Vintage Audio Review YouTube channel

[musicforcities]

I hope this has not already been discussed (my search did not turn up a thing obvious), but I wanted to mention I YouTube channel I have been enjoying:
Vintage Audio Review.

Vintage Audio Review

Thanks for stopping by Vintage Audio Review (VAR). I have enjoyed collecting, repairing and of course listening to stereo equipment for many years and thought I would start this channel to further this hobby of mine. Hopefully you will enjoy some of the equipment that I show here as well as find...

youtube.com

What makes it stand out is his use of measurements on this old equipment. The transparency of his testing is great, as is the modesty of his low key style. It is very refreshing.

The channel is up to 2.8k subscribers now (a year ago it was a couple hundred), and the comments sections are actually short and often actually have content.

Anyway, I think even if the channel had been discussed before I wanted to support the channel and suggest ASR people check it out if they haven’t.

 

[Soria Moria]

What I love about smaller channels like these is that they're most likely doing it because of passion.

 

[jkasch]

Thanks for the link. The Sherwood S-8900a was my first real audio component which I purchased in '73 based on a Julian Hirsch, Stereo Review review. Unfortunately, mine was a lemon and Tech HiFi traded me a Pioneer SA9100 integrated for it after a couple weeks, but that rekindled some memories.

 

[musicforcities]

Some of the stuff he tests performs remarkably close to spec, and good spec. For example, the McIntosh gear so far seems to mostly live up to its build quality hype. Of course some of it may have been updated/serviced, and if he stated if he knows for certain if it has recently been serviced.

I appreciate the reviews of older gear due to nostalgia and my interest in it but also because it presents a nice counter-point to our age of cheap but essentially disposable gear. if one bought one of those old McIntosh amps new and used it for 30 years or longer, the cost of ownership per year is very small. Probably approaching the yearly cost of the electricity it consumed.

If one is looking at used equipment, how old something is not the whole story. I have bern very frustrated by the lack of longevity / repairability of some relatively recent gear (NAD, I’m looking at you with your cardboard PCBs and complicated but poor thermal layouts that toast transistors and caps and traces). They can go out of spec even after a few years or fail and repair can be more trouble than it’s worth.

I don’t find the old speaker testing quite as interesting because generally vintage speakers are not my thing ( speaker tech has advanced leaps and bounds) but he does honest measurements of them (no klipple machine…but I applaud his commitment to measuring them without it!).