5 of our Favorite Vintage Stereo Amplifiers from the 70s!

Hey Kevin here skylabs bringing you another video this is definitely going to be a fun one we haven't talked very much about amplifiers and it just so happened that we have four or five of them around the shop that we think you would want to see there's a couple of them that it might be a while for us to get another one in and so we thought we'd make this video now it wasn't necessarily even a planned video it just just happened to be looking around the shop and went oh wow okay um we need to make a video about these while we've still got them also after we go over these amplifiers if you are interested in adding an amplifier to your current system maybe you've got a small wattage receiver or integrated amplifier we're going to go over how that's done because we do seem to be getting customers in at least once a week that are trying to do this and they don't understand how so after we go over these amplifiers we're going to hook up a small receiver or integr an amplifier to show you how you would do that it's going to be a fun video we've got a lot of good eye candy to show you Eric's in a great mood I'm in a great mood we want to talk about amplifiers let's get into it let's do it let's do it and the first big amplifier we've got up on the bench is going to be the Pioneer Spec 4 stereo power amplifier made between 1977 and 1980 the MSRP was $700 you've got 150 watts into 8 ohms this is a dual mono construction with analog watt meters and if you were looking for the matching or the companion preamp you'd be looking for a spec one this is definitely one that I would consider to be kind of a holy grail for the Pioneer fans out there you want to see what it looks like I'll live up yes yeah light it up money shot there you go look at those meters big watt meters and on the inside as you can see and I think most the amplifiers are going to be this way that we show you this is a dual mono construction so you've got um two Transformers you've got individual amp boards and two relays actually there's four relays on this model these are about as cool as they get as far as the looks go and the performance goes I mean these things are just t built really well they sound great um rack mountable and even back in 1978 they actually sold a Pioneer rack that you could buy that was badged Pioneer I've actually only seen one of those in person a few years ago a guy brought in his rack that he bought brand new uh he had the EQ he had the spec one he had the spec 2 amplifier which is the lower wattage version of the spec for he had a 570 PL 570 turntable it was a really impressive looking system and he bought it brand new in the late 70s so he did you buy it from him no he um we just serviced a few of the pieces for him and made sure everything was working but so there definitely were speakers back then that did require this type of amplification this would get the job done I think it's definitely one of the cooler looking amplifiers from the70s and as far as serviceability goes I mean these are really straightforward filter caps are easy to get to that is the nice thing about amplifiers they're really just not very over complicated if you can get good access to all the boards um that's usually a win these can be a little bit tricky because the wire wrapped cables coming from the output transistors it makes a little bit of a challenge nothing too bad what you do is you remove the whole heat sink with the amplifier on it and um that's the best way to be able to service it so if you're looking for a monster Pioneer amplifier from the 7 you definitely can't go wrong with the Spec 4 or spec two oh hey we've got new hats in they're pretty much the same design as the last hat they're just not fitted anymore we've got the snapback hat so one size fits off you've got a massive Cranium or a small melon uh this one hat is a richardson2 should have you covered love it love it it's my favorite hat all right next up on the bench we've got the phase linear 700b and The Phase Linear 400 series 2 both of these have really large meters obviously my preference would be the analog V meters on the 700b and the 700b came out in the mid '70s it had an MSRP of $879 345 watts per channel into 8 OHS these are a very very rare amplifier I this is the only one I've had in the eight years I've been open and it's little brother over there the 400 series 2 came out in 1978 it's got the LED output meters on it and the MSRP was around $700 both of these pieces were definitely on the expensive side um but you know I don't think there were a lot of ants that were putting out 350 watts per Channel back then this thing is kind of a rarity and for those of you that are familiar with Bob Carver or Carver Electronics phas linear is essentially Bob Carver's design these are really well made The Phase Linear as from this era did have a couple issues which gave them the nickname flame linear in that they didn't have speaker protection on them you hear a lot of people kind of dog on the these amplifiers and call them flame linear usually when we get these before we sell them we do the speaker protection relay just to make sure that doesn't happen and makes them safe to operate is that easy to put in not bad I'll pop off the top and um we can take a look at it I'm pretty sure both of these have that relay done on them all looking at these amplifiers you would assume they're really deep you know like the chassis went way back and then you pull them out of a rack and you realize they're not all that big they're not all that deep really they're kind of lopsided when you carry them because that Transformer is really heavy and the rest of it there's not much going on there and as you can see on this one there's actually been some pretty significant U modification and refurbishment done you know you got your new filter caps you got these new replacement boards these things get hot and it's really easy for a board to overheat and get hairline cracks in it or start to curve I don't remember who makes these but um we we've bought several of them you can see on this one as well there's the new speaker protection relay there right here yeah right there that that wasn't a part of the original design and you can see kind of the original board compared to you know the new board who makes the new board White Oak and I think that's who makes the uh speaker protection relay that one right there that is a that's a forever piece for somebody these do look cool when they are moving um when you have when you have audio going through them they kind of dance up and hit look kind of like Night Rider yeah kind Night Rider so definitely if you're looking for a monster amplifier um I would be looking for a phase linear 700 be I think for the money that's a great amplifier I mean the 400's great too most people don't need over 200 wats per Channel either I mean do they have a warm sound or a clinical sound or is there any sound signature that goes with these or is a difference between the ones that we're showing today you know the amplifiers they don't have a lot of sound signature you know and some people out there might say I'm crazy but you're going to get most of the difference in your preamp you know the the pre's going to color the sound more than anything so it's really going to depend on what preamp you put in front of it you know if you put a two preamp in front of it it's going to sound like two if you put a solid state preamp in front of it it's going to sound like solid state you know I don't think you get as much of a A variation with the sound of amplifiers as you do with the sound of preamplified but again that's just my opinion and you'll hear a hundred other ways that people will say that I'm wrong and that's just the way audio goes so and coming up next next we've got the Harmon Cardon 16 and the Harmon Cardon 16 came out the mid 70s and the MSRP was $599 they're 150 watts per channel into 8 ohms again another dual mono construction we've had quite a few of these I love this amplifier they're usually really reliable I don't think we've ever had one come back that we've sold or we've serviced and if you're looking for the preamp from payment be looking for the model 11 or the model 17 we've had a lot of these over the years this one a friend of ours two times Tony two and three4 or two and 34 Tony I messaged him and said hey do you have one of your he three of these things he was nice enough to bring this one in so we did use it for the video CU I didn't think there was really much of a point of doing a 70 solid state amplifier video not having the Harmon Card 16 so thank you Tony appreciate it what's your favorite thing about this pamp um I just fell upon this one with a tuner and a matching uh matching preamp at a estate sale and for a ridiculous price and I got it and uh I've not turned back since I I bought this one now I own three I've had hard drive speakers dolquist uh Martin Logan's Maggie you name it it makes every set of speakers I put on it even some Panasonic thrusters uh sound good you know that's why we're a lot of us are into vintage we like the looks of them it's kind of like a little little business in the front the touch of party with the lights all the parties in the back you know I got a mullet so kind of goes along with that and the meters on these are also LEDs they' got several colors uh going from green yellow to red and let's see do we have power on this guy I'm not sure if this one even works this might be maybe a dead unit or something one planning on refurbishing are those lamps hard to replace if one goes out they're kind of in the butt the problem is is you usually just can't replace one because it'll be a lot brighter than the others yeah so you have to almost relamp the whole thing but if you look on the inside of these too you know you got even on the back you know there's 20 transistors on this amplifier it's insane and again great build quality easy to work on everything easy to access everything get your four monster filter capacitors two Transformers dual mono construction really well-made stuff everything from Harmon Cardon in the 70s was really well designed really easy to work on really well made made in the USA Plain View New York I don't I know why I always use Darth Vader as a reference for the way some pieces of equipment look but this definitely could be an Vader's TIE fighter he have a TIE fighter yeah tie this looks like something r2d to would try to crack into to release uh prison yeah so definitely a really cool amplifier for sure several times when I bought these from somebody they said they bought Magna pan speakers they didn't really have many options you know and at the price point I think they were probably selling quite a few of these I've definitely had more Harman Cardon 16 than any other solid state amplifier from the 70s I think they sold a lot of these I think there's a lot of them out there and I think they continue to work therefore their numbers just remain high I definitely think they're under valued um when you see them online you'll see these sell anywhere between like $600 to $1,000 in my opinion is pretty cheap for what you're getting the build quality and everything all right ma is that the heaviest [Music] one not even by a little bit got the Macintosh 2105 manufactured between 1967 and 1978 definitely the longest run of all the amplifiers we're talking about today uh the 21105 is 105 watts per Channel and this is also macintosh's first solid state amplifier if you were wanting to grab the companion preamp you'd be looking for either a c26 or a c28 and this is actually my amplifier um we showed you in the last video the Macintosh video and I showed you the face plate this is the reason I ordered the face plate when I got this one it was cracked it does work but this is actually on deck for Rob to go through recap the power supply all those kind of good things that um that need to get done it looks like maybe some coffee was spilled or something in here I don't think that's uh mouse urine I know where I got this and I just don't see that happening in that environment but um it looks more isolated to me this is definitely an iconic amplifier they're heavy you got the big uh meters up front the only thing I don't like about these amplifiers are the speaker Jacks you've got the old Spade style um it'd be nice if these were you know banana jacks or something like that but there's always ways to get around those types of things if you're looking for you know 100 Wat channel of a really good amplifier you definitely can't go wrong with the 2105 there's no question you know with a 10 year 12 year run like they had on this amplifier I'm sure you could put that code into the search bank and figure out if this is one of the early ones or one of the later ones or maybe some of you out there can even tell just by the appearance of it I don't know them that well in order to be able to date one just off a look and one of the things that gives Macintosh kind of their signature sound is the auto forer there's a really good article at Roger russell.com McIntosh where he kind of goes into it a little bit on why they used auto formers and kind of the the sound signature that they were trying to achieve with them but if there is a a signature Macintosh amplifier sound I think most people would agree those Auto formers have quite a bit to do with it and these these do I I think these are a little bit mellow I think they are a little bit too life sounding and I genuinely try not to describe the sound of amplifiers as much because I again I don't think they have as much of a play in the overall experience as the preamps and the speakers do but I I kind of tend to agree with people that these are a little bit on the warm side for an amplifier uh take that for what it's worth yeah mine has a oh Eric has yeah mine mine has kind of a just a warm lovely sound I I just I love the sound of it it's it's he's got the the small verion the slim line yeah they're mono blocks yeah yeah and they have they yeah they just as soon as I plugged them in for the first time and played a record I was just all smiles because it just I don't know if it reminded me of my parents old console from when I grew up and it had that kind of soft sound that squishy kind of yeah warm sound which I I had no idea what that was as a kid but um hearing it when I got older I was like oh that's kind of a tube sound yeah that's what most people say you know when they talk about Macintosh amplifiers is they do kind of have a tube characteristic to them and like we said at the beginning of the video we do get quite a few people come in and they say you know I want to keep my receiver but I want to add more power to it and they don't know how to do that you do have to have one feature in the receiver integrated amplifier in order to make this work a lot of people think you can just put an amplifier on a receiver and really that's like trying to add an engine to an engine you can't do it you need you need preout main ends in order to do it correctly so I'm going to show you that here on this little Kenwood when you're looking for a receiver if you do think you're going to want to add an amplifier that is something you definitely want to have so you go out the preamp out so it says preout and and you go into the amplifier you go preout into the amplifier and then you'll see a switch here that says normal or separate some amplifiers have that some do not but you want to make sure you put it to the separate position because that is going to separate your preamplifier from your internal amplifier so in this case you're using the Kenwood as a preamp only you're bypassing the amplifier you're sending the audio out of the preamp and you're going into the amplifier and then you're hooking your speakers up here there's no need to hook your speakers up here because you're not using the amplifier the nice thing is is you'll still have full control of all of your input switches volume potentiometers balance knobble all still work this is all part of the preamp section now another way to do this if you're wanting to use the amplifier from the Kenwood and you're wanting to use the amplifier from the Macintosh is you could use y cables and essentially what you do at this point is so you go out of the preamp with your y cables you bring one y cable down to the amplifier here and then you go back into the main end and that means it's going back into the main amplifier so at this point we're going out of the preamp we're going down to the Macintosh and then we're also coming back into the amplifier of the Kenwood and then you would just repeat this on the right channel as well and then that way you could utilize the amplifier inside of the Kenwood as well as the Macintosh you know if you wanted to do a bu a situation on a set of speakers or if you wanted to run more than two sets of 8 oh speakers that would be the way to do this so for those of you out there to add an amplifier to a receiver you know what I was just going to say I wouldn't do this if you have a high-powered receiver but that's not right either because you know how you enjoy your stereo equipment is up to you it it it's kind of a waste let's say you're going to buy a morance 2270 and then you're not going to use the amplifier of the the 2270 because you're going to run it into a Macintosh amplifier you're kind of not using the the 2270 for what you paid for you know the the biggest expense inside of the 2270 what you're paying for is a 70 watts per Channel and by doing this type of a configuration with it I think a lot of people would say you're you know you're wasting that amplifier but again to each our own who gives a do what you like there's nothing wrong with doing this and if that's the way you want to enjoy your stereo you should enjoy it the way you want it don't let anybody tell you not to do something like that there's nothing wrong with it can't thank you enough for all your support out there skylabs audio.com shop we got t-shirts hats we're constantly adding new records to our inventory so so definitely head over there and definitely don't forget to hit that subscribe button down below you can always un click it later stay tuned we've got some great stuff coming for you and we'll see you in the next one thank you [Music] he

Channel: Skylabs Audio

Views: 91,051

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Id: mFLd1LJpyE0

Length: 21min 40sec (1300 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2024