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Kyocera B-910...a high end oddity

SOTA

SOTA

Solder Splash Goalie
I have had this behemoth for about 10 years now and it was old when I given it by my dad after he couldn't get it to work properly.

This was supposed to be the top end audio series from Kyocera back in the 80s and one of my brothers worked there as a tech back then. As the story goes, the amp I have was the one that was sent out for CSA testing/approval and although it looked fine when it was returned to the distributor, the one channel that they tore apart was never reassembled. The company sat on the repairs for a while and in the meantime the whole component system (which sold for somewhere in the range of $25k Cdn.) tanked in the market. My brother managed to score a good number of the available components for little or nothing and the amp ended up being my prize. I put the dead channel back into working order and the end result is a 200wpc monster amp that should have had an option to its $2k pricetag, that being a small forklift to move it if you have to.
 

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Can you give us some interesting details about this amp like what is the "egg-crate" top made of... What type of transformer is inside and what is the rating of the main filter caps? A picture with the top off would be most interesting.
 
The Orion Audio Blue Book lists it as:
1984-89

B-910 150WPC DC Configuration/Honeycomb Heatsinks, Direct and Subsonic inputs.

MFG list Price $2000

Very nice looking amp.
 
SoCal Sam said:
Can you give us some interesting details about this amp like what is the "egg-crate" top made of... What type of transformer is inside and what is the rating of the main filter caps? A picture with the top off would be most interesting.
Click to expand...

The egg crate top is a pair of ceramic heat sinks. It has been a while since I was inside this amp so I can't remember any cap specs but it has toroidal transformers in there. In the coming week I will try to find the time to pull the coverings (a million screws) and do a nekkid photoshoot.

I don't know much about the amp myself. I have seen two different sets of specs for this amp, one calling it 35 wpch class a and another calling it 200 wpch class a/b. My amp looks a little bit different than the one in the link Martin posted as it has two sets of spkr hookups in the back and a HP jack in the front panel. Having never seen another example or even a manual for it, it is very much a "who knows" piece for me.

Merry Christmas to all:yippy:
 
Sota,

Very nice piece!
According to what I have gathered since postiung these units on TVK, the original japanese unit is 2x 35W in Class A and the 2x 200W was to be export only and finally never released - which is what you're telling us, right?

The color of your unit isn't like that of the jap' units but it does seem to have the dedicated electrostatic speaker taps on the back?

tell us more about this proto!!!
 
axel said:
Sota,

Very nice piece!
According to what I have gathered since postiung these units on TVK, the original japanese unit is 2x 35W in Class A and the 2x 200W was to be export only and finally never released - which is what you're telling us, right?

The color of your unit isn't like that of the jap' units but it does seem to have the dedicated electrostatic speaker taps on the back?

tell us more about this proto!!!
Click to expand...

That's my problem axel, I don't know much more about it than I've already said. The extra spkr outs are a set of banana jacks for each channel with no provision to switch them on/off that I'm aware of. As far as it being an unreleased proto, well I wouldn't make any such claim since I have no evidence to back that up. It does at the very least seem to be a rare bird since I have never seen another one and I believe my brother once told me that there were only ever three of them in Canada. I have one, the prez of the company had one and my bro wasn't sure where the third one ended up.
 
This could mean yours is the 79th off the line. This could represent an evaluation run but more likely, I'm guessing they were series produced in very small numbers.
 
Didn't this line also have some ceramic involved in the construction of that bottom 1 inch +/- that you see in the picture ? The receivers also had this built in base design.
 
Hello Rybeam,

Yes, most all of their components utilized some form of their CCR - Ceramic Compound Resin used for vibration damping.

Here is a few links from TVK and Niji on the B-910.

Regards,
TB
 
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