Iconic Custom Sixty

Ttryon

New Member
A couple of week ago my wife and I went to the estate sale for a leader in digital electronics. My wife spotted a beautiful mahogoney cabinet and just had to have it. Turns out that it is a Fisher Custom Sixty.

Her intention was to gut the cabinet and turn it into a modern media center. I told her I would have to see what if any value the Fisher components held before starting the repurposing of the cabinet.

So here I am, wondering when this unit may have been manufactured, what type of amp it is... all those questions that a neophyte has when the first spark of interest is struck.

Any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated!!!
 

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You got a great catched!...:thmbsp:

Wait! 'til the Fisher Gurus made their assessment... :scratch2:
 
Hiya,

Well .. don't gut it but in the same vein don't gut the relationship holding on to it.

The components are rare enough for this collector to get excited a bit. I know I would be doing pinwheels if that was in my house.

I have a model just down from that with a different cab. Look on the back for a serial number (May be written in pencil)

May be on one of the panels I hope you just removed to take pictures.

Great find!!

Frannie
 
never mind. it's a jensen.

but, seriously? what you have in there will rival or exceed most things that produce sound you can buy today. perhaps figure out how to make it work with your other devices, rather than gut it. they're pretty rare birds.
 
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If you decide to gut it, I'd humbly recommend carefully removing everything and boxing, crating, or otherwise protecting everything you remove. Also, the best use of the cabinet would involve keeping the general configuration intact.

It's a cool piece and fairly high-end in its class, so you might already know that there are those who like and want it as is, rather than seeing it get some sort of irreversibly 'modified' repurposed piece.

It sort of reminds me of a beautifully built, high-end classic radio console that I saw recently. It's a really special piece with all the kinds of super electronics bells and whistles, all contained in a super luxury cabinet with serious doors and ultra fine details. The whole thing easily screams top end luxury and must have cost a huge fortune when new. I'd really like to buy it, but the cost is on the prohibitive side. The final strike against owning it is the fact that I just don't have any good place for it to be displayed; not as it deserves.

I have visited areas of the US where collectors have managed to archive literal warehouses full of beautiful consoles and it was an unforgettable experience to see the hundreds they have shelved in stacks to the ceiling and rows so far down you can't see the end. The only downside is that when anyone calls them from the area with another potential donation, they just say "No, we have no more room, and we don't know anyone else who could take another, so just take it out to the curb..." :sigh:
 
That's as good as it gets in the way of mid-century Radio-Phonographs! What you have there is Fisher's top-of-the-line, tour de force, flagship model: the 1955 Custom Sixty, model HS-360, in the mahogany Hampshire cabinet. It was priced at a whopping $1295 - and those were 1955 dollars!

These are the ones that we tend to get a bit excited about around here. We had a slightly earlier model Custom Sixty surface back in February which landed in AK member Joel27's lap. Two Custom Sixties in one year is extraordinary! It's enough to give the rest of us hope. You might enjoy clicking through Joel's Custom Sixty thread:

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=354241

Your photo collages show the three main chassis, (the 360A amp, 360R tuner/control amp and the 360P power supply) as well as the crossover chassis for the Jensen 610 Tri-Axial speaker and it looks like there's a fifth chassis, too. I'm not sure what that would be. 1955 seems kind of late for a Dynamic Range Expander. Could you take a close-up photo of that one chassis with no ID plate showing?

The original Custom Sixty debuted for the 1951 model year. Ads from Oct. '50 show a price of $1330 and then up to $1534 by Feb. '51. I believe the 360 Series started in mid 1954, replacing the earlier 60 Series. (I think the 60 Series can be further divided depending on which generation chassis they contain: 60, 61 or 65.) It looks like the Z-Matic control was exclusive to the 1955 model year. That was the key to dating yours. The '56 Custom Sixty ads don't mention the Z-Matic but do mention a special "presence" control. In 1957 the Custom Sixty was renamed the Ambassador and I expect those models probably have that printed on the dial glass instead of 'Custom Sixty'.

I would argue strongly against re-purposing the cabinet. As it is, it is already an extraordinary object. Restored it would be any Fisher collector's prized possession to be displayed proudly and prominently. Congratulations!
 
Holy cripes! Look at that walnut. Look at those chassii!

You can find another late 40s/early 50s square console lower down in the line to reuse, but it would be a crime to part that one out. A lot of them were walnut, cherry, mahogany, and even bleached mahogany.
 
Oh, wow. Please don't gut that...if keeping it together doesn't fit into your plans, I'm sure it would be easy to find a Fisher nut who would absolutely love to give it a good home.
 
I had a feeling it was sort of special. I had no idea that Fisher has such a following. I have an A/V project studio and had used an old Fisher 400 for playback for years. I recently gave that and my old Luxman turntable to my son. I are an idiot!

So first things first, what does it take to restore/refurbish something like this? I'm sure a good cleaning is required but I don't want to do anything that might damage any part of it.

@ The Red 1: Is this the chassis you were questioning?
 

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Like every company, Fisher made products to all sorts of price points, from fairly inexpensive to truly breathtaking pieces of craftsmanship. Your Custom Sixty fits into the latter category.

Back in the day, Fisher and HH Scott were only a step behind McIntosh in terms of quality and price.
 
Dusting is fine, either with a soft paintbrush or compressed air.

The finish looks very good in your photos, I wouldn't mess with it unless it's ruined on one or more surfaces. Very hard to recreate once you remove the original.

It would need a total replacement of capacitors to run safely and up to spec. You can do this if you can use a soldering iron, or have someone else work on it.

Don't know if you're a tube guy but be careful not to break tubes and don't wipe them with a wet rag, it will remove the lettering.

That's the short version!
 
red, you sure it's the jensen triaxial? i don't recall seeing a handle on any jensens...must go look at hifilit.com.

edit: yep, wow, never realized that. outstanding!
 
I recently gave that and my old Luxman turntable to my son. I are an idiot!
Well, Karma sure paid you back for your generosity with INTEREST when it dropped a Custom Sixty in your path.

The Red 1: Is this the chassis you were questioning?
It must be but I believe that's your power supply (360P), isn't it? I think I was confused by your photo collage. Looking carefully now - closing one eye and tilting my head - there are only 4 chassis, right? (360A, 360P, 360R and the Jensen crossover.) The fifth chassis seems to have disappeared.

['Fifth Chassis' - now there's good name for an album.]
 
@ TheRed1: yep, a total four chassis(es).

@toxcrusadr: the finish is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!! That is what caught my wife's attention. Any discrepancies in the photos are caused by nighttime flash and daylight pictures on my iPhone. Photos cannot do it justice. A good cleaning and carnauba will make this a showroom piece. A couple of scratches on the scrolling on the lower left but that will French in nicely.

I was a journeyman in the ISCET so am acquainted with soldering. I'm sure that the volume and control pots need cleaning/ replaced, can I clean qthem with a spraycan or are they particularly fragile? looks like some caps, from my reading here, need replaced with a different type. I am not a tube aficionado as my experience is really on the recording side of music. My tube amps are made for guitar and built to clip so I would think a dissimilar voltage grid would be needed.

@ bugle girl: no problem with the relationship.... I know who the UDM in our house is...and I ain't the boss o me ;)

Does anyone know anything about the turntable? It has a rather cumbersome looking mechanism on it that I haven't fingered out. Any paperwork out in the world? Even a URL would help.

I appreciate all of your input, it looks like I have more think about than I anticipated.
 
The Custom 60 is from the early mid 50's. The #'s on the speaker will tell approx when it was built. Look for a number like 220xxx on the rim of the speaker frame. Post that #.


The turntable is an Early Garrard. Red will have the model #.

The Tuner and amp aren't that hard to recap. I just did my Coronet for about $35.00 for CD DME's and a few Lytics'. I'd recommend replacing ALL of the one's that look like large resistors with the bands on them. They have a nasty tendency to split and go open or short.

I'd love to get my hands on the 610 and the xover, but $$$ no got's!!

Larry
 
:drool::drool:

That is an absolute perfect find. I would drive across the country to get another. I'm just in awe at the shape that's in. I'm speechless.
 
The turntable is an Early Garrard. Red will have the model #.
Looks like a Garrard RC80 to me. However, according to the only ad I have for a Custom Sixty from 1955 - it was supposed be a Collaro.

While looking through my 1956 MusiCraft catalog for the RC80, (It's not in there so '55 must have been its last year.) I ran across a listing for the Jensen G-610. Far and away the most expensive driver that year; the 15" Stevens 206AXA was over $100 cheaper! I thought you all might be interested.

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That's pretty nice to go hunting for a cabinet and end up with a Custom Sixty. That Jensen G610 is worth big bucks.

Congrats on finding a piece of Fisher history. I think yours is only the third Custom Sixty known at AK.
 
Tube gear ages gracefully, though consoles often don't.
This one does.
You have something exceptional there.
Just imagine, even the speaker alone cost more than a week's average pay.
 
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