My vintage hifi setup

I've been putting together my own hifi for a while now, and I've now got the ability to play all the formats I want (read as: can afford), in a good quality. 

Firstly, and most crucially, is the receiver. I've had a few in this setup, an old Sony AV receiver (STR-D790), then a Panasonic (Technics) SU2800 from the late 70s to early 80s, and now, a JVC R-S5L.

Other than a bit of the text wearing off near the power button and volume knob, the unit is in excellent condition, especially when you consider its age. The full specs are available here from hifiengine. It pushes a modest 25 watts into 8ohms, which works out as 33 watts into 6ohms; a great match for my speakers, which I'll get to.

Next in the stack is my Minidisc deck (bottom) which is a MDS-JE480. While I would love to have a JB-980, 940 or 930, with the metal facia, the prices of those are much higher than I can justify paying, when this deck has Type-S MDLP, and cost me £40. For NetMD I have a MZ-NE410 walkman which I record discs with using Platinum-MD or the WebMD site. 

Above that is my CD player which is actually a DVP-NS330 DVD player which I got for free on Facebook marketplace. It sounds good to my ears, has the quality you'd expect from Sony, and has a decent remote. When silver fronted CD players go for a premium, you can't go wrong with a cheap DVD player, you can get them for around £10 on eBay, or cheaper if you wait for something to come up locally. One thing to keep in mind is that not all units have the transport controls on the player itself, meaning you'll be reliant on the remote, and you'll be SOL if you don't have that. You can even get SACD functionality on some of these, Blu-ray players, especially, have this.

The last component is this Technics M215 cassette deck. It's only 2 heads and Dolby B but it works just fine for how much I use tapes, has a flashy vacuum fluorescent VU meter, and only cost me £30 what's not to love?

Over to the right of the main stack I've got a Realistic 31-2000 10 band equalizer. The sliders for both channels are missing at 31Hz, and I've been unable to source replacements; at least it's symmetrical. I got this from a local seller for £48 which I thought was a good price for the unit, especially since it had been serviced so the slider pots have no crackle at all.

On top of that is my turntable: a Dual CS-504. I actually got this for free from a friend of my Dad's who bought it as a teen in the 70s, and had since upgraded. It wasn't working when I got it, but a new belt and a good clean up later and it's great, even holds speed perfectly. I actually got this component first, and had it hooked up to a smaller Sony all in one system, before getting into separates. 

Most importantly, the speakers! I've got a pair of Wharfedale Linton XP2 loudspeakers which I had to drive a bit for, but got for only £20. The guy also had a pair of Dentons which are a smaller bookshelf speaker, with a bigger woofer, which I didn't pick up (slightly regret that, although they wouldn't get the use, better they went to someone else really). These speakers are some of the best I've ever heard, the bass is punchy, the range is unmatched for anything I've heard, and they look great, especially with the grilles off. When I posted them to Reddit I got a request to perform a frequency response measurement which you can see here, it was done through my iPhone 8 and is not at all professional, so shouldn't be used to form any strong opinions.

Here's a picture of the original ad courtesy of petervis.com which shows the speakers with the grilles off. As you can see, they're three way, which allows a wider range of frequencies to be represented accurately. At the bottom you can see they recommend 10-40 watts RMS amps to be matched with them, although on the back of my speakers they recommend 35 watts, hence why 33 watts into 6 ohms from my amp is good.

While the cassette deck is the last audio component in the stack, it isn't the last thing. This is my switchbox for both inputs and outputs, which allows me to record from any source to any format. It's a couple of cheap AV switchboxes which I'm using the audio channels of, in a homemade enclosure which I made out of the top half of a CD shelf I cut down, and now holds up my turntable. I would recommend the switchboxes as they're entirely passive (allowing them to be used both ways as I am, so 1 input spread to 4 outputs as well as 4 outputs to 1 input). This also means they add no noise to the audio path which may happen if a powered switch is used. They're a little lightweight so some velcro or double sided tape helps to prevent them sliding around. They come with text in white on the front, which I just blanked out with a marker.

On top of that is my 128GB flash modded iPod classic, in an official Apple dock, hooked up with the official AV cables which allow for USB and audio out in one neat cable, as well as allowing for control via an IR remote.

This is the other half of the CD stand which is still performing its intended purpose, as well as extending the dresser in order to allow me to fit my turntable alongside my stack of components. It was only £5 from a charity shop so I didn't have any worries about modifying it. It fits most of my CDs but not my cassettes, those are held elsewhere.

The rest of my CDs and tapes are kept, rather unceremoniously, next to my PC in a second CD shelf.

My records are stored in the cabinet under the left speaker, which I've taken the door off of.

My Minidiscs are in small cases which have no real home yet, they're currently sitting on top of my left speaker.

So that's my hifi! As I said it's been through a few iterations, above is a picture from 4 months ago where I had the aforementioned Panasonic SU-2800 amp, and no EQ. The turntable was rotated 90 degrees to fit in the space and a different CD tower is there, no switchbox either. And to the right is a photo of before that, when I had the Sony AV receiver. So as you can see a bunch of DIY changes, as well as just new things bought. Next up is a Pi Zero W network streamer which the parts for are in the post as I write this, and a blog post will be made about. Other than that, a metal fronted Minidisc deck for the right price would be amazing, but everything is of a good standard now in my opinion.