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Dynaco Mk III question help me decide

Coming from an all Marantz background, I absolutely love my Mkiiis. The purists may steer you away from these because of the modifications, good or bad. What I see is someone who appreciated them enough to dump some coin into them whether it is an improvement or not only the seller would know as you haven't spent the time listening to stock units. Have the seller send you images of the wiring underneath and share that image with us. Also find out if the quad cap has been replaced. The best thing you could do is listen to them and pass your own judgement.

For what its worth, I barely turn on my Marantz power amps now that I have the Mkiiis. I opted to go for new kits through Kevin at Dynakit and built them myself.
 
Why am I looking at something else since I do love the Marantz 15's.
My answer, Never owned any tube equipment. The MK lll's are the same wpc output as the 15. And If I dont try out a tube amp now I will never be able to afford one later.
I still regret not getting a 7 or 8b when they were affordable.
And finally someone paid me back $2,000,00 that I lent them so long ago that I had given up all hope of ever getting paid back.
Thanks for your question It was a good one and really made me think.
-john
 
Brice said:
If you don't mind the look, there is pair of Allen Organ 75s on ebay for that money.
That would be something else than a Dynaco, left alone a clone.
Click to expand...
I saw those and no I looks are not that important to me. I kind of like the thought of something in contrast to my Marantz stuff. But as my OP said I am new to tubes.
I am looking for something that will sound great a low volume. was just gifted a pair of Dynaco A-25
but has enough punch to drive my original large Advents.
thanks for your input.
-john
 
These amps are modified MK3's, most likely with "cloth lead" transformers. The driver boards and modifications look nice and good components were used. The problem is "original" MK3's are much easier to sell and command a premium price to modified MK3's (no matter how good or how expensive the modifications were). It is easy enough and relatively inexpensive to turn these back into "stock" if you wanted to so to me the only issue is the price. A excellent condition pair of original MK's 3 is worth $1,000 or so and it would cost about $200 to turn these back to stock so a more reasonable price would be $800. If you could get them at this price I would buy them and try them... they probably are great to listen to... but if you ever wanted to sell them it would be hard because they are modified. I would not worry about the comments above about design problems... I run a pair of MK3's with a bucking transformer (117 volts) as daily amps and they are fine... not to mention the fact that they are over 50 years old.
 
$2k will get you a Marantz 8/8B.

Personally, I'd be more interested in a properly mod'ed Dynaco tube amp than a stocker for actual use. The original design was a cost effective compromise with very good output transformers.
 
petercapo said:
So, if I understand, you are saying that the Mark III represents "bad engineering" even though they continued in service for decades without failures due to turn on surges or other things?
Click to expand...

Its just budget engineering, maybe not so much bad engineering. A lot of other things did the same thing, but it doesn't mean its great design. If you didn't have to work within the budget constraints that Dynaco (and many others) did, you'd use caps that could withstand the voltage of a completely unloaded power supply for an indefinite amount of time. That is more expensive though, and since most of the time there isn't a need to do that you size your caps just big enough to handle a short surge voltage and still survive.
 
I have a Marantz model 33 preamp I restored. It is supposed to sound very close to the 7t. It was Dawson Hadley's design if I remember right. I also have a model 16 power amp. The 16's are also mono blocks. Just an updated, more stable version of the 15's. Both sound very nice. I spent time researching both to try my best to get them both restored as close to original as I could with new parts. Out of all the early to late 70's SS Marantz gear ive had or have they are my favorite. I would love to compare them with a 7t and 15. Saul Marantz didn't jump into SS until the technology got better. His goal was to have Marantz SS gear sound as good as his tube equipment. While these older mono blocks weren't the most stable, udates to them continued during and after the manufacture runs.
So far my tube equipment is a bit better sounding to me than the old Marantz seperates due to being able to tailor the sound some by trying different tubes. Even though the 33 and 16 are now in a second system, they aren't going anywhere.
 
Just a thought here, the HK Citation II is just a bit more then 2K (with careful shopping and some patience) and in my opinion a better amp then a pair of MKIII's. You might want to consider something like that instead. I also looked at what Mac's went for and quickly looked away:(.:dunno:

Just a thought for you to consider.

Shelly_D
 
I would like to thank all of you guys for your great and educational coments. I enjoyed reading them all.
One of you offered me with a very nice pair of Dynaco MK III's.
I am looking forward to there arrival and finally having my first set of tubes.
I had a wild ride exploring SS before deciding on collecting Marantz and finding the ones that are keepers.
I'm sure exploring tubes will be just as much fun. Looking forward to trying different tubes and at some point a few different amps.

Thanks again I had fun.
-john
 
Lavane said:
I have a Marantz model 33 preamp I restored. It is supposed to sound very close to the 7t. It was Dawson Hadley's design if I remember right. I also have a model 16 power amp. The 16's are also mono blocks. Just an updated, more stable version of the 15's. Both sound very nice. I spent time researching both to try my best to get them both restored as close to original as I could with new parts. Out of all the early to late 70's SS Marantz gear ive had or have they are my favorite. I would love to compare them with a 7t and 15. Saul Marantz didn't jump into SS until the technology got better. His goal was to have Marantz SS gear sound as good as his tube equipment. While these older mono blocks weren't the most stable, udates to them continued during and after the manufacture runs.
So far my tube equipment is a bit better sounding to me than the old Marantz seperates due to being able to tailor the sound some by trying different tubes. Even though the 33 and 16 are now in a second system, they aren't going anywhere.
Click to expand...
Where do you live I'm in San Francisco
-john
 
I was on a quest to find amps for ESL63's. One that I tried were Mark III's. I bought two pairs, both stock so I could compare as I updated one pair. I did recap the reference pair so it would be a fair test. Regarding surge, yes rectifier tends to conduct before outputs, at 125V AC thermistor is needed.

I did an upgrade similar to the ones the OP was considering, including power cord. And I tried old stock 6550's and current production Gold Lion KT88's in both. With the ESL63's the upgraded pair sounded considerably better. But I kept up my search, as someone else suggested updated Citation II was an improvement so was an 8B and some others.

I sold the stock Mark III's for $700 and the updated ones for $900. The updated one sold to a guy that used them with A25's or maybe A35's don't remember which and he really liked them. What he was using before were Mac60's that had some updates. He thought the Mark III's were a big improvement. As a consequence he had a complete update done to the Mac60's. Last I heard from him, he liked both sets of amps equally although they did sound different.

In case someone is going to ask, both sets of Mark III's had the cloth transformer leads.
 
Modded Mk III's can be great but all "hot rods" are only as good as the builder. Bob Hovland did these for me years ago and they are fantastic. Coincidentally, from what I understand Bob is a fan of the Marantz 15.

24070523300_c0cd0cdec8_c.jpg
 
I had a pair of "modded" III's, and they were hell to get repaired when various issues started popping up. The previous owner had modded them years before and did not have a schematic of what he did, so a couple of different techs that I had working on them had a bear of a time working backwards to figure things out. They were good sounding when working properly, but the advice here is to make sure that if you buy anything that's been modded, make sure you can also obtain details on what was modded and how.
 
This pair has the rare hand-wound transformers so many lovers of these units search for.

The author of this worked on an audio sales floor I'd bet.
 
There is some amount of hand work involved when output transformers are made. That may be fitting the bobbins to the armature, soldering leads to the coil(s), or final assembly. But that isn't hand-winding which would have added cost to Dynaco iron. In some cases the amount of wire per section is staggering, must all me aligned with the preceding run, and properly tensioned. Try winding a simple 1H choke on a bar lamination and see how long and how tedious the process is.
 
soundmotor said:
...Try winding a simple 1H choke on a bar lamination and see how long and how tedious the process is.
Click to expand...

No thanks. Life is too short and I have better things to do. Besides, automated or machine winding of coils is more consistent between examples as well. Get a good machine wound output tranny and the next one will be just as good.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Shelly_D
 
jptinc said:
I would like to thank all of you guys for your great and educational coments. I enjoyed reading them all.
One of you offered me with a very nice pair of Dynaco MK III's.
I am looking forward to there arrival and finally having my first set of tubes.
I had a wild ride exploring SS before deciding on collecting Marantz and finding the ones that are keepers.
I'm sure exploring tubes will be just as much fun. Looking forward to trying different tubes and at some point a few different amps.

Thanks again I had fun.
-john
Click to expand...

good to hear you got a pair of them coming to you.
Let us know how they perform and what you think of them!
 
I remember reading on E-pay how so many sellers stated the cloth lead x-fmer wired ones were so much better than the "modern" reproduction ones. Whatever. I believe the transformer company that makes them today bought the old machines that they were originally wound on an used the same winding technique. So what, you need an old guy that used to wind them too? Sheesh. Cloth Leads are better!! Whatever.
 
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