Where Did You Start?

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IslandPink
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#31 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by IslandPink »

Top notch !
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ed
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#32 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by ed »

IslandPink wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 9:54 pmTop notch !
steady on Mark!. I beleive that style of posting is copyright Mike Holmes.
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#33 Re: Where Did You Start?

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I encourage the student to look for all instances of 'Top notch' on this forum !
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andrew Ivimey
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#34 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by andrew Ivimey »

Well, obviously, Mr Jeff's has described my entire works and I as such. But then, you'd expect that, n'est ce pas!
Philosophers have only interpreted the world - the point, however, is to change it. No it isn't ... maybe we should leave it alone for a while.
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#35 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by ed »

it wasn't the content I was referring to, more the brevity
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#36 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by Mike H »

Dave the bass wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 8:15 pm I discovered we could get better sound from it by closing the lid while the records were playing and placing something large and heavy on the lid, experimentation found my baby Sister strategically placed onto the lid got a much better and louder sound so I reckon that was the true beginning of my journey into DIY HiFi.
Ah shutting the lid of the Dansette! Absolutely. I forgot, that predated the Heathkit. Much before that tho, I well remember when I was very young, playing 78's on an ancient, albeit mains powered, 78 record player of my dad's. Eventually sadly the capacitors caught fire and that was that. :( Melted paraffin wax all over the place. Still not sure what the capacitors actually did, but I now suspect they might have dropped the AC Voltage for the motor. Or maybe motor start? Sole sound output was the mechanical sqawking of the, replaceable, 78 rpm needle, fixed in a small kind of metal diaphragm in the head of the pickup arm (by means of 'amplification'). Nevertheless distant memory informs me that it was surprisingly listenable. At least if you have nothing better to compare it to (besides a similarlty ancient and huge wood cased AM wireless, that was ensconced on a rickety old wickerwork table that always seemed in danger of collapsing under the weight, and not helped by the lower shelf of same being stuffed full with piles of old Readers Digest magazines). There was a little container in the plinth, like an inkwell, for the spare needles, which I believe you could still buy back then. :D The case was proper old hardwood with a hinged lid, and the platter mat was brown felt. The pick-up arm was huge and Bakelite, of course. VTF was probably measured in pounds. :lol:
 
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#37 Re: Where Did You Start?

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Dave the bass wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 8:15 pm ...purchased a Sharp RT10H cassette deck, I'd been studying magazines and talking to school mates and it seems most of our circle of music loving chums had small record collections but we worked out that if we all had cassette decks we could copy one anothers record collections and have even more music.
Bah, that's HiFi! When I were a lad I used to record the Radio 1 Sunday evening chart from the radio using a microphone and a mono portable cassette recorder, like this...

Image

My ealiest recollection of playback from media was an old 78 of 'I saw mama kissing Santa Claus' - that would have been on an old Dansette type record player, pretty sure the textured vinyl was two tone grey.
Sorry, I couldn't resist!
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#38 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by Dave the bass »

Aaah, you've jogged my memory there Ray, I did have a Prinzsound mono cassette recorder with built in mic and auto level control.

I tried to make it a sound-to-light device by connecting a small light bulb to the earphone out socket and failed to achieve Pink Floyd-esque results somehow.
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andrew Ivimey
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#39 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by andrew Ivimey »

You'd probably connected the light bulb the wrong way round... simples really.
Philosophers have only interpreted the world - the point, however, is to change it. No it isn't ... maybe we should leave it alone for a while.
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#40 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by Dave the bass »

andrew Ivimey wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 10:29 pm You'd probably connected the light bulb the wrong way round... simples really.
You're right, hence it lighting up black and me not noticing back then.

Live and learn eh.
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#41 Re: Where Did You Start?

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As I remember, John Milton had something to say about that .
Before he invented his fluid.
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#42 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by Morgan Jones »

As it's been pointed out that this should be your first effort, not your first decent effort...

Hand cranked record player made out of Meccano. I invented the record clamp, but not for the more modern reason. I had some large (perhaps 5" diameter) Meccano wheels but their flanges allowed my two singles to slip, so I added another wheel pressing down onto the label to give enough friction for the single to rotate. Needle was a pin stuck through one socket of a plastic egg box as a diaphragm. It made a sound, and as I was only nine or ten at the time, that was wondrous. We weren't allowed to bring radios into school, but nobody had thought to ban hand-cranked record players. Record player didn't do "Cinderella Rockefella" much good. B side was "Lonesome Road", which I discovered four years later was originally done (and much better) by Duane Eddy. Still play the Duane Eddy LP (which I didn't abuse).

By thirteen, I had discovered electronics, but couldn't afford new-fangled germanium transistors. Also, we were introduced to metalwork at school. BSR Monarch with M44/7. Yuck. Made my first unipivot pick-up arm at fourteen and put a Shure M95ED in it (paper round money). Put arm and Shure on Garrard 301 (huge amount of paper round money). No plinth. 301 balanced on a couple of coffee tins. Loudspeaker (glorious mono for years) was KEF B110 in very solid transmission line with Peerless DT10HFC soft dome tweeter. Passive crossover copied from KEF design and wildly inappropriate. Bedroom throbbed to "Dark Side of the Moon." RIAA equalisation calculations were not understood, so values were tweaked by ear. Acquired Quad II power amplifier but never liked it as much as EL84s. Southampton University stated that home-made Hi-Fi was not allowed in halls of residence, so the whole thing was tarted up (concrete plinth for 301) and made to look commercial. Crossover went active at Christmas with addition of Leak TL12+ for bass. And Shure was replaced with Decca Gold (for which that arm had been designed).
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#43 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by jack »

andrew Ivimey wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 6:51 pm ... Elektor- where are they now?
Elektor is very much alive and kicking - different to what it was but I still subscribe. Pretty much all there is now.
Morgan Jones wrote: Fri Jun 16, 2023 7:24 am As it's been pointed out that this should be your first effort, not your first decent effort...

By thirteen, I had discovered electronics, but couldn't afford new-fangled germanium transistors. ... Made my first unipivot pick-up arm at fourteen ...Southampton University stated that home-made Hi-Fi was not allowed in halls of residence, so the whole thing was tarted up (concrete plinth for 301) and made to look commercial...
Small world again. My first efforts in electronics was around 1968 (10) - small valve radios made from bits from HL Smiths and others in Edgeware Road and the various shops around Tottenham Court Road. HL Smith would make a chassis to your design if asked, plus one of the staff there was the uncle of one of my school mates, so we got a discount :) I was reading PE, PW & WW. First transistors I used were OC71s - a good trick was to scrape the paint off them - they then became OCP71s, the first photo transistor which was MUCH more expensive. Eventually Mullard twigged to this and filled the OC71s with opaque gel. Bah. Just noticed that Langrex are selling NOS OCP71s! https://www.langrex.co.uk/products/ocp7 ... iodes-nos/

The school I went to actively encouraged me to make & blow up stuff - the workshop facilities were just fabulous and if you were competent and not too dangerous, you basically got free reign to make your own things.

Like Morgan, I made a unipivot arm, probably around 1974, so I'd have been 16 - I still have some of it nearly 50 years later - see photo below). The arm was a light aluminum tube that went over the brass stub, with a light aluminum shell. There were a number of fine tracking adjustment weights one of which is also shown below. This was pretty fine lathe work to be doing at that age.
I admit I also made a pretty decent cannon which used sugar & weedkiller, lead shot from the physics dept and Jetex fuses (see below)

Again, like Morgan, I went to Southampton to study Electronic Engineering, but I don't remember any rules regarding home-built audio kit... I was in Montefiore in my first year, and certainly had a KT66 PP homebrew amp and a pair of enormously heavy speakers I'd made with slate cabinets. I can't remember what the drivers were but I do remember playing with them and the amp in the anechoic chamber in ISVR (the Institute for Sound & Vibration Research) - that chamber was a scary place to be in on your own, though I think that there was a telephone in there and an alarm cord in case you got locked in.

Decks included SP25s & 401s - I remember making a really nice plinth for the first SP25 from iroko...

My second & third years I was sharing a flat with my girlfriend and two other females - the flat was above a hairdresser and we got continual complaints about the noise - lots of parties - those amp & speakers were well used.

As mentioned before, my first commercial kit was Sl6 speakers and a Sansui AU 717 amp, which were lovely. Deck was a Linn Sondek LP12 & SME 3009 II arm. I'm ashamed I cannot remember the cartridge... I sold my car to buy the deck & arm.

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#44 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by Morgan Jones »

Are you sure the world isn't flat? It seems so small. I had custom chassis made by HL Smith too. There was an amazing old chap there who wore a thick greatcoat even during the summer. Was in Montefiore (B188). My first unipivot wasn't as fancy as Jack's (nice machining and soft soldering), but that's because it was made in one double period, finished after school and was playing records that evening. We weren't encouraged to blow things up (my dad taught me about weedkiller and sugar) but metalwork teacher was astonishingly tolerant and let me do my own thing rather than his formal projects. I always regret not going back to thank him. One thing I learned was not to combine brass and aluminium (electrolytic corrosion).

Sadly, I haven't kept any of my early stuff. Come to think of it, I haven't kept much of my later stuff, either. I'm fairly sure I have a scanned image of a photograph of arm in action taken by Kodak Instamatic. Fairly ropey because I didn't have flash and new nothing about photography. Hmmm, I don't seem to be able to insert and image from a file.
Last edited by Morgan Jones on Fri Jun 16, 2023 6:08 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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#45 Re: Where Did You Start?

Post by simon »

I guess I'm around 10 years younger than Jack but school had already changed a lot by then - even the chemistry teacher's practical demonstrations to the class were done behind protective perspex to shield us. And we had to make the same approved projects in woodwork and metalwork; there was certainly no blowing up of stuff. It sounds like school used to a lot more fun.
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