My “Reference System”
This is my “baby” that I have put together over the past year or so. I have done some photos in the “antiques” gallery of the speakers and turntable, but decided to show the complete (at least for now) gear. I am not sure where “antique” ends and “old” begins, but most of the items would fit into one of them. The speakers are KEF 107’s, the flagship of their line in 1988, and would have sold for about $9500 in today’s dollars. I left off the cover on the left speaker so that the tweeter/midrange, which swivels, can be seen. I did have to refoam the woofers, which was a pain but worth it. They came with a small equalizer, the KEF “Cube”, the small black box with 3 knobs on the upper left of the “equipment stack”. Next to the Cube is a Discwasher “Zerostat” ionizer for cutting down record static, which is leaning against an Original Discwasher record cleaner- both of these I have owned since early 80’s. Underneath the Discwasher is a 12 segment LED stereo power meter I designed and built. Holding those two items up is a Sony Blue Ray player, under which is a Marantz PMD-526C CD/media player, which I purchased a few months ago. It plays most music files that can be put onto a thumb drive or SD card, and displays the song/track info, including CD text onto its own display, plus it has good old analog audio outputs. Under that is a BSR EQ 14/14XR 14 band equalizer/spectrum analyzer, which was given to me by a friend. Under all of this equipment is a Yamaha RX-V2090 A/V receiver, from about 1996. It is only being used as a preamp and can be controlled with a remote. Speaking of remotes, the one that is standing up is a Harmony 650, which is programmed to control everything including the TCL 55” 4K TV. To the left, on top of the stand, is a belt drive Pioneer PL-50 phonograph, which was given to me by another friend. Below the turntable are a pair of Carver M400a power amps, which are being run in mono so that each can put out 400w/ch into 8ohms. I owned a Carver M400 amp in 1980 but sold it and nearly 40years later have two of them to drive the KEF’s, which can handle the power. The Carver’s are always on so I built a relay circuit that allows them to switched on when the Yamaha receiver is powered on.