Reviews of our old kit....

BSR McDonald - that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.    From their brochures, they looked pretty good!

Surely the turntable is fantastic. Doesn't BSR stand for 'Better Sound Reproduction'?

A McDonald, must be a happy deck...Mmmmm.....We're lovin' it.

I still have the remnants of the "sharp "1144 kit on the inside back page of the magazine !! ie the rack and the tuner , still goin strong ! bought in '78 from cherwell valley nr banbury ,got a pair of "leak " time delay compensated speakers ,ie the tweeter was set back from the drivers by t-3 .whatever that was lol .£478 Altogether !!!

tuner ,cassette, amp,rack with cupboard for lps and 2 draws , 1 for 36 cassettes and 1 for all the important stuff , leads ,Tape head cleaner etc etc

OK, I'm gonna have to be selective here, but what follows is a brief run down on some of the kit I've had in the past...


Mission 760 Speakers: Exciting, fast sounding compact stand-mounters. Surprising depth of sound for their size and extremely musical, although they were prone to being slightly ragged when textures got thicker and more demanding, particularly at the top end. At the time they were superb, but modern budget boxes are much better balanced.

Mordaunt-Short MS15 II Speakers: Old fashioned, shallow but comparatively wide stand-mounts. 2-way, sealed box and no binding posts on the rear - just sockets for banana plugs. Good sense of scale and better than average imaging although they could occasionally sound a little boxy. They didn't have the sense of complete openess that the best modern speakers offer, but were extremely enjoyable and the music gushed out of them.

Rotel RA-920AX: A solid budget amp that partnered well with the Mission 760 speakers to give a detailed and rhythmic presentation without veering into sounding clinical. The Rotel had a well balanced sound and kept decent control when things got more complicated. One of the better amps I've had.

Rotel RA-01: More of what the RA-920AX gave me. A very clean sounding amplifier although it could occasionally err towards sounding slightly grey tonally.

Cyrus 7 Amplifier: So bright it could strip wallpaper. Very detailed sound, but the brightness was too much and too often it sounded clinical rather than presenting the music in an enjoyable, infectious way. Didn't stay here very long.

NAD C325BEE: I've had two of these (and still have one now). A very very capable budget amplifier with a big and dynamic sound. The bass is particularly well judged for a budget amplifier and, contrary to some users' experience, I've never encountered any excess brightness. Soundstaging is confident for a product of its price, but it does have an annoying tendency to sound muddy with some material and it starts to show its limitations all too clearly with anything other than budget-level speakers.

Naim Nait 3: A very capable amplifier with an extremely musical, foot-tapping presentation. Only really gave its best when using Naim's own NACA5 speaker cable and worked very well with a Rega Apollo CD player which seemed to balance out the tonal presentation. Big drawback for me was the atrocious imaging which just became too irritating when listening to large-scale orchestral music.

Pioneer SA-508 amplifier: Silver 70s box with Pioneer's trademark blue peak level meters. Beautifully made and a very clear and well seperated sound. These really were very capable little amplifiers and I wish I'd kept mine for the study. Equally at home with modern speakers or those from its own time and a bargain at current 2nd hand prices.

I'll add some more later.

A few more for the record...

Mordaunt-Short MS902i Speakers: Took a long time to run in. For the first 50 hours they sounded a bit top-heavy and the imaging lacked stability. After running in, though, they really came on song with plenty of bass for their size and much more control at the top-end than the first few hours had led me to believe. Just occasionally they could sound a bit bloated in the bass and get a little bit ragged in the most complex music, but very impressive little speakers with good build quality. Some way off the Mezzos though.

Mordaunt-Short MS914i Speakers: Basically a floorstanding version of the 902i. Much more controlled in the bass but very similar sounding otherwise.

KEF Cresta 10 Speakers: Lovely open treble and mid-range with very natural tonal quality and excellent imaging, but absolutely useless with regards to bass reproduction. No matter where they were placed these just couldn't reproduce bass.

Wharfedale Diamond 9.1: Superb midrange and treble and beautifully integrated drive units. Stereo imaging is a real strength. The sound was a little too laid back for me in the end with some of the veiled quality that afflicts the Quad 11Ls (which share similar components).

Still have my old Garrad 86SB - must finish digitizing my vinyl. Used to have an old Leak amp and made some thumping speakers with 12" drivers. Subtle? Nah. But they banged out some bass them bad boys.

I then made some kit speakers from Goodmans - £100 in the 70's was a stretch to the budget but Pink Floyd never sounded better with a new Rotel amp. Amp failure let to prchasing an AWAI 3CD disc changer. Not a good move but with Dolby ProLogic on board I was in for hours of fun.The front pair of speakers were ok but I made some boxes for the rears and with some decent drivers I made a modest centre speaker.

Most recently adding a Denon 1906 I realised that my speakers did a reasonable job even after upgrading to my first 'proper' speakers (AE Evos) I recon I did a great job with a few slabs of mdf and some imagination. Anyone intersted in some homegrown speakers?

So now with Dolby and a half decent LCD panel I can enjoy a decent cinema experience. Thinking about upgrading the amp to a Yammy but I do wonder if the room acoustics has the last say in the overall sound when no matter what kit you throw in its never going to be ideal.

Sooo - settling down to a good DVD I'll leave you all. Cheers and thanks to anyone who may have got to the end without a yawn.

Rob 

BSR- too much weight on the cartidge? My project genie sounded awful til I adjusted the counterbalance...

I'm sure you already tried that, just a thought...

First music system was an old Dansette Viva record player, 4 speed - 16, 33, 45 & 78.

Later, after a few years, the first separates system consisted of:-

Pioneer receiver, Pioneer casette deck and Fisher turntable with Wharfedale Laser 60 speakers. Still got the speakers and my father-in-law is using them at his home - not bad after buying them in 1982.

Later, the receiver went and was followed by a NAD 3020A amp in 1986 which is currently still going very strong indeed. The tape deck was replaced by a Sony one in 1985 or '86.

That set-up lasted a few years, until the early 90s in fact, when an Arcam Alpha 5 arrived with Mission 751 speakers, Aiwa ADF850 tape deck, a Thorens TD-280 Mk IV turntable with a Goldring 1012GX cartridge and a Marantz CD52 Mk 2 CD player. This was a great little system and lasted until I got divorced in the mid-90s! I kept the turntable, records and tape deck and left a happy man.

Later a pair of Mission 733i floorstanders arrived in 1998 which lasted for 11 years until being replaced by some Mission 752s last November. A Rega P3 followed in 2001, a friend got the Thorens, the Alpha 5 was replaced by the Marantz 6010-KI which in turn is now on the bench and the NAD is back in place as the current CD player makes for too "honest" and revealing a combination with the KI amp - phew!

Sansui SR222 Mk 2 turntable. (£75)

Black and shiny and gorgeous looking budget TT with a clear (not horrible smoked) perspex lid. Nice arm, good tracker, well made. With a felt mat it would still look great today especially with the current vogue for piano gloss black things.

NAD 3020. 

You simply could not do much better at the time for £75. (Spring clip terminals at the back meant using QED 42 strand, but that was still far better than the 'bell wire' everyone else was using.) Fantastic sound in it's day for a 'cheapie', big, lush, warm and exciting sound with bags more power than specified. Tone controls and loudness button never required by me but every maker still had to provide them or no-one would have bought their amps.

'Soft clipping' button at rear for parties to save your speakers and amp from damage. Again never used. (I had a one bedrom flat when I was 18 with no room for parties so went to other people's where they all had Amstrad or Fidelity 'racks' that blew up and caught fire a lot!)

Celestion County speakers. (About £75)

Two way speakers. Looked like Celestion Ditton 11s. Great veneer, lovely sound. Sold them after two years for what I paid. Excellent value! Used them on width adjustable floor stands with castors removed.

(Looked very like these.)

Sennheiser HD414 headphones with  'highlighter pen' yellow foam pads. Legendary budget headphones...

 I had just finished my A' levels. I spent the whole of my first (full-time) monthly salary on this system (including a Technics   cassette deck - probably an RS-Mxxx but I cannot remember exactly which one.) Luckily I was paid in advance and had some savings for rent!

I also had this Sony  ST-88 tuner donated to me from a hifi shop I used to work Saturdays at - when a student - because they could not sell it. (Shape was too odd.)...

I had that for years and years and it ended up being given to a local Ambulance station for a  'bring n buy' charity sale.