Christmas 2011

Despite the hectic nature of the holiday-season, I am inevitably able to produce one piece each year as a gift for some person or persons near+dear to me.  This year’s recipient of the prize-winning entry in Connecticut’s Got Free Time! will receive this charming set.

I’d been thinking a bit about V. Gallo’s comment in Sound Practices #1…  see the previous post for the full details…  basically, the idea that ‘good hi-fi should sound like the best radio you’ve ever heard’ (as opposed to some supposed verisimilitude to an actual acoustic event).  Well, here’s an attempt at the best-sounding radio you’ve ever heard.   At the front end, two RCA inputs mix via fixed resistors to a single 100K pot, and then onto the grid of the voltage amplifer stage (6J5, the ‘single’ triode iteration of the more common 6SN7); this feeds one 6V6 via a gigantic paper coupling cap; in the power supply, a 5Y3 rectifier and R/C filtering with large (50uf) caps and an extra filtering stage before the output transformer for a n extremely quiet, stable signal.  The circuit is very similar to what you would find on the back-end of most transformer-mains-isolated AM/FM tube radios of the 40s and 50s.

The speaker is a 1950’s extension speaker, maker unknown; it has extremely nice finish work and detail; it is unusual in that both the front and back of the enclosure are open via grille clothe, creating a ‘bright’ and ‘dull’ side; position the speaker as-you-like for a very unconventional tone control!

The cabinet is 1×3 solid cherry with internal bracing.  Keeping with the ‘best-radio’ theme, the tubes, transformers, and brown Bakelite sockets are pulls from various Ancient Radios that have wandered into the shop over the years.  And yea it sounds great…