags and media are .
I thought that was "happy, fun" talk, no???

Besiede it He bought one of the best radios you could buy:
Marantz St 8
Man that Marantz is a beauty, one of the nicest I ever remember JMHO
 

Tool

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But for Me Micro seiki Win it all, with that arm, It's impossible to buy it now, Radios are every were though...:confused:
 
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anmpr1

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BTW, I also like the 'naked' power-amps Pioneer made in the 70s, like the M-25

It's just classy somehow.
I owned an M-25. It was part of the Series 20 thing Pioneer was hawking back then. Also had the matching preamp. Strange. To me the amp didn't really seem too powerful. It sure looked cool. The matching preamp, C-21, was just as nice looking, but developed noisy contacts, with some intermittent connections. I was really disappointed that something so cosmetically nice would be so electrically substandard. Sold both as a set.

If I was going to go retro, I'd spring for a refurbed Spec preamp and amp over the Series 20 stuff. There is a Yoo-Toob video of a guy repairing and aligning a Pioneer Series 20 FM tuner. My god! What a design nightmare. Great tuner. Just incredibly screwball design. No way you could find anyone that would get something like that going, again. I think he kept at it more as a Moby Dick kind of thing. He wasn't going to let it eat him first. And to his credit, he did get it going.

Pioneer also made a Class A version of that amp, the M-22. Looked the same as the M-25, but was 30 watts per channel, instead of 130, or so. I never understood the Class A mystique. I had a Yamaha amp with a front panel switch--you could go from A to A/B and compare. I couldn't tell any difference.
 

Fledermaus

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Hi, My father i 80s bought couple of Good Jap Staff:
Nakamichi CR-7E


Denon POA-8000


View attachment 31550

denon pra 6000


View attachment 31552

Stax SR-Lambda Pro headphones



And one last thing he was really proud about:

Micro Seiki SX-1500 FVG :



Thats a picture from some facebook, our arm was diffrent:

Sme V but not V-12 only V



Sorry for long post heheh;)

Love those Denon monoblocks :p

Here's my Onkyo M588F (sorry about the crappy sound, severe case of smartphone mic overload here ) :


Next time I'll show off the Kenwood L09-Ms :cool:
 

Tool

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Love those Denon monoblocks :p

Here's my Onkyo M588F (sorry about the crappy sound, severe case of smartphone mic overload here ) :


Next time I'll show off the Kenwood L09-Ms :cool:

Unfortunately Amps were pretty disappointing. Too small built for Class A so it burnt out a lot. But looked amazing I have to agree.
 
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anmpr1

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Hi, My father i 80s bought couple of Good Jap Staff:


Micro Seiki SX-1500 FVG :

View attachment 31557
One of the men responsible for the Micro decks is making updated versions called Air Force. Evidently the top of the line pushes half a million dollars. Almost 500 large to play a record? But there you have it. I'm not sure if this is the high end model, or one of the lower iterations. You can see the Micro Seiki DNA in its design.

Air-Force-One-Turntable-1_e-975x600.jpg
 

Tool

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Thanks, but if I ever be able to buy turntable it's gonna be this one:
1566573061603.png


Simple way is the best way;)

But I took a closer look and now I think that This Air Force One is a Good Alternative Dream....:p
 
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Zerimas

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One of the men responsible for the Micro decks is making updated versions called Air Force. Evidently the top of the line pushes half a million dollars. Almost 500 large to play a record? But there you have it. I'm not sure if this is the high end model, or one of the lower iterations. You can see the Micro Seiki DNA in its design.

View attachment 31875

A turntable that costs 500k. How do they transfer torque from the motor to the platter: via rubber band of course!
 

Sal1950

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One of the men responsible for the Micro decks is making updated versions called Air Force. Evidently the top of the line pushes half a million dollars. Almost 500 large to play a record?
Yep, ain't that a hoot.
A turntable that costs 500k. How do they transfer torque from the motor to the platter: via rubber band of course!
What difference does it make? Half a mil to make sound off a 50 year obsolete technology.
The audiophile market has completely lost its mind and any direction to advance the SOTA
 

Zerimas

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Yep, ain't that a hoot.

What difference does it make? Half a mil to make sound off a 50 year obsolete technology.
The audiophile market has completely lost its mind and any direction to advance the SOTA

Well, objectively speaking there are better implementations. If we're talking about spending "silly" money on turntable I'd rather have one of these SL-1000Rs. Although apparently Technics has somehow forgotten how to measure rumble.

What would SOTA even be at this point? Haven't CDs pretty much achieved audible transparency? Maybe they didn't with the CDP-101, but surely the designs that came after it were adequate. I mean it only supports 2-channels. Isn't DSD pretty much bullshit? I don't think there is anything to support the use of higher sample rates, and greater bit-depth doesn't seem to make a difference with regards to playback. I've seen some pretty fancy active speakers posted here with DSP and the like. Aside from that and possibly stimulating nerves responsible for aura perception directly I am not sure what you could conceivably do.
 

Ilkless

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Well, objectively speaking there are better implementations. If we're talking about spending "silly" money on turntable I'd rather have one of these SL-1000Rs. Although apparently Technics has somehow forgotten how to measure rumble.

What would SOTA even be at this point? Haven't CDs pretty much achieved audible transparency? Maybe they didn't with the CDP-101, but surely the designs that came after it were adequate. I mean it only supports 2-channels. Isn't DSD pretty much bullshit? I don't think there is anything to support the use of higher sample rates, and greater bit-depth doesn't seem to make a difference with regards to playback. I've seen some pretty fancy active speakers posted here with DSP and the like. Aside from that and possibly stimulating nerves responsible for aura perception directly I am not sure what you could conceivably do.

SL-1000R has been measured independently before. State-of-the-art and better than even the Air Force stuff, in a far less cumbersome package. Speaks a lot about the level of R&D and manufacturing capability Technics possesses vs cottage industry turntable companies.

But yes transparency has been reached with digital. I see advanced turntables as at best interesting specimens of ingenious mechanical engineering to create objets d'art. Like mechanical watches but big.
 

Sal1950

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Don't wish to take this thread too far off topic but,
What would SOTA even be at this point? Haven't CDs pretty much achieved audible transparency? Maybe they didn't with the CDP-101, but surely the designs that came after it were adequate. I mean it only supports 2-channels. Isn't DSD pretty much bullshit? I don't think there is anything to support the use of higher sample rates, and greater bit-depth doesn't seem to make a difference with regards to playback. I've seen some pretty fancy active speakers posted here with DSP and the like. Aside from that and possibly stimulating nerves responsible for aura perception directly I am not sure what you could conceivably do.

Yes Redbook, DAC's, Amps have all achieved transparency but transducers have quite a ways to go.
Lot's of work to be done on multich. Current optical sources all have some weaknesses in various areas, though SQ isn't one of them.
Settle on a high rez data standard even if for nothing else than piece of mind. 24/96 or even 24/192, there's no reason to worry over delivery bandwidth any more.
We presently have a mishmash of multich optical sources, there's work to be done on bringing a better one out. Combining a standardize data rate, with least 20+ audio channels, 8k video, and easy access with or without a monitor. We should be way past having separate formats for audio and video.
DSP is still in it's infancy for the consumer market, lots of work to be done there.
Some feel that integrated actives are the future, I have reservations there. There are so many variables in audio reproduction that I believe separate boxes will have a lot to offer for a long time.
We've make a lot of progress in the last century but there's still a lot to be done before we can truly say,
Is it live or Memorex? ;)
0b6bb1eb3c9f01d6619a9f332b3575d9.jpg
 

JJB70

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I am no expert on audio but it strikes me that the part of the chain where you can make a difference in SQ is the speakers, both in terms of speaker design and set up in room. Or headphones for headphone users. Digital music achieved transparency a long time ago and provided that the amplifier is suitable for the the speaker demands then decent amplifiers have been audibly transparent for a long time I think.
Multi-channel could make a big difference, it has been a mature idea for a long time but hasn't really penetrated the mainstream. Even in the AV segment most people seem happy with 2.1 or 3.1 soundbar set ups. I hoped wireless would unlock the gate for much wider multi channel penetration by eliminating the faff of running wiring around a room but it doesn't seem to have worked quite yet.
 
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