jhoyt
02-23-2008, 11:13 PM
Well, my skill and expertise in jerryrigging came in handy this evening!
I decided to try to hook up the MCS 3051 I got recently on a lark. It has no internal power supply, so it has a special umbilical cord for power from the matching amp (which I don't have). I found my variable DC voltage wall wart, and metered it. The 12V setting was putting out about 23V. Interesting. Every other setting was also putting out 23V. Hmm. Nothing to lose, so I completely jerryrigged a way to hook the wall wart plug to the tuner's power cord. Finally, I got a light on the front of the unit to come on. A little more fiddling around, and I figured how to hold the wires together with one hand, and push buttons with the other!
Success, lights and buttons that work. However, the digital readout (vfd) is still dark. A little reading on the net shows that vfd's use about 12-14VAC; well, forget it. But, with a cobbled-together antenna, the signal strength meter is pegging on stations I can't see! Then, I ran a line from my amp over to the tuner, and sure enough, it was working.
I decided to tune it to a decent station, then tuned my best tuner (Yamaha TX-950) to the same one for a shootout. As you might expect, the Yamaha bested it sonically in just about every way. The MCS soundstage was flatter and narrower. The top and bottom extension wasn't there. The overall sound was just plain duller. But--not by much! Yes, the differences were readily discernible, but then again, my main system is very transparent. My vintage system, with older speakers, revealed the same differences, but not as readily.
In the end, it didn't sound bad per se, just boring by comparison. If it had a normal power cord, I'd probably keep it around as an emergency backup tuner. But alas, too much work would have to be done to be able to make it convenient to use. So, I've had my fun with it. I got it working, if albeit blindly. And it proved that it really didn't sound too bad after all.
Jeff
I decided to try to hook up the MCS 3051 I got recently on a lark. It has no internal power supply, so it has a special umbilical cord for power from the matching amp (which I don't have). I found my variable DC voltage wall wart, and metered it. The 12V setting was putting out about 23V. Interesting. Every other setting was also putting out 23V. Hmm. Nothing to lose, so I completely jerryrigged a way to hook the wall wart plug to the tuner's power cord. Finally, I got a light on the front of the unit to come on. A little more fiddling around, and I figured how to hold the wires together with one hand, and push buttons with the other!
Success, lights and buttons that work. However, the digital readout (vfd) is still dark. A little reading on the net shows that vfd's use about 12-14VAC; well, forget it. But, with a cobbled-together antenna, the signal strength meter is pegging on stations I can't see! Then, I ran a line from my amp over to the tuner, and sure enough, it was working.
I decided to tune it to a decent station, then tuned my best tuner (Yamaha TX-950) to the same one for a shootout. As you might expect, the Yamaha bested it sonically in just about every way. The MCS soundstage was flatter and narrower. The top and bottom extension wasn't there. The overall sound was just plain duller. But--not by much! Yes, the differences were readily discernible, but then again, my main system is very transparent. My vintage system, with older speakers, revealed the same differences, but not as readily.
In the end, it didn't sound bad per se, just boring by comparison. If it had a normal power cord, I'd probably keep it around as an emergency backup tuner. But alas, too much work would have to be done to be able to make it convenient to use. So, I've had my fun with it. I got it working, if albeit blindly. And it proved that it really didn't sound too bad after all.
Jeff