Would you take a chance on a vintage amp ?

[grevillea]

Hi All,

Those of us who have spent thousands on old cars are very wary when it comes to something that is 'too good to be true':

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Luxman-L-58A-Int ... 3a60896993

The seller admits that it has a couple of problems, but claims that it will work fine with the tone controls disabled and from a source other than vinyl - all sounds great to me, but the obvious question is 'how soon will something else die on the old girl ?'

I know it makes no sense to buy something that would otherwise be down at the tip if it didnt have the Luxman name on it, but this is a piece of audio history, people !

Grev the Clueless

[dc]

like old cars, it'd be best if you knew a thing or two about repairing them if things go wrong

otherwise, it can become a very costly exercise when things start to break and you have to hire a 'specialist' to restore it

[grevillea]

Thanks dc - confirms my fears, esp the part about hiring a specialist. In my current location, we seem to have exactly one such guy and he is notorious for returning old gear in worse shape than it arrived at his workshop. TVs mainly, but I'm told he can butcher pretty much any consumer electronics goodies you care to mention - its a real boon for those selling new product.

Other than the hassle of finding expertise, it occurred to me that finding replacement parts for amps of that vintage would be a nightmare, but then I was blown away when I realised that there is a roaring trade in old tubes from Russia and the US - who knew ?

[dingostolemyipod]

Tubes? That certainly didn't look like a tube amp. Are you sure it's not solid state?

Any tube amp will need the tubes replaced regularly. And for tube or solid state amps, the electrolytic capacitors(the metal can looking things) are often an issue in aging gear, as these will dry out. If i was to buy some old amp, I'd want it to be a bargain price, and i'd pretty much replace all the electrolytic caps straight up rather than waiting for them to cark it.

[grevillea]

Thanks Dingo - the Luxman is SS - my comment about tubes was only to illustrate that I have absolutely no idea what sort of 'NOS' parts are still available for old kit. When you find etailers, and even hobbyists, with huge stocks of tubes from the era when they were 'state of the art', its a bit of a mind-bender : I know old car nuts hoard anything and everything, but a lot of the really good stuff disappeared from barns in the 80s and 90s. Nothing quite like finding NOS parts, still in the original wrapping.

[Drubbing]

It's probably a great deal for someone who knows what they're looking at with the top off.

I had an old Vauhall Chevette (Gemini) years ago, developed problems starting and cutting out while driving. I tried fixing the carburettor timings/leads/head etc. Fitted a new one and it just got gradually worse. Got fed up with it not starting, put it up for sale at a bargain price. First bloke to look at it heard the story, lifted the hood, played with the carb for 5 minutes, paid me, and drove off.

[grevillea]

First bloke to look at it heard the story, lifted the hood, played with the carb for 5 minutes, paid me, and drove off.

I had a similar experience with an ex girlfriend.

[dingostolemyipod]

Thanks Dingo - the Luxman is SS - my comment about tubes was only to illustrate that I have absolutely no idea what sort of 'NOS' parts are still available for old kit...

Right
Well when it comes to solid-state, pretty much anything is fairly easy to replace with new bits, although usually may not be "exact" replacements, you'd never hear the difference.

As tube tech got less popular, good tubes stopped getting made. That's not so much the case with solid state, it's been getting better and better. BUT we have seen this decade, many good purpose built (HIGH fidelity) audio transistors, have actually stopped getting made.

Toshiba would be the obvious example, but other manufacturers too. As it turns out, there's not much money making 1,000s of hi-end audio parts when you could be making 1,000,000s of memory chips, microcontrollers and what not. Think about it. This week in perth, there probably wasn't even 10 mid-high-fi amps sold. In the same space of time, how many 1,000 mobile phones and portable devices would have sold?

[grevillea]

Agreed, and this is another delusion shared by many at HF - that the electronics world revolves around 2-channel audio. If only.

[Drubbing]

First bloke to look at it heard the story, lifted the hood, played with the carb for 5 minutes, paid me, and drove off.

I had a similar experience with an ex girlfriend.

You pimped your ride?

[Riverback]

First bloke to look at it heard the story, lifted the hood, played with the carb for 5 minutes, paid me, and drove off.

I had a similar experience with an ex girlfriend.

Got junk problems eh?

[grevillea]

OK, so no cash actually changed hands, and sadly it wasnt the last that I saw of her, but the 'looked under the hood' part was apt.