How To Buy Vintage Audio

Alright, before you begin you should know that this is NOT your simple 4 paragraph ‘buyers guide’ so often seen everywhere else. This article contains reams of information and is very, very looong. If you wish, you can simply skip to certain areas but I strongly recommend reading this article in it’s entirety at least once.

So where do you start? Easy. If you are simply starting out in the audio hobby there is a massive market to explore with garage sales, flea markets, swap meets, thrift stores etc. Sometimes simply asking your friends or relatives if there is some stuff in their attic or garage they wouldn’t mind letting go of can yield surprising results! There are no rules at this level about what to buy as long as it works, and there is no smoke coming from it when it is playing, and it should not smell like the bathroom Grandpa just left. If you can buy an entire ‘system’ for around 50 bucks including speakers, welcome to the hobby.

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MAY
2013

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Articles

audio, buy, how to, vintage

Record Care and Cleaning

Believe it or not, even stored records will still accumulate dust, and when that happens, you’ll have to clean your records before playing them.

To clean vinyl (LP’s): Use a solution up to 20% isopropyl alcohol (one part isopropyl alcohol to four parts water), and gently wipe the record in a spiral motion, using a soft cloth, from the center out to the edge. Pat it dry with a clean, anti-static cloth. A fine camel hair paint brush can remove visible dust particles.

31
MAY
2013

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78, lps, record care, record cleaning, vinyl

Innovative Audio Cassette Deck Shootout: Take 2

Vintage Cassette Deck Death Match: Can decades-old decks survive modern computer-based measurements?

Any time you do a comparison test with audio products, someone’s bound to get mad. When you do it with vintage audio products, it’s worse. With new stuff, few people own the products yet. With vintage stuff, lots of people do.

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MAY
2013

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Butterworth

brent, butterworth, cassette, esoteric v9000, marntz sd60, nakamichi dragon, pioneer ct-f1000, pioneer ct-f1250, son tc-k808es

How Much Power Do You Really Need?

A lot of audiophiles think you’re better off with just 8 or 10 watts rather than 100. Are they right? Let’s listen and find out!

In the 21st century, we’ve gotten used to having everything we want. We demand to hear any tune ever recorded right now. We insist on studio-quality sound everywhere, even when we’re on a wilderness hike. But it wasn’t always this way. Audio used to be challenging. Back in the days of tubes, and even the early days of transistors, power was precious.

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JAN
2013

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Butterworth

Brent Butterworth, low power

An Inside Look: Where It All Began

Innovative Audio/Visual Solutions (IAVS) has been in business providing exceptional service to clients since 2000. But to get a better understanding on the development, we need to go back quite a few years ago…

Around 1989-1990, Gordon Sauck (that’s me) started experimenting with stereo set-ups that were slightly different to what people up to that point were used to. Not radical things mind you, but simply showing people ways of getting various sound sources through their systems. This included VCR’s, (beta and VHS), musical keyboards and a host of other fun things. In today’s world this sounds like child’s play but this was some cutting edge stuff back then. I specifically chose this as the official starting point because this was the time I started to put into works the dream I had as a kid.

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JAN
2013

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Gordon Sauck, iavs, innovative audio