Shop audio video set-ups

[ingola]

Use a dim light bulb tester to power it up the light will most likely stay bright (fuse blowing) pull one of the out put transistors out one a time restarting after each one when the light goes dim you found the dead section. If it's the main fuse most likely an output transistor.
https://antiqueradio.org/dimbulb.htm

 

[Ulu]

Thank you. This unit has been repaired twice before, but when I looked at the soldering work I could not tell where.

Both channels were dead

Someday I’ll get back to work on that, but too many cars and bikes want my attention.

 

[ingola]

Thank you. This unit has been repaired twice before, but when I looked at the soldering work I could not tell where.

Someday I’ll get back to work on that, but too many cars and bikes want my attention.

Fixable providing it doesn't have a sanyo power pack.

 

[Ulu]

Fixable providing it doesn't have a sanyo power pack.

Parts are unavailable?

 

[ingola]

Parts are unavailable?

There's a way to work around it but not worth the effort. Almost all transistors are no longer available however there are available subs for most things usually by larger stuff. Many of those old transistors are known to fail. I could pick through a schematic and know what parts will fail.

 

[Tallbikeman]

-I added the woofers in the botttom of the dresser. The ”floor” had already been replaced with 3/4” plywood.
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What a cool stealth stereo system. I am of an age where I still own a turntable that hasn't seen a record in decades, a nice quality tuner amplifier system and I rarely use them. Now I'm thinking about your system and how I could furniturize my system.

 

[Ulu]

Crappy pictures of the realistic ST 2100 D.

She sits in my shed, partly disassembled. I had to buy a better meter to check my capacitors.

Years ago I plugged it in and did some voltage tests, And I was satisfied that the main amp section was not working. It’s detecting radio just fine. I suspect that somebody tripped over the speaker wires when this thing was playing loudly at a drunken party and shorted the output terminals.

I say this because the main fuse was not blown. I guess the current draw falls off immediately when you blow those big transistors.

Anyhow it reminded me of the Sharp-made unit shown above, because it has three tone controls. Otherwise not so similar as I remembered.

 

[Jude Ephesus]

What a cool stealth stereo system. I am of an age where I still own a turntable that hasn't seen a record in decades, a nice quality tuner amplifier system and I rarely use them. Now I'm thinking about your system and how I could furniturize my system.

Thanks! It was a total blast building and restoring! And as I was buying most of the components off of Craigslist, it was relatively cheap…. at least for the power and clarity that thing pumps out!

all the components I was buying were state of the art in the 90’s, Craigslist bargains now.

I had to laugh, I bought to external sets of speakers to go with this thing. One of the speaker sets, the guy was like…. ‘Do you want this receiver? I’m never going to use it…. Just take it.. so, now I have an extra kenwood or pioneer receiver!

Id highly recommend the build! Tons of fun, I have the sentimental value and the thing sounds GREAT. If you go through with it please post as I’d love to follow the project!

 

[Ulu]

I’m refurbishing two computers right now, and one of them is going to be my new shop machine and TV/music server, while the other one is going to serve up YouTube to my auxiliary home TV.

The one With all the loose wires is probably going to wind up being the TV server. The one with the matching Hewlett-Packard pro monitors is of course my daily driver.

Nice video card.

 

[Jude Ephesus]

Here’s the finished product; I didn’t realize I didn’t post the final pics:

I bought an adapter cable and run music off of my iPad. I also listen to the radio

Some day I’ll do the top drawer and add a CD player

The system as a whole has:
1 3-way speaker in each side
2. Woofers underneath
2. Infinity RS 5001’s
2. Bose 4.2’s

The video clearly doesn’t capture the stereo or richness of the sound, but for the $400 and sentimental value I have into it, this thing live is TOTAL a kick in the pants!!!

 

[Jude Ephesus]

I’m refurbishing two computers right now, and one of them is going to be my new shop machine and TV/music server, while the other one is going to serve up YouTube to my auxiliary home TV.

The one With all the loose wires is probably going to wind up being the TV server. The one with the matching Hewlett-Packard pro monitors is of course my daily driver.
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Nice video card.
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THAT is definitely beyond my skill set!!!

 

[Ulu]

THAT is definitely beyond my skill set!!!

I made my living for most of my life working with computers. I don’t enjoy it that much anymore.

I have to complement you on how clean your shop looks. My garage and my shed are both a crowded mess of things that need to be sorted and diminished by half.

You might think that now I’m retired I would have plenty of time for such things, but oh no . . . I have to build back to back bicycles.

In any event, this is why I’m not working on the tricycle or the fake Jaguar. Plus it is currently raining, & has been on and off until we have had record rain totals.

 

[Ulu]

WooHoo Ubuntu! My new garage web/music/video server is up! It Lives!

I haven’t run a Linux machine since Mandrake 2.1 and this was as painless as it gets so far.

Ripping a Tull CD while running Youtube etc. The test speakers are weak. This needs some Yamahas.

Running Ratrod, Youtube, J Tull and more.

Either I had everything for this build already, or I got it for free. I did buy a new one terabyte SSD, because they were on sale for 50 bucks and I couldn’t pass it up; but I already had three hard drives and two SSDs for this.

 

[Jude Ephesus]

WooHoo Ubuntu! My new garage web/music/video server is up! It Lives!
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I haven’t run a Linux machine since Mandrake 2.1 and this was as painless as it gets so far.

Ripping a Tull CD while running Youtube etc. The test speakers are weak. This needs some Yamahas.

Running Ratrod, Youtube, J Tull and more.

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Either I had everything for this build already, or I got it for free. I did buy a new one terabyte SSD, because they were on sale for 50 bucks and I couldn’t pass it up; but I already had three hard drives and two SSDs for this.

Epic!!! Now, you need to hook up some BIG speakers!!!!! Do the YAMAHA’s!

 

[Son of Kradus]

Somewhere I still have a box of hoarded vacuum tubes, wrapped individually in toilet paper. I don’t have any old equipment that runs on vacuum tubes anymore. Someday, maybe I’ll get a vacuum tube guitar amplifier.

That is exactly where I would start, an old blown tube amp, there must tons in the USA, and youre right in saying the advertising war over stereo power was incredible, as a 10yr old I loved going into the shops and looking at and listening too the ghetto blasters etc, I watched over the next 10 yrs as they waffled on about RMS per channel, 4-6-8 onms, I used to try n sneak behind the cabinate to get a glimps of the power rating on the back and match it with the speakers they used and make my own assumtions which were the most powerful, in 1980 sound quality aspects were still a few yrs away so it was all about bass n loudness!
Now in the shed I use our old house stereo, an old panasonic mini bookshelf system with subwoofy sitting on the floor, its over 15yrs old and the disk rotator is tempermental but it has a beautiful clean sound! still works great, current disks in there are poison, native tounge and flesh n blood, the corrs and a couple BBQ randoms!
I have the speakers spread out across the rear of the shed at head height (bookshelf design) you can see the the far one on the left behind the hanging life jackets, the sub woofer is on the ground inf front of the head unit on the shelf, sorry its the best pic I could get without tidying up!
Been a great unit this one and still got tons of grunt, the neighbor n me use it to play along with as I can run the system through an MP3 player or a phone that supports the 3.5mm jack for its auxilary input! been many a beer n project listening to this! and those CD's have been in there since at least pre covid, maybe 2 yrs prior...sorry...Poison fan!

 

[Ulu]

Epic!!! Now, you need to hook up some BIG speakers!!!!! Do the YAMAHA’s!

I’m trying to figure out if I can get the HDMI cable to carry sound to my Aiwa AV receiver as well as video. I have an HDMI receiver with 35 W per channel to run the front Yamahas, and I have a 300w Yamaha subwoofer.

8” Yamaha and AV receiver.

There’s probably a pass-through cable that goes from the motherboard to the video card to supply sound to the HDMI out. I’ll have to figure that out.

Otherwise I’ll have to use the 3.5 jack for audio out. Not the optimal solution.

It’s time to do some more homework, and if there’s anything that exemplifies the computer business it is homework.

My current system in the garage is only a 50 watt logitech set up.

Garage Monitors and current Logitec 2.1 (6.5”) system.

That bare chassis leaning against the subwoofer is my current garage streaming video machine. I had to take the cover off because the thing has a tendency to overheat and lose connection.

 

[Jude Ephesus]

I made my living for most of my life working with computers. I don’t enjoy it that much anymore.

I have to complement you on how clean your shop looks. My garage and my shed are both a crowded mess of things that need to be sorted and diminished by half.

You might think that now I’m retired I would have plenty of time for such things, but oh no . . . I have to build back to back bicycles.

In any event, this is why I’m not working on the tricycle or the fake Jaguar. Plus it is currently raining, & has been on and off until we have had record rain totals.

Thanks also for the kind words on my shop!!!! It’s my basement and it’s SUPER crowded. It’s actually a mess!

I work in the basement in the winter and try to work outside spring, summer and fall.

the floor makes it look cleaner than it is. I’d HIGHLY recommend a 2 part epoxy paint and flakes you can pick up at any big box home improvement store For any basement or garage floor.

the bad news is, we had a flood and some water damage. The good news is, the insurance company was very fair with us on our losses. it enabled me to start with a clean slate.

I lost a bunch of nice antique shelving and storage cabinets and replaced them with the beautiful metal cabinets Which are equal in value but a different look to the stuff I lost.

While we had the place emptied, I did the floor prep and paint, which honestly, any who sees it raves about it.

it is definitely clean, bright and very easy to maintain!

 

[Ulu]

That is exactly where I would start, an old blown tube amp, there must tons in the USA . . .

I have not looked very hard yet but I have seen a number of blown guitar amps for sale. My current guitar amplifier is just a little fender 15w transistor practice amp that was probably made in Taiwan. It was a freebie too.

Maybe I can make it sound like a pignose and then mike it up through the main system? ;-)

I would like to actually buy a kit and build a high powered tube amplifier from scratch. I’ve only done one complete tube (radio) build from scratch, and that was in 1968.

I keep forgetting that I still have one old vacuum tube radio, and it sits in the garage in the dash of my ‘47 Plymouth. The radio has never run in the 38 years I have owned it. I should do that one first.

 

[ingola]

I've built a few using this

Sound great and the transformers are easy enough to find and tubes are still produced.

 

[Tallbikeman]

I have not looked very hard yet but I have seen a number of blown guitar amps for sale. My current guitar amplifier is just a little fender 15w transistor practice amp that was probably made in Taiwan. It was a freebie too.

Maybe I can make it sound like a pignose and then mike it up through the main system? ;-)

I would like to actually buy a kit and build a high powered tube amplifier from scratch. I’ve only done one complete tube (radio) build from scratch, and that was in 1968.

I keep forgetting that I still have one old vacuum tube radio, and it sits in the garage in the dash of my ‘47 Plymouth. The radio has never run in the 38 years I have owned it. I should do that one first.

I've owned a couple of very early 1950's Plymouth cars. A station wagon with the overdrive and a business coupe. Both had the flathead 6 cylinder engine which was a pleasure to own. Very smooth running engine. The clutch and transmissions were excellent. The only issue I really had with these cars is that Chrysler saw fit to gluing a mohair carpet to the pan which trapped moisture and totally rotted out the floor pans. I've owned a couple of Pignose amps and they were great. Good luck with your vacuum tube radio/amplifier projects.