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Golden Age of Japanese Audio

BigVU's

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Anyone bought an amplifier from Japan on Ebay and can share their experience? Luxman/Accuphase?
 
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anmpr1

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Anyone bought an amplifier from Japan on Ebay and can share their experience? Luxman/Accuphase?
Watch out. If it's made for the Japan market, it probably won't work on foreign voltages. Also, Japanese FM tuners use a totally different bandwidth than you'll find in America, and I'm guessing Europe, too.
 

BigVU's

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Yeah thanks, was looking at Step Up transformers to convert 100V - 120V. Wondering if anyone has experience that can share if it is a pain or nothing really to be concerned about.
 

SegaCD

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https://audio-heritage.jp/

This is a nice database of vintage gear. Japanese language only though.

I came here to post this. Audio Heritage is my go to source for looking up Japanese audio gear & until recently, they used to come up at the top of Google results for almost any Japanese gear (they don't anymore; not sure what happened). They also have an English "translation" (using "translation software" according to them): https://audio-database.com/ . Unfortunately, the English page has much less content than their Japanese page. Fortunately, if you use Google Chrome, it'll translate the whole Japanese site for you...or you can go to https://translate.google.com, paste the URL into the translation box, and it'll translate the whole page for you.

Thanks to them, I heard about & hunted down my pride-and-joy 1981-vintage Yamaha A-9 which is a 21kg-behemoth of an integrated amplifier. Its almost 40 years old and unrestored yet absolutely noise free. Best of all? I paid ~$300 to import it AFTER shipping. I also imported a beautiful Technics SL-15 linear tracker with original EPC-P205Cmk4 cartridge for ~$100 (needed new belt & capacitors but still). Japan is a gold mine of cheap A/V equipment (although more and more people are realizing this and slowly driving prices up).

Even so, I've found even Audio Heritage isn't comprehensive enough! For example, my Victor AD-7000 AHD digital processor isn't on there.
 
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SegaCD

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Yeah thanks, was looking at Step Up transformers to convert 100V - 120V. Wondering if anyone has experience that can share if it is a pain or nothing really to be concerned about.

My main integrated amp and much of my A/V equipment is 100V and permanently connected to a step-up transformer.

Its just a plain old transformer so you just plug it into a wall, then plug your equipment in and forget about it. No pain besides the cost of the transformer (between $50 and $300 depending on size & such) and possibly your back since they can be heavy if you get one with a 1500W+ rating. I usually find cheap ones in resale shops in areas with a high Japanese population.

Please don't use a travel adapter since most of them use a noisy switching power supply to keep size down.
 
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anmpr1

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From the, "Did we leave anything out?" school of Japanese audio design. The 1976 Rotel RC-5000 preamp.

rc-5000-h.jpg


rc-5000-in.jpg
 

NoMoFoNo

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I'd love to see objective testing of some of the old Japanese gear. I'm in my mid-50s and when I was a young kid, almost anything of Japanese manufacture was considered junk in the cultural zeitgeist, and there was still plenty of anti-Japanese sentiment floating around from those of WWII era. It took an explosion of high-quality Honda, Datsun and Toyota small vehicles to slowly change the prevailing sentiment.

Now, I sense almost the reverse, wherein in the audio hobby there is almost a Japanese-gear fetish that seems to exist. Guys go bonkers over shiny amps and receivers from 40-50 years ago. I'm suspicious that the 40+ year old vintage Japanese amps would test any better, or even as well as, something that I can buy for cheap from amazon.
 

BDWoody

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Guys go bonkers over shiny amps and receivers from 40-50 years ago

I wish I had picked up that sx1980 I was looking at many years ago, but he wanted $10 more than I had...

pioneer-sx-1980-faceplate.jpg
 

A800

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947975-steel-beast-hitachi-ha610-70wpc-totl.png


Hitachi HA-610.
Incredible amp.
 
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anmpr1

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I'd love to see objective testing of some of the old Japanese gear. I'm in my mid-50s and when I was a young kid, almost anything of Japanese manufacture was considered junk in the cultural zeitgeist, and there was still plenty of anti-Japanese sentiment floating around from those of WWII era...

Stereo Review, High Fidelity, and Audio are good sources for that period's measurements.

In the early days of transistor gear Japanese product was associated with hand held transistor radios and such. Stuff that really didn't last long and was cheap. Sansui and Pioneer (plus a few others) began importing 'serious' hi fi gear in the sixties. Unfortunately, at least in the case of Pioneer, their advertisements didn't translate into English very well. The company was called Fukuin Electric (just say it slowly) and in their ads they used female Japanese movie stars that no one in the US ever heard of--such as Yumi Shirakawa, whose only US feature was the Toho monster movie, Rodan.

By the mid '70s, the era of interesting Japanese gear, many American audiophiles had been Mark Levinized and Audio Researched, led to think that anything not made by an 'esoteric' boutique outfit was no good. Even McIntosh, the stalwart of sane American engineering, was looked down upon.
Mac is still in business but it's not the same McIntosh. Just the name and location remains the same. Affordable Japanese gear is mostly history, with the possible exception of Yamaha.
 
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They never had a chance to gain traction after WhatHiFi gave a trash 2-star review of their new coaxs. Even Stereophile making the SB-C700 the second-cheapest Class A speaker currently on the list (after the LS50) didn't seem to help salvage the wrecked reputation.
WhatHiFi missed not only the boat, but the ocean with that "review". And deserves to be torpedoad and sunk for that - for good. Showing just whose pockets it is in.

In reality, both the new SB-C700 and older SB-RX30/50/70 require totally different placing as compared to normal box ( british) speakers about this size.
Being an extremely close approximation to a true point source, they need LOTS of breathing space - as their polar characteristic excites the room resonances in all planes equally. First reflections off everything has to be kept either low and/or delayed enough. They need at least 2 metres from the side walls ... and absolutely hate low ceilings. That means at least 6 metres wide/long room, with the speakers on stands and much more towards the centre of the room than customary.
Fail to observe that - it is perfectly possible to get the sound a la WhatHiFi described.

A restored/recapped and properly positioned pair of SB-RX50 driven by a powerful amp with high damping factor is about the closest equivalent to Stax Lambda Pro headphones in the speaker world.
 
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The only mediocrity in these pics is the SME arm. What originally could came on DP-100 is incomparably better. Personally, from your collection I would choose Nak TT with B500/EPA250 arm - despite EPA 100MK2 looking soooo tempting. The above mentioned combo would no doubt help ameliorating vinyl's worst real world problems while accomodating most cartridges.
 

Frgirard

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Well, fortunately, Yamaha is still here to save the day with their Pacificas. And they already produce one of the most solid studio monitor line at its price point.
They produced a hifi bookshelf used in studio. Not a studio monitor.
 

JP

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The only mediocrity in these pics is the SME arm. What originally could came on DP-100 is incomparably better. Personally, from your collection I would choose Nak TT with B500/EPA250 arm - despite EPA 100MK2 looking soooo tempting. The above mentioned combo would no doubt help ameliorating vinyl's worst real world problems while accomodating most cartridges.

My daily driver is an SP-10MK3 with B500 as at times I experiment a bit with cartridges - the interchangeable wands with integral counterweight are great for that use case. I also have a few high-end Technic's p-mounts and EPA-A505 wands for those.

I would've preferred a DP-100M but the DP-100 came up at a good price. I've not seen a DP-100M for less than $10K since and it's not worth it to me. The SME arm was simply because that's the armboard that the unit came with.
 
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My daily driver is an SP-10MK3 with B500 as at times I experiment a bit with cartridges - the interchangeable wands with integral counterweight are great for that use case. I also have a few high-end Technic's p-mounts and EPA-A505 wands for those.

I would've preferred a DP-100M but the DP-100 came up at a good price. I've not seen a DP-100M for less than $10K since and it's not worth it to me. The SME arm was simply because that's the armboard that the unit came with.
Well, DP-100/100M are rare and expensive in any shape or form - nice you could get one at reasonable price.

SP-10MK3 is great - as is B500. Instead of EPA-A505 I would prefer to use EPA-250 and SH-90S P-mount headshell adapter - because it is the only way to correct for azimuth with real world P-Mount carts AND cater to the real compliance of the cart used. Some deviated appreciably from the Technics' spec - particularly MC models by Ortofon. Using a standard azimuth adjustable headshell and standard P-Mount adapter for 1/2" mounting is also possible - at the penalty of increased mass and reduced rigidity.
 

JP

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The trade off there is that the EM is more than double.
 
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The trade off there is that the EM is more than double.
EPA-250 has an extremely precisely adjustable dynamic damping/antiresonator - should not pose any problems. I agree with conventional "dumb" arms, twice EM would ba a problem with per spec high compliance P-Mount carts.

I do have B500 ( needs to be rebuilt... ) and EPA-501H - but will add EPA-250 the minute funds/availability allows.

Azimuth is the #1 requirement in phono playback - FAR more important than everything else, save the stylus shape.
In case of P-Mount, there is usually only possible to try finding "complimentary pairs" of arm and cart/stylus combinations in order to get perfect azimuth adjustment.
A VERY large quantity of carts/styli ( and/or turntables/arms ) is the prerequisite for such matching.
Only Grado with replaceable stylus and Audio Technica can be "adjusted" for azimuth - with all others, it is complimentary pair matching only.
 

JP

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EPA-250 has an extremely precisely adjustable dynamic damping/antiresonator - should not pose any problems. I agree with conventional "dumb" arms, twice EM would ba a problem with per spec high compliance P-Mount carts.

You're confusing the EPA-A250 with the EPA-100/100MK2. The 250 has dynamic damping based on the same principals as the 100, but it is not adjustable.
 
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