Akai/Roberts party at my house!

I have had an Akai M8 since the 80's. Recently restored and recapped. Then I got an M7 from a buddy. Made a guitar amp from one of them using a cabinet from a Roberts 770x. Jaymanna has the amps from that one. Then I was contacted by another AKer who had a M8 he wanted to convert to monoblocks. Turns out he was in the same state and would be in the area soon.
Chris came over today with his M8 for me to look at, with a surprise...A Roberts 770 he found at a thrift! Hard to believe this much of this gear made in Japan would all wind up in the same garage, I also have a cabinet from the M7 which is now my soldering iron stand and footrest. Holy heavy stuff! John

uber stuff.

I am curious what others think about these when converted to use as monoblock
amps.
I have a pair of the Roberts 770X amps that I converted to use as monoblocks and
I really like the way they sound, I use them with the Sony HD radio tuner in my
bedroom for low level listening, they have better stereo separation and soundstage
then the other systems I own or have owned.
Very sweet and clean sounding 5 watts per channel.

That's my impression. They are little single ended amps, which are known for their sweetness. Of the units above, I am keeping 1 M8 stock, will sell one guitar amp and make at least another, and Chris and I are each making a pair of monoblocks together. After seeing others, I am thinking a sweet little wood enclosure for each out of bamboo or something exotic.

Are you leaving in or removing the .001 capacitor that is across the OT primary?

When I did my guitar amp conversions I removed the caps but now I believe that their function was as conjunctive filter. Dr Z does some pretty well admired stuff with conjuntive filters.

The other thing I was thinking is that there's enough juice to run a push-pull pair of 6AR5s. You'd need to use a different OT, of course. It would get a much different tone than the single 6BQ5. Have you thought about anything along those lines?

Sloober, now that I have done all the modification's and a complete recap,
I need to build a nice wood enclosure too.

RWood, yes I did leave the .001 capacitor across the OT primary,
actually I replaced it with a .0012 orange drop.

I would like to pass this along to anyone who is thinking about replacing
the resistors in those amps.
Those amps have a beautiful airy quality about them, the sound seems
to dance in the air around the speakers, I think those resistors are wire
wound (correct me if I am wrong) when I was experimenting with the
amps I replaced all the resistors with a different type (major mistake)
it lost all of that airy character about them.:sigh:
That was a big learning curve for me because I did not know that
different type resistors could have that big of an effect on the sound.
I don't think that those type resistors that come stock in those amps
are a big problem because of there age and only change the ones that
you have no other choice then to do so.
I did put back in the stock resistors and that airy quality is back.

Before I learned to appreciate vintage audio I had a Roberts 770x sitting around for 10 YEARS. I was on a creative kick of removing the guts of gear and just retaining the USER INTERFACE. I have several o-scopes that are now just cool wall art.

I keep the switches and knobs working.

That is what I did to the Roberts RtoR. I gutted it and sold the tubes on eBay. I wish I would have kept the twin tube amps and did the mono block thing.

Anyway, It is cool wall art

Omegaman. You should hook up a small motor and make the reels spin and hang it on a wall.

I will keep all resistors when doing them over. Will be making another guitar amp, and a couple pair of monoblocks. John