I realized I hadn't done one of these member systems post so this is my attempt. The amplifier and speakers I bought new in the early-mid 70's. I had these in daily use in the 70's up until about 1985 when I went with a smaller setup due to always traveling for work etc. My oldest brother had my big speakers and amp for the next 30 years. One day he was on the phone (he lives 650 miles from me) and asked if I wanted my old gear back. Oh yeah! Getting the amp back was easy, but the speakers simply wouldn't fit into our Jeep Patriot with all the other stuff we take along on these road trips. Anyway I ended up making a special trip to retrieve the L200's by removing the rear seat in my Chevy extended cab truck. It was a very tight fit!
Modded JBL L-200's
“Frat house speakers!” Yes they have been called that and worse from several of the JBL authorities. Still they have a certain charm. Beautiful to look at and they do have a nice horn mid range (what used to be hi frequency driver before I added the tweeter). The biggest complaint is that they are boomy although there are some things that I have done to help that.I find that they play the music I now like to listen to quite nicely. Jazz, a genre I am new to sounds wonderful on these! Other than low bass these are about 90% there right now. These can be a real project platform if one really wants to go for it and many have been converted into virtual L-300's. I am already part way there with the addition of the 077's.
What I have done thus far that is in the “mod” category: I added an 077 tweeters to them. It is the same one found in the L-300, (as is the stock LE85 compression driver). Then I built new crossovers and added them to the area in the base of the speaker cab, on the outside so I can get to it easily should I want to change anything later. I built the xovers to JBLL200 original specs, and then have simply added the 077 tweets with a separate 1uf cap and 8 ohm Lpad as recommended by a fellow AK'er. As it turns out this is the same arrangement that Nelson Pass used when he recreated the L300 crossover. It works well like this, picking up the highest frequencies as the LE85's are rolling off at their high end. I don't know what a frequency chart would look like but I definitely love the effect that adding these 077's did.
Link to crossover build:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/index....-i-just-got-new-speakers.736903/#post-9985346
Kenwood 700M and 700C Supreme series.
For those that are not familiar, the Supreme series was meant to be Kenwood's TOTL amplifiers. This amp is in the rare variety and is fairly in demand by collectors. It is the most powerful of the Supreme family of which only around 1000 total were ever made and distributed world wide. That includes the integrated amps which were the 500, 600, 650, and the separates 700M and 700C. Tuners were also available in 500-700 too.
http://www.thevintageknob.org/kenwood-Supreme.html
These amplifiers have received some very good reviews here on AK as well as elsewhere and EchoWars is probably the best source of info there is on these. He has rebuilt many as well as a complete rebuild (shotgunned as he described it due to a stubborn static issue) on my 700C preamp. It is like brand new now!
The 700M we had to take a different approach. While it still worked, it was starting to have high DC offset numbers on one channel (over 40mv). Shipping out to EchoWars was the problem due to where I live. Everything that comes or goes from my tiny Alaskan town has to fit and fly on single engine Cessna's or else float out on a barge. No truck freight, and UPS is very limited (they contract with the air taxi's on some items). The USPS is it, and they have something like a 60lb limit. The 700M weighs over that! Anyway he felt that if I sent him 3 boards to be rebuilt that it would sound like new and probably would be all it will ever need so that is what we did. Relay protection board and the 2 driver boards. I also changed out all the output transistors as well. So now DC offset is under 10mv on one channel and under 1mv for the other.
Technics turntables and AT440MLb cartridge.
I was given these 2 tables, one from each of my older brothers. One is a SL-1401 and the other is an SL-QL1 linear tracker. The SL-1401 is somewhat of a rare bird as it was only made for 1 year (1978). I have both of these TT's connected to the 2 phono stages on the 700C pre and they both work without any issues. The only thing I had to do with the tables themselves is a few drops of Technics lube oil in the lube points on the direct drive motors.
The SL-1401 also came to me with a bent stylus on its original cart so I ordered a new AT440MLb which sounds very good. This has become my main table now which I am using to go through a large donation of vinyl that was given to me both from my oldest brother and a brother in law. Some of it I am keeping and recording to digital FLAC lossless. I am simply too lazy to play music on a turntable on a daily basis although I do love the sound of vinyl and that 440MLb really is an incredible bargain!
The SL-QL1 plays well, but I suspect it could use a new cartridge too. Just doesn't sound nearly as good as the AT 440MLb. I plan eventually to replace its cart at some point but my options are limited to the various P type cartridges.
New sources meets old equipment. The digital age.
I play music almost exclusively from lossless and above tracts stored on my Windows PC. I now use JRiver to “stream” files to another small computer called a Raspberry Pi which also has JRiver on it. This was in a successful effort to rid the music from the noisy (RF) USB bus on the PC which caused quite a bit of problems. By sending files to the Raspberry via Ethernet cable now the music gets sent to my DAC from a very quiet, dedicated USB on the RPi. The results were quite good, better than I had hoped! Not only is the background dead quiet, but I believe the SQ is better as well in that possibly some jitter has been removed, and a really annoying issue of on occasion the music cutting out at a very fast continuous rate that would take a few seconds to up to a minute to realize. Either that or the music would play slightly too fast, the biggest clue was the increase in frequency of the vocals in particular. Then always a complete reboot of the Win 10 PC was needed to correct. Then I couldn't have any other programs running. The little Rpi, for under $50 is one of the best audio purchases I have made this year..
Schiit Modi, and Modi Multibit.
These both are great little DAC's that sound from very good (for the original Modi) to fantastic for the Multibit. I have the Multibit DAC exclusively connected to the Raspberry Pi3 and this is where I do all serious listening to music. I keep the original Modi just for direct PC sound now, which includes YouTube video, some movies or DVD concerts etc. It still sounds great for this sort of thing, but the Multibit is in a class removed from the original. It is that good!
Other equipment not in regular use:
A couple other items that don't get a lot of use. I have a Yamaha tuner (CT-610 ll). It needs to be gone through but still plays the radio fine but only mono. We only have one radio station here, an FM public station that does have good music with Jazz and Classical as well as a 3 hour call in rock show that is all live and all from old vinyl! Thing is the music mostly sounds worn out and or the cartridge bad on their TT so I don't tune in to that show very often. I also have a Teac reel to reel model A-3300SX. It works pretty well but the tape I have for it isn't in very good shape. It also needs to be rebuilt or recapped. If and when I ever figure out what I need it for I will get to work on it..
Modded JBL L-200's
“Frat house speakers!” Yes they have been called that and worse from several of the JBL authorities. Still they have a certain charm. Beautiful to look at and they do have a nice horn mid range (what used to be hi frequency driver before I added the tweeter). The biggest complaint is that they are boomy although there are some things that I have done to help that.I find that they play the music I now like to listen to quite nicely. Jazz, a genre I am new to sounds wonderful on these! Other than low bass these are about 90% there right now. These can be a real project platform if one really wants to go for it and many have been converted into virtual L-300's. I am already part way there with the addition of the 077's.
What I have done thus far that is in the “mod” category: I added an 077 tweeters to them. It is the same one found in the L-300, (as is the stock LE85 compression driver). Then I built new crossovers and added them to the area in the base of the speaker cab, on the outside so I can get to it easily should I want to change anything later. I built the xovers to JBLL200 original specs, and then have simply added the 077 tweets with a separate 1uf cap and 8 ohm Lpad as recommended by a fellow AK'er. As it turns out this is the same arrangement that Nelson Pass used when he recreated the L300 crossover. It works well like this, picking up the highest frequencies as the LE85's are rolling off at their high end. I don't know what a frequency chart would look like but I definitely love the effect that adding these 077's did.
Link to crossover build:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/index....-i-just-got-new-speakers.736903/#post-9985346
Kenwood 700M and 700C Supreme series.
For those that are not familiar, the Supreme series was meant to be Kenwood's TOTL amplifiers. This amp is in the rare variety and is fairly in demand by collectors. It is the most powerful of the Supreme family of which only around 1000 total were ever made and distributed world wide. That includes the integrated amps which were the 500, 600, 650, and the separates 700M and 700C. Tuners were also available in 500-700 too.
http://www.thevintageknob.org/kenwood-Supreme.html
These amplifiers have received some very good reviews here on AK as well as elsewhere and EchoWars is probably the best source of info there is on these. He has rebuilt many as well as a complete rebuild (shotgunned as he described it due to a stubborn static issue) on my 700C preamp. It is like brand new now!
The 700M we had to take a different approach. While it still worked, it was starting to have high DC offset numbers on one channel (over 40mv). Shipping out to EchoWars was the problem due to where I live. Everything that comes or goes from my tiny Alaskan town has to fit and fly on single engine Cessna's or else float out on a barge. No truck freight, and UPS is very limited (they contract with the air taxi's on some items). The USPS is it, and they have something like a 60lb limit. The 700M weighs over that! Anyway he felt that if I sent him 3 boards to be rebuilt that it would sound like new and probably would be all it will ever need so that is what we did. Relay protection board and the 2 driver boards. I also changed out all the output transistors as well. So now DC offset is under 10mv on one channel and under 1mv for the other.
Technics turntables and AT440MLb cartridge.
I was given these 2 tables, one from each of my older brothers. One is a SL-1401 and the other is an SL-QL1 linear tracker. The SL-1401 is somewhat of a rare bird as it was only made for 1 year (1978). I have both of these TT's connected to the 2 phono stages on the 700C pre and they both work without any issues. The only thing I had to do with the tables themselves is a few drops of Technics lube oil in the lube points on the direct drive motors.
The SL-1401 also came to me with a bent stylus on its original cart so I ordered a new AT440MLb which sounds very good. This has become my main table now which I am using to go through a large donation of vinyl that was given to me both from my oldest brother and a brother in law. Some of it I am keeping and recording to digital FLAC lossless. I am simply too lazy to play music on a turntable on a daily basis although I do love the sound of vinyl and that 440MLb really is an incredible bargain!
The SL-QL1 plays well, but I suspect it could use a new cartridge too. Just doesn't sound nearly as good as the AT 440MLb. I plan eventually to replace its cart at some point but my options are limited to the various P type cartridges.
New sources meets old equipment. The digital age.
I play music almost exclusively from lossless and above tracts stored on my Windows PC. I now use JRiver to “stream” files to another small computer called a Raspberry Pi which also has JRiver on it. This was in a successful effort to rid the music from the noisy (RF) USB bus on the PC which caused quite a bit of problems. By sending files to the Raspberry via Ethernet cable now the music gets sent to my DAC from a very quiet, dedicated USB on the RPi. The results were quite good, better than I had hoped! Not only is the background dead quiet, but I believe the SQ is better as well in that possibly some jitter has been removed, and a really annoying issue of on occasion the music cutting out at a very fast continuous rate that would take a few seconds to up to a minute to realize. Either that or the music would play slightly too fast, the biggest clue was the increase in frequency of the vocals in particular. Then always a complete reboot of the Win 10 PC was needed to correct. Then I couldn't have any other programs running. The little Rpi, for under $50 is one of the best audio purchases I have made this year..
Schiit Modi, and Modi Multibit.
These both are great little DAC's that sound from very good (for the original Modi) to fantastic for the Multibit. I have the Multibit DAC exclusively connected to the Raspberry Pi3 and this is where I do all serious listening to music. I keep the original Modi just for direct PC sound now, which includes YouTube video, some movies or DVD concerts etc. It still sounds great for this sort of thing, but the Multibit is in a class removed from the original. It is that good!
Other equipment not in regular use:
A couple other items that don't get a lot of use. I have a Yamaha tuner (CT-610 ll). It needs to be gone through but still plays the radio fine but only mono. We only have one radio station here, an FM public station that does have good music with Jazz and Classical as well as a 3 hour call in rock show that is all live and all from old vinyl! Thing is the music mostly sounds worn out and or the cartridge bad on their TT so I don't tune in to that show very often. I also have a Teac reel to reel model A-3300SX. It works pretty well but the tape I have for it isn't in very good shape. It also needs to be rebuilt or recapped. If and when I ever figure out what I need it for I will get to work on it..
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Would love to hear the 700's thru those speakers. 
Seems low.