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Vintage Fisher Tube stuff . . . audiophile or not?

it all depends on what holds your rear in the listening chair the longest. If you are listening, get bored and get up and walk away, not so good.

But if you want to keep going into the wee hours of the night that is a different story.

so, the key to measuring has to with measuring the glue bond joint between your rear and the seat. If its super strong and resists the tensile pull to get up you are on the right path. If its weak and you get up and wonder away after 15 min, then you need a stronger glue,,,,:-)
 
mcgjohn said:
it all depends on what holds your rear in the listening chair the longest. If you are listening, get bored and get up and walk away, not so good.

But if you want to keep going into the wee hours of the night that is a different story.

so, the key to measuring has to with measuring the glue bond joint between your rear and the seat. If its super strong and resists the tensile pull to get up you are on the right path. If its weak and you get up and wonder away after 15 min, then you need a stronger glue,,,,:)
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For me, bright systems tend to attract at first, but I step away from them relatively early. :idea: :)
 
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned running a vintage amplifier with a modern preamp. I run restored heathkit w5ms with a modern chinese preamp with upgraded tubes. Previously I ran a scott lk-72. While at times I miss the sound of the scott I think the sound I have now definitely qualifies as high-fidelity. Very nuetral but non-fatiguing while the scott certainly had more ‘color’.
 
Fisher stuff Is beautiful and popular, but on my experience its price point designed.
The very top tier fisher stuff qualifies as high end, (think 50A) but the average fisher reciever probably came from a department store.
 
trainbuftony said:
Fisher stuff Is beautiful and popular, but on my experience its price point designed.
The very top tier fisher stuff qualifies as high end, (think 50A) but the average fisher reciever probably came from a department store.
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alot of people don't think any receivers can be "HIGH END"
But I consider their receivers to be high end compared to everyone else at the time in the receiver category but scott/sansui come close with their receivers.
 
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I kinda wish I got an intergrated Fisher but as of now my FM/AM works pretty good and is the best sounding FM I ever heard but I know once it goes poof I am going to have issues sorting it out.
 
The Fisher SS "Studio Standard" series also sound excellent. The earlier ones used discrete outputs.
Newer models used STKs. My CA-220 is run from my Akai 770x and sounds as good as any other amps.
The tube stuff is getting pretty old (like me)and high maintenance is likely.
 
regore said:
The tube stuff is getting pretty old (like me)and high maintenance is likely.
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Oh Really??!?!?!?!? All of my FISHER tube gear is run regularly. 2 400's, 2 800c's (one in a 63 Executive console which gets used Daily 7-10 hours a day). X-202, X-101B, and various tuners, and 8 other consoles.All have been rehabbed or rebuilt. The last one I rehabbed was in 2017(2nd 400). I do yearly voltage, and Bias Checks on all of them, and haven't had to adjust one. I've had more trouble with old transistors, crappy caps, and burned out resistors in my Solid state stuff in the last 6 months than the last 12 years with my Tube gear. Oldest running unit is a 1951 FISHER Coronet. Pretty much everything I run FISHER is in my Signature. AFAIC I find vintage tube units more dependable/reliable than comparable Solid state units.
 
larryderouin said:
Oh Really??!?!?!?!? All of my FISHER tube gear is run regularly. 2 400's, 2 800c's (one in a 63 Executive console which gets used Daily 7-10 hours a day). X-202, X-101B, and various tuners, and 8 other consoles.All have been rehabbed or rebuilt. The last one I rehabbed was in 2017(2nd 400). I do yearly voltage, and Bias Checks on all of them, and haven't had to adjust one. I've had more trouble with old transistors, crappy caps, and burned out resistors in my Solid state stuff in the last 6 months than the last 12 years with my Tube gear. Oldest running unit is a 1951 FISHER Coronet. Pretty much everything I run FISHER is in my Signature. AFAIC I find vintage tube units more dependable/reliable than comparable Solid state units.
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Have any of your EH or tung-sol 7591 worn out yet?
 
Crummy BPC Yamaha receiver has literally never needed anything since I bought it new and is on a minimum of 10 hours a day in my office for the last 25 years. Tuner has never gone out of alignment and still performs as well as it did when new.

Having owned a number of vintage tube units, and much as I appreciate and enjoy vintage tube equipment, there is no such thing as a '60s tube unit that could make the same claim, with the same use, over that length of ownership.
 
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I'm curious as to what is considered high end during the early to mid-1960's during the Stereo tube era? I get that McIntosh would qualify, but what else?
 
My Acrosound amps, perform on the same level as my McIntosh from the same time period. I wouldn't call them hi end, they're the stripped down Honda chasing the porsche down the freeway, a car length behind, but never more than that... Yeah.
Acrosounds make more raw power, but I cant honestly say which is the better amp.
Probably the Acrosound.
The McIntosh is more "high end" but what does that mean?
I think a lot of these adjectives mean totally different things to different people.

Theres others which play in the top tier, but I'll name them after I attain them.
Don't want the price to continue upwards any more than the current circumstances dictate.
 
Tim D said:
I'm curious as to what is considered high end during the early to mid-1960's during the Stereo tube era? I get that McIntosh would qualify, but what else?
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Marantz tube of that era could safely be included, probably Fairchild as well.

"High end" is sort of gray area but Marantz and McIntosh pretty much held the distinction of meeting factory printed specs during the era before FTC requirements governing advertised equipment specifications that began in Nov 1974. Prior to then, there had been massive shortcomings between manufacturers claims and measured test results.
 
Perhaps those who diss tube technology have not heard decent stuff and have preconceived ideas or they may have listened to something that was not properly matched.

Modern speakers and amplifiers are all about high damping factors and voltage stabilisation but in the past with low damping factors very acceptable results were achieved. This is what some of the single ended tube amplifier aficionados with their high efficiency speakers are enjoying.

It is like sailing in a boat: do you let the boat just ride the wave or do you try to correct every wiggle caused by a wave? Similarly with a car, far more relaxing and less tiring when you let it wander a tad than trying to control every little hump in the road.

Perhaps have a read of what Nelson Pass writes up on current source amplifiers and sensitve full range drivers.

https://www.passdiy.com/project/amp...e-amplifiers-and-sensitive-full-range-drivers
 
I agree with @AmadeusMozart my 800c doesn't sound "Tubey" just very high sound quality and I like the analog and tubes assure this. I can play a rap with deep bass as good on my fisher 800c and it would be comparable to most receivers you could buy in the stores today.
 
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Got a kick out of this Nelson Pass quote regarding tube amps and full ranger drivers from the link above.

"Tube amplifiers seem to bring out the best in such drivers. They have more bottom end, a warmer, mellower mid and upper mid-range, and often more top octave. By comparison, the “best” solid-state state amplifiers make them sound more like transistor radios – less bottom and a, occasionally strident upper midrange. If you are a solid-state kind of guy (like me) you start wondering how that could be, and if you are a tube aficionado, you smirk and say, “I told you so.” The solid-state guy probably starts fixing the response with a parametric equalizer, and the tube guy enjoys his music with a nice glass of wine".
 
Poultrygeist said:
Got a kick out of this Nelson Pass quote regarding tube amps and full ranger drivers from the link above.

"Tube amplifiers seem to bring out the best in such drivers. They have more bottom end, a warmer, mellower mid and upper mid-range, and often more top octave. By comparison, the “best” solid-state state amplifiers make them sound more like transistor radios – less bottom and a, occasionally strident upper midrange. If you are a solid-state kind of guy (like me) you start wondering how that could be, and if you are a tube aficionado, you smirk and say, “I told you so.” The solid-state guy probably starts fixing the response with a parametric equalizer, and the tube guy enjoys his music with a nice glass of wine".
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Without mentioning it explictely it the Nelson Pass article explains why there are at times heated disussions of how much power is needed to drive certain speakers. I recently saw an thread on another website about a guy who blew up not once but twice some expensive Lowther full range drivers with his esoteric Kenwood KA-9X amplifier. I suspect he wanted to get more bass.

On Pearl's HiFi website is a trove of interesting articles (no affiliation, just a customer using some of his tube coolers) and one of them has to do with damping factors writen by D.J. Tomcik, Chief Electronic Engineer, Electro Voice, Inc. (Attached).

A short side step (not on tube coolers to extend life): the military did extensive studies and discovered that repeatedly removing tubes from their sockets and testing resulted in a shorter life span. Recommendation was to test in situ.

The military also discovered that if equipment is run in a controlled environment tube life can be twice as long.

The mains these days flutuates a lot and neither is it nicely sinusoidal due to all the switched power supplies, speed controllers and what have you.

I am piggybacking my tube amplifiers on a 1.8 kW UPS that I use to convert our 50 Hz mains to 60 Hz for some other equipment. This UPS has a stable voltage and pure sinus output reducing the stress on the tubes.

AM
 

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