Show us your cosmetic mods/upgrades to your vintage audio gear

My Marantz Esotec pile (preamp and monoblocks) got all Zebrano wood jackets - for some reason Marantz never bothered with wood (or anything) for the monoblocks. I like it a lot with the wood.



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I'll post mine three mods tomorrow, but look at the second pic- the top cover, as compared with the first photo. The blinds make it look warped- interesting effect.
 
My Marantz Esotec pile (preamp and monoblocks) got all Zebrano wood jackets - for some reason Marantz never bothered with wood (or anything) for the monoblocks. I like it a lot with the wood.




Nice and clean. What speakers are those- there, on the stands?
Me likey!
 
No such magic. They warped it a bit during the blasting. I was able to train it out with some small weights over a couple days. I was a little ticked off, but it is better now.

I'll post mine three mods tomorrow, but look at the second pic- the top cover, as compared with the first photo. The blinds make it look warped- interesting effect.
 
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So you using the mono's to power a surround system? Looks like plenty of venting for those block amps, going by the tops.
 
Hitachi sr-2004 Blue leds on the meters and soft white leds on the tuning dial.

That looks beautiful! Great job.


I had thought about taking one of my cheaper cassette decks and swapping LEDs in it..I think some blue LEDs would look better than green ones at the bottom of the meters.
 
Here's a little Kenwood KA-3500 that had some surface rust on the case and got a little damage in shipping from a careless seller. I had the case powder coated Persimmon Orange. It matches the wall at my shop.

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Man that orange is just plain cool!
 
OK, so here are my three (to date) mods...

I rec'd the Walsh 2's in white with some marring, facing damage, rounded corners on that lovely trapezoid, and missing the grilles. This is my first veneering job. Turned out very well, I thought.
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I used my experience with veneering the Ohm's to redo the all-to-often peeling plinth syndrome on my PL-530. Coulda been better, but I am happy with the result. Just needs a new dustcover.
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My KEF 104aB's came without their grilles. Considered foam (to keep them original-looking) but opted for making cloth. I built the frame, stretched the cloth, obtained original '70's KEF badges.... and there 'ya go. Looks VERY British, don't you think?
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No such magic. They warped it a bit during the blasting. I was able to train it out with some small weights over a couple days. I was a little ticked off, but it is better now.

Is that powder coated? The place that does mine doesn't blast, they use a bake off oven. I've seen stuff stretched from blasting before - sucks.

- Woody
 
Yeah - it's powder coated. I discussed the removal with them alot. They made me confident they'd be able to remove it without warping or stretching it. They didn't thinking baking was an option - they thought it was a powder coat finish on it already. I'm not sure what it was. It was thick and very strong.

They ended up with a chemical stripper and some scraping to get it off.

I got it back to 95% flat. Good enough for this.

Is that powder coated? The place that does mine doesn't blast, they use a bake off oven. I've seen stuff stretched from blasting before - sucks.

- Woody
 
Here's a picture of my recently discussed Large Utility Advents that I recovered in black vinyl. I am using them currently as the "A" system fronts on my 7.1 HT system. The Mission 760i's are the "B" system. The cabinet was made from an old chest of drawers from a thrift store for about $10. It was painted black with hammer textured paint in the front areas then covered with the same black vinyl that I used on the speakers on the flat areas.

The LED lights came from Parts Express. They are remote controlled and there are many choices of colors and intensities. The LED's which fit exactly (39"/1 meter) on the cabinet's curved lip were on sale along with the power supply and the remote. I think the total was around $25 to do that. they are really cool looking in a dark room when watching a movie at night or for ambient lighting.

By the way just for info....you can see my nice Pioneer cassette 6 tape changer in the picture and that HD with the orange circle is a 500 GB DVD Expander that connects to the Scientific Atlantic 8300 cable receiver and gives it a huge capacity for recording those HD programs.

I'm kind of proud of the way it all turned out! Thanks! Franksta
 

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Solid maple side panels for my two Sony TA-N80ES amps. The original rosewood veneer panels were in rough shape, and didn't match my furniture very well.

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