The wonderfully worthless w1jim Rat-Rod garage system

[w1jim]

Honestly, I’ve stopped looking for gear. But, despite my best efforts weird and wonderful stuff seems to find me for free or at “can’t say no” fireplace prices.

With that in mind I’ve finally set up my rat-rod garage system.

I know, don't put stuff on top of the power amp - except the heatsinks stick out of the back so it's all good.

 

[w1jim]

Power amp - is something that I picked up at one of our FrankenFests and it’s indeed a FrankenAmp. Kudos go to its constructor (I forget who it was). He sold it to me broken and said that it needed an unobtanium transistor but I eventually found the part on eBay.
Back in the early seventies Southwest Technical Products sold a kit called the SWTP Tiger .01. But, they also ran a series of technical articles in Popular Electronics magazine which showed you everything required to build their products.
So, the article would include not only the building plans but artwork to create the PCBs in your home - flushing the nasty chemicals down the drain of course.
The original builder of this amp took it further putting in protection circuitry and mounting it in a beautiful rack mount chassis.
I added the meters because, well, meters!
It's rated at 60 watts per channel at .01% THD.
Not only is it beautiful but also has close to no resale value.

 

[w1jim]

Preamp - I've got a really good relationship with the town dump (oops, I mean Transfer Station).

An odd variety of goodies frequently show up on the electronics recycling stack - so when I saw this Crown IC-150A preamp I scooped it up. It was pretty clean inside and out though it did have a bit of corrosion on the main PCB.

I did some research on upgrades and the general opinion seemed to be that while it was respected in it's day that day was long gone. The recommended upgrade was to gut it and replace the guts.

So, off to AliExpress and I purchased a preamp board for about $25 shipped and transplanted it into this. I remote mounted the potentiometers and two switches, added a new neon power lamp where the headphone monitor jack was, put RCA connectors on the front inputs (for testing gear) and generally cleaned it up.

I retained the power transformer, input and tape loop switches and power switch.
I also replaced the four knobs to the right with shiny new ones.

Classic on the outside, modern junque on the inside.

By the way, the Lexicon MC-8 is only there temporarily for testing - that’s too nice for garage status!

 

[w1jim]

Sources - Nothing special here - just a Carver CD player with upgraded opamps and a Kenwood digital tuner that probably came from a rack system.

I also have a Philips turntable with a new belt and an Ortofon cartridge - but I’ve yet to hook up the phono preamp in the Crown so that’s not yet functional.

 

[w1jim]

Speakers - Here I have some modded Sony SS-TL3 transmission line speakers. Sony isn’t known for their speakers but these were well regarded.

Well regarded except for the crap tweeter they put in them. I replaced the tweeter with an M&K Vifa 1” soft dome unit.

Personally I don’t like the lite oak look of these speakers - perfect for the garage environment.
I do however like the small footprint.

 

[Nightwisher]

Sweet! That's better than what most people have in their house.

 

[59volvo]

I've been wondering about those cheap preamp boards. is there a multi input (3 or more) preamp board you recommend? this would be to pair with a class d amp board. Thanks

 

[lightcapture]

I had a used Southwest Tech power amp in the '80s. It was quite nice until I blew it up.
Was the crown preamp that bad that it's not just rebuilding w/ modern parts vs. junking the innards for chinese guts?

 

[Rome]

Mighty fine!

Rome

 

[Soundork]

I agree: The electronics bin at the transfer station is full of treasures.

While in existence, I do not have motivation to buy anything new...

Soundork

 

[300man]

Nice system! The transfer station has been good to me as well. My garage system although not connected due to a major reorganization. It does include a 80W yamaha receiver and a CD player from the X-fer station. They are connected to my UREI 809s.

 

[w1jim]

Here’s the documentation on the power amp.

 

[w1jim]

Update on the Rat-Rod garage system.
One joy of this system is that I can easily swap out gear at will. This is versus the other “pretty” systems which are fairly stable.

I swapped out the Crown based preamp for:

FX-Audio Tube-01 preamp (swapped with RCA 6AK5 tubes).
Home made 3 input source selector.
ART DJPre II phono preamp.
SMSI Mini DAC.

I also hooked up my little Philips GA-407 turntable with its basic Ortofon VMS-3E cartridge.

Now I need to find a garage project to keep me busy.

 

[forsgren]

I too have an SWTPC 215 Amplifier that I built in high school. It is only rated at 25 wpc but I would bet it uses the same meters as your amplifier does. I have also acquired a non-working 198/A preamp, it is in the stack to be repaired. It was very well regarded in its day, not sure about now, however. Nice garage system!

 

[onwardjames]

We dress up for the big system, but the little system is where we can let our hair down.

Long live the cobbled-together funtime system designed for wobblepops, smoke and good times.

 

[Hobie1dog]

I love garages and got to have tunes in there too