Kurt Hamsters' Gear

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I've been a wannabe audiophile since 1974. Unfortunately my tastes and my desires have frequently outstripped my wallet :(

My very first (personal) sound system was circa 1970, a real shitbox of an all-in-one record deck and amp. It was I believe called a Music Fidelity 4, and it sounded dire! Being a 10 year old though, that didn't matter. It played my Gary Glitter LPs at a sufficient volume to annoy my father (a BBC sound engineer).

Four years later after a family reorganisation I found myself living with a maternal Grandmother who had enough spare cash to squander on a precocious grandson with ideas above his station after getting an interest in 'hifi' via borrowed copies of various Haymarket Publications products.

My very first (half decent) hifi consisted of...

The turntable sufficed for about 6 or 7 months until its plasticky switches and unreliability soon gave me my first case of 'upgradeitis'

I vaguely remember that around this time there was a bit of a war starting to be raged between a few turntable makers, Thorens, Linn and Ariston. I'm not known for my forward thinking so I espoused a first generation Linn LP12 Sondek for a Thorens TD160BC MkII. I outfitted this silver beauty with an SME 3009/II arm (complete with FD200 viscous fluid damper). I think the cartridge used was ADC but my memory has a gap on that particular subject.

Being a skint schoolkid my upgradeitis was held back for many years, though I was able to add a Sanyo cassette deck to the system, this was later replaced by an Akai 4000DS/II open reel tape deck and a Sony TC153 portable stereo cassette deck (which I still own). The rest of my money was spent building a meagre LP collection.

In '77 I joined the Royal Navy, so as to not go without my beloved music I added a pair of Beyer Dynamic DT100 (8 ohm version) headphones and a Sony stereo condenser mic to the ensemble.

Years past and my life in the slow lane of the hifi world was held in abeyance until the urge hit me again in the mid-80s.

It was in the middle of the Thatcher years that I threw caution to the wind and spent like there was no tomorrow.

I ended up with...

...after a brief flirtation with lo-fi JVC amp, tuner and a first generation Pioneer CD player (I can't remember the model but it only had 2 LEDs which displayed the track number only)...

At some point in the proceedings I also ended up with a Quad 33/303 amp combination which I ended up giving to my father. I can't remember why I didn't want it, I think maybe that it didn't give rock music the oomph that the Naims did.

The speakers were built for me by a very close friend (who also happened to be the chief sound engineer at Manchester's Free Trade Hall). They were a 4-way design whereby all the electronics and drivers were sourced from Wilmslow Audio (when they were actually in their original establishment in Wilmslow).

Now bear with me because as I previously stated I have a very dodgy memory, but they consisted of (and still do as I use them today)... (per cabinet)

4 way design
4 way design
  • 2 x Kef B200G (SP1075) 8" bass drivers
    1 on the bottom of the front baffle, and 1 on the top of the rear baffle firing backwards. I'm buggered if I know the theory of how they worked but when a bass signal is played they both move in/out at the same time compressing the air in the cabinet, so basically the more bass the more internal pressure. I can tell you they never 'honked' :) and are pretty flat down to 30hz
  • 1 x Kef B110B (SP1057) midrange
    Isolated internally via a very thick cardboard tube stuffed with acoustic wool.
  • 1 x Kef T52B (SP1072) tweeter
  • 1 x Coles Super Tweeter (I think), surface mounted on the front baffle
  • KEF 4-way crossovers SP2034 (LF) and SP2035 (HF, MF)

This sufficed for another couple of years until the the gnawing doubt of the aging Thorens (and it's razor bearings) rotted away my resistance to more upgrades. I ended up with a Linn Axis, with Akito arm and Audio Technica AT-OC5 MC cartridge. I also added a Sony S-TS370 RDS tuner and a Sony MDS-JE520 Minidisk player. I also upgraded the headphones (as my kids wrecked the Beyers) to Sennheiser HD 540 reference II. I'm not totally enamoured of them (a tad bright for me), but they'll do as I can't be arsed to replace them!

I have just recently moved house and all the above (with the exception of the speakers) are all boxed away, hence no pics.

I've also been playing on the fringes of Home Cinema for the last couple of years. The system is currently in flux partly because of the renovating of my new abode and partly because my wife retained the widescreen TV in the recent divorce :(

Currently it stands as...

The PC side of things...

There are currently 4 PCs running in my 'office'

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