Made in the 1960’s by Sears as part of their Silvertone music equipment range, the 1484 Amp and Head combo was fairly popular in it’s time and was now a classic contender for a vintage repair job at Open Ear Audio.
Like any old valve amp repair like this one, this guy needed a lot of valve socket cleaning and retensioning. For a fairly cheaply made Sears amp, they have a pretty cool character, and with some love from our resident amp doctor Riah, it now has heaps of play left in it.
The X-10 Vertical Music Centre was a genius idea from the early 80’s to mount the turntable vertically with linear tracking. Combines a tape deck, tuner and turntable in one, with a satisfactory amount of knobs and buttons. Sounds OK, looks friggin’ cool and fits into places where you wouldn’t normally be able to fit your turntable. Also the cat can’t sleep on it.
These kinds of vintage audio equipment provide us with hours of entertainment here at the OEA workshop, and we love restoring them to their former glory.
Another set of DCM Time Windows brought back to life.
A woofer repair plus new grill foam and veneer polish gave these a new lease of life.
We see the classic Technics SL-1200 and SL-1210 regularly. They are just like our extended family who just keep popping to to say ‘hi’.
They have gained a reputation in DJ circles and with avid vinyl listeners as being a solid, reliable and reasonably priced deck. As reliable as they are though they have a few elements that are prone to problems. Fortunately our Turntable techs have lots of experience with these and can service and calibrate your SL-1200 so that you can get back to doing what you do.
Connoisseur BD1 Turntable …
This lovely old classic turntable came in a little worse for wear. The drive belt had given up the ghost and the tone arm adjustments were well out of whack.
Like all high-end models, this vintage turntable is a very simple yet precisely engineered machine. An AC synchronous motor drives a nice heavy platter with a solid round belt that reduces vibration and transmission noise.
A new belt had this turntable running smoothly and the new Ortofon 2M Blue moving magnet cartridge was a perfect match.
All the usual alignments were undertaken and this elegant Grace tone-arm made it a breeze to get it absolutely humming.
