show your newest vintage electronic entry !

Not really. You can measure for certain things like capacitance, balance and generalise for certain materials etc but cables are soooo subjective to how they sound to every individual that it's hard to quantify for SQ.

I can only imagine how the audio industry would be with an established and recognised standard for sound quality. That would be a total game-changer - especially for the high-end cable sector - it would be difficult to justify some of the ridiculous prices I see from Siltech, Audioquest, Crystal Cables et al.

If you or anyone is interested, I currently make a range of headphone and interconnect cables as a sort of paid hobby. I only make/sell what I use in my own systems.
I used to make a version of this called the 'Crystal Cranium' which I resurrected after my finding s using this particular cable type.

https://www.marktplaats.nl/plaats/m1838647400/view

 

W&F, frequency response, azimuth, correct Dolby level, mechanical noise and grinding, wobbling cassette door, scratched paint - this I care about. Cables or DACs - I don't.

BUT! If someone could explain why my repaired (should I write "repaired"?) cassette deck would produce clearly distorted overloaded sound with a couple of different cables, but then turned into a decent hi-fi component when I used another, similarly identical and cheap-ass cable? Is it something about non-matching... what? Or the deck's amp is simply too weak? I probably should have started another thread

 

Probably badly terminated with cheap-a$$ solder / connectors.
The perfect cable (for me at least) is one that sounds invisible - i.e. that conveys the true, neutral sound of the source component. There shouldn't be any colouration, sonic loading of any sort....but that's a pipe dream sadly.

 

Thanks for clarification. This makes it hard for me to invest 100+ Euros in a cable that I might not be able to tell apart from the one that came with my IEMs for instance. I’ll think about it though, especially for the DC2, D6C and DX100.

 

Update - After consultation with @Chris_D , I decide to purchase two different cables for the KZ ZS10 Pro IEMs (Crystal Cranium and Coffee Cranium).
The QDC connectors are not that common, so assembly will take a bit longer than usual.

 

Those QDC connectors will be a first for me and a bit of a challenge to be honest. The internal clearances, especially with that kink in the connector will be the hardest bit to make tidy and strong. The most difficult connectors I have soldered so far are for the Sennheiser HD-8** series headphones. OMG, that was like threading a hair with split ends through the eye of the tiniest needle, in a strong wind, on the beach, with a dog biting your ankle, with a gang of seagulls using you as target practice and the tide coming in!


I'll let you know when those connectors hit Dutch shores Emiel....


QDC connectors. Kinky.


HD-8** connectors




Completed (balanced) Coffee Cranium cable

 

It is no fun either when you succeed at anything on the first try
For me this is a first too, I never spent a proper amount on cables.
Besides a 2 interconnect pairs that I bought second hand.

 

saved those from the dump lately. don‘t know what‘s working or not, haven‘t tested‘em, they need a proper clean first. the guy who gav‘em to me told me to come back next week, s he still got some speakers for it somewhere under the roof:

 

@Mister X keeps posting adverts for ancient mono boxes. I actually bought one last weekend in a house clearance shop for just £5.

Looking at it in the shop I was so puzzled how you were supposed to open the cassette door that when they told me the price I decided to buy it. The designer obviously thought they could do better than the usual piano keys or push buttons and put all the playback controls on a single knob that both turns and slides.

It turns out that turning the knob to "CASS" ejects it (with all the force you would expect from an early 1970s cassette recorder).

A couple of websites date this Grundig C250FM to 1971. It was "Made in United Kingdom" presumably in Grundig's Northern Ireland factory.

Fast Forward and rewind are non locking and are engaged by sliding the knob left or right while in the stop position.


Yet another quirk is the FM band only radio. Bizarre since the U.K.s most popular Radio Station back then Radio 1, didn't get its own FM frequency until 1988.

Even fitting batteries is different from your typical 1980s machine. Press two spring loaded buttons in the base and the whole back can be lifted off. From the internal markings I suspect this was designed entirely in West Germany and just assembled in the U.K.


Testing it the Radio has a surprisingly rich and full tone for the size. It will be interesting to see how big a speaker is fitted. Although the cassette plays, Wow and Flutter is about 50%. More investigations are needed. The belt seems to be in reasonable condition, giving a decent torque on the pulley.

I need to go back to a different shop in the same road soon. Will I be tempted to pick up the Red Sony CFS220L they have there labled "Radio Only" for £10 ?

 

Not had a chance to try it out yet, just got this PYE music centre out of my parents garage.

 

This morning I was browsing this site which might have some tips for you
https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=75401

The same site is a whole section on identifying various decks from that era.
The cream deck looks to be similar to one my parents had in the 1960s through to the early 1970s. When it went wrong and they bought a replacement I recall my Father saying that the new record player was was better because it had four transistors rather than two valves

 

Thanks Longman, I'll check it out.

This unit was free as my dad worked for Philips / PYE and when you get to a high level in the company, they always give the top executives free bees.They give them the top equipment / TV's they make in that year for them to have at home.

 

I just found this
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/pye_achoicachipho_1005.html

A surprising number of transistors for that time. As you say it was probably the top of the range back then.

 

Nice one Longman, thanks for finding the links

 

Looking at the 1964 price of £72 on the RadioMuseum site and feeding it through an inflation calculator I get a 2021 equivalent of just over £1000 in 2021 money.

 

I will have to see if I can get someone to restore it for me, I don't see me using it much but it can be a talking point when friends come over.

 

lovely little music-centre - i think PYE is PERPETUUM EBNER

in those days, the three german brands ELAC, PERPETUUM EBNER and DUAL together shared 90% of the worlds (!) turntable-market, and that untill ~ 1978/9 (when japanese markets/brands started to take over.

even Thorens, Garrard etc. where tiny little lights then.

i will get an early 1970‘es Elac Miracord within the next days and off course introduce it here.