Vintage amps and headphone jacks

[mhardy6647]

Actually that one's not mine, but I do now have a 400 to restore as a winter project (if it is restorable).

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=78700&highlight=400+fotos

 

[ponderbear]

"The ATH-2 is a high performance, lightweight widerange sterophone on which Audio_Technica has lavished its precision pickup technology. In this planar-wave dynamic system, the spiral voice coil itself form a flat diaphragm that moves the air directly. This new design, which applies physical principles to more closely achieve ideal sound, gives wonderfully accurate music reproduction. The ATH-2 stereo-phone increases your listening pleasure by offering you superb audio reproduction not found with ordinary speakers."

I have ATH-3s. They have very transparent highs and mids, very nice for classical, and, alas, the midbass bump mentioned in the head-fi orthodynamic thread. Are they orthdynamics? I only have Sennheiser HD 424s to use as a reference, and I can say the mids are similarly airy but the Senn's bass beats the pants off the ATH-3s. I wonder if the felt behind the driver trick would work on these too.

 

[wualta]

I have ATH-3s. ... I can say.. the Senn's bass beats the pants off the ATH-3s. Sounds like this is characteristic of orthodynamic headphones. I guess I'll have to try the felt behind the driver trick.

Ponder b, I'm pretty sure the ATH-3 was a dynamic 'phone, same type as the 424 (which I too owned, back in the day). Can't help you with that one.

By the way, the efficiency of headphones has increased so much over the decades that an amp that would've been dead quiet on '70s headphones would be intolerably hissy with the current crop of Grados or Sennheisers, requiring the use of an inline pad. That would also help lift the amp out of small-signal distortion (aka crossover distortion), if it was old enough to have that problem.

 

[ponderbear]

Ponder b, I'm pretty sure the ATH-3 was a dynamic 'phone, same type as the 424

Ah! That would explain why I've seen several threads about taking the ATH-2 apart, none about the ATH-3

 

[ponderbear]

I listen to headphones almost exclusively. I have/had vintage 1970's integrated amps and receivers from HK, Onkyo, Marantz, Pioneer, Sansui, ect. and some are great and some NOT so great. I want a truly QUIET phono section, and some are much, much noisier than others.

Darth, what amps can you recommend? I'm fairly happy with what I'm using for private listening (Realistic SA1000A) but, obviously, there's a lotta room for improvement.

Anybody listen to an AR amp through headphones?

 

[RaymondLeggs]

My Akai 2600 has it's headphones driven from the main amp section... sounds nice...

I like your AVATAR that makes me wish I had gotten all silver gear Now If I could only find one of those big EQ's with spectrum analyser.....

The headphone jack in my supewrscope R1220 sounds good with my AKG headphones.

 

[zenith2134]

Oh yeh vintage amps sound great thru good 'phones. Been doing that since I got into this hobby.

I had a dedicated tube headphone amp, but I hada send it back, it went up in smoke, :thumbsdn:.

Just make sure the often-neglected headphone jack is cleaned out from oxidation and dust, to make a nice connection.

 

[darth]

I can recommend the following so far: Kenwood KA-3500,5500, KR-6600 Harman Kardon 730, Onkyo A-7, Sansui AU-4400,,AU-217,Kyocera 861, Luxman R-1050, Pioneer SA-8100 and many others I own or have owned. I was least impressed with the headphone sound from my rather large Marantz collection. I would advise to stay with 1975 or newer integrated amps and receivers.