Hi folks,
I shared this over in the tube audio forum, but honestly, this thing sounds so good and my buddy did such a kickass job on it over the last 6 months in his free time, I wanted to share with a slightly wider audience. Hope that's okay!
Last Spring, I inherited a 1959 Magnavox Berkley Cabinet from my deceased great uncle. No one else in the family wanted it, and it was likely to end up in a pawn shop, or worse, a junk yard. I told them I'd take it and see if my friend who is super handy and into HiFi audio could do anything with it. I've never had a HiFi audio setup and I didn't stand to lose much, since my friend offered to do it for whatever the parts cost.
Purchased January, 1959 by my Great Uncle in Baltimore, MD.
Here's the amp, before - it's really not that bad, most of that is dust. Luckily, this cabinet lived inside it's entire life, never in a garage, shed, wet basement, etc.
Well, he sure could. Not only did he completely restore the amp (I'm talking test and replace resistors, caps, added a thermistor, made sure the transformers were good...etc) and mechanical Collaro Victory TT, he found the matching stereo cabinet, and fixed and rewired that, too. Added a direct line in switcher (meaning anything that has RCA capability can be hooked up - I have an iPad that now lives as an Apple Lossless Lightning-->RCA in jukebox...) and a bluetooth reciever, too. All in all, it sounds pretty incredible. Each cabinet has a 15" woofer, 8" midrange, and 2x5" tweeters.
It's really funny to hear stuff like Deftones or anything hyper modern coming out of these, but at the same time, the engineering is really impressive. I honestly can't believe something built this long ago could be coaxed into sounding so amazing for every day use again some 6 decades later.
I reconfigured the family room when they came home a couple weeks ago. Moving the bookshelves together gave us a lot more room for art, so forgive the bare(ish) walls! Gonna take some time to buy cool stuff to fill them in. The cabinet on the left is the amplifier cabinet pictured above. The cabinet on the right is just a stereo cabinet powered by the amp. It's top does lift up and there's storage for 125 LPs in there
Anyway, there's a whole album here, including some videos although a few last minute changes were made (different line in switcher, for one), it's pretty much exactly how it is now. Video doesn't really do it justice. Here's to another 6 decades of music through these bad boys!
I shared this over in the tube audio forum, but honestly, this thing sounds so good and my buddy did such a kickass job on it over the last 6 months in his free time, I wanted to share with a slightly wider audience. Hope that's okay!
Last Spring, I inherited a 1959 Magnavox Berkley Cabinet from my deceased great uncle. No one else in the family wanted it, and it was likely to end up in a pawn shop, or worse, a junk yard. I told them I'd take it and see if my friend who is super handy and into HiFi audio could do anything with it. I've never had a HiFi audio setup and I didn't stand to lose much, since my friend offered to do it for whatever the parts cost.
Purchased January, 1959 by my Great Uncle in Baltimore, MD.
Here's the amp, before - it's really not that bad, most of that is dust. Luckily, this cabinet lived inside it's entire life, never in a garage, shed, wet basement, etc.
Well, he sure could. Not only did he completely restore the amp (I'm talking test and replace resistors, caps, added a thermistor, made sure the transformers were good...etc) and mechanical Collaro Victory TT, he found the matching stereo cabinet, and fixed and rewired that, too. Added a direct line in switcher (meaning anything that has RCA capability can be hooked up - I have an iPad that now lives as an Apple Lossless Lightning-->RCA in jukebox...) and a bluetooth reciever, too. All in all, it sounds pretty incredible. Each cabinet has a 15" woofer, 8" midrange, and 2x5" tweeters.
It's really funny to hear stuff like Deftones or anything hyper modern coming out of these, but at the same time, the engineering is really impressive. I honestly can't believe something built this long ago could be coaxed into sounding so amazing for every day use again some 6 decades later.
I reconfigured the family room when they came home a couple weeks ago. Moving the bookshelves together gave us a lot more room for art, so forgive the bare(ish) walls! Gonna take some time to buy cool stuff to fill them in. The cabinet on the left is the amplifier cabinet pictured above. The cabinet on the right is just a stereo cabinet powered by the amp. It's top does lift up and there's storage for 125 LPs in there
Anyway, there's a whole album here, including some videos although a few last minute changes were made (different line in switcher, for one), it's pretty much exactly how it is now. Video doesn't really do it justice. Here's to another 6 decades of music through these bad boys!
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