rlisin
Quad 4 life
So here's my recent project, Fidelity 450TA receiver.
Mid-to-late 70s receiver from a London company that made affordable (read: way cheaper than NAD) gear and then went down with the rest of the economy.
Fidelity 450TA is not a giant killer, not even a NAD killer, but it's rare, cheap, made in England, looks nice with the silver face, and doesn't sound half bad.
I grabbed it as a fun project. It needed a lot of cleaning, new lamps, and some experimenting with wires running from the transformer that were too close to the volume pot and were causing nasty hum. I moved them around and found a path that made the hum go away (well, most of it anyway).
I also added a green sheet behind the dial, because the original white(ish) was way too bright at night. If you look at the pic, it was as bright as the white bit in the meter.
The good:
Front panel and knobs are aluminum. Really. That's already something, Superscope from the same period has plastic face pained to look like aluminum from a distance and aluminum knobs. Not to mention cardboard bottom on both Superscope and Marantz units from late 70s. Back to England, NAD 7020 had metal face, but plastic knobs.
It sounds nice. Nothing special, but nothing bad either. I had a Rotel RX-300 few months ago, this Fidelity is comparable. I'm actually tempted to keep it for the summer house.
The bad:
Top cover, on the other hand, is plastic.
Built quality is funny. I actually laughed when I saw the heatsink.
Connectors are all DIN. There are connectors for two sets of speakers, but no switch, so if you connect 2 sets, you can't run one and switch off the other.
I don't have specs for this thing, but the outputs are HA-1370s rated 18W, so I guess that makes it 15-18 WPC. PS seems more than enough for this.
So, here's a pic:
More here:
http://pokazywarka.pl/nqjamd/
Mid-to-late 70s receiver from a London company that made affordable (read: way cheaper than NAD) gear and then went down with the rest of the economy.
Fidelity 450TA is not a giant killer, not even a NAD killer, but it's rare, cheap, made in England, looks nice with the silver face, and doesn't sound half bad.
I grabbed it as a fun project. It needed a lot of cleaning, new lamps, and some experimenting with wires running from the transformer that were too close to the volume pot and were causing nasty hum. I moved them around and found a path that made the hum go away (well, most of it anyway).
I also added a green sheet behind the dial, because the original white(ish) was way too bright at night. If you look at the pic, it was as bright as the white bit in the meter.
The good:
Front panel and knobs are aluminum. Really. That's already something, Superscope from the same period has plastic face pained to look like aluminum from a distance and aluminum knobs. Not to mention cardboard bottom on both Superscope and Marantz units from late 70s. Back to England, NAD 7020 had metal face, but plastic knobs.
It sounds nice. Nothing special, but nothing bad either. I had a Rotel RX-300 few months ago, this Fidelity is comparable. I'm actually tempted to keep it for the summer house.
The bad:
Top cover, on the other hand, is plastic.
Built quality is funny. I actually laughed when I saw the heatsink.
Connectors are all DIN. There are connectors for two sets of speakers, but no switch, so if you connect 2 sets, you can't run one and switch off the other.
I don't have specs for this thing, but the outputs are HA-1370s rated 18W, so I guess that makes it 15-18 WPC. PS seems more than enough for this.
So, here's a pic:
More here:
http://pokazywarka.pl/nqjamd/
Sony started making amps with switching power supply just a moment later.
