Yamaha R300 Stereo receiver

My wife has discovered that among the myriad items individuals dispose of by donating to thrift stores are articles of the fancy or frilly stationary one might buy at Michael's or some other arts and crafts store.  I think that previously she thought that they were only filled with discarded electronics that only fools could take any interst in, old mismatched golf clubs and stained pairs of Zubas (if you have to ask. . . ). Last we went, she came home with an armful of notepads, magnets, stickers and the aforementioned pastel stationary.  What she'll do with it, I have no idea- but while she's busy with that I can stuff the trunk full of broken tape decks.  Win-win.

Planning for a Saturday trip,  I had gathered up a box of clothes and other items to take in (but I'm keeping all of my 1991 Buffalo Bills Zubas for those still following the joke), and off we went.   I of course had to see what audio treasure might be found and came up with this:

A nice Yamaha R300 stereo receiver, 1982 vintage.  In the store I noticed that the input selector switch was loose, but amazingly, the allen-style screw was still in place.  I am sure the receiver hadn't been at the thrift store long as a few flicks more of the input selector and that screw would have disappeared forever- it is TINY.  So, $24 later I had yet another piece of gear for which I have no real use.  I scrubbed it thoroughly, took off the top and blasted everything with canned air and Deoxit.  Amazingly, I had an allen wrench that fit the selector switch screw and was able to tighten it right up.  The selector switch is made of metal and has a great weight to it, with a wonderful tactile sensation when turned. (Looking at the picture I may have to re-seat the tape monitor button- crooked).   

Darned if it isn't EXACTLY like the selector switches on my new A-S2000 integrated amp.  Even the font is identical (that's branding for you), and the loudness is that same, graduated and very useful system Yamaha also  uses on the A-S2000.  The R300 has a 30 watt per channel amp, but it had no trouble whatsoever driving the Paradigm Mini Monitors to rock levels playing "Clockwork Angels" from the new Rush CD, and the FM tuner is quite good, even without a decent antenna.  On that same note, this one came with the original AM loop antenna.

Gotta love the faux vinyl wood grain.  It's in fantastic shape with no scratches, and the corners are still pretty sharp.  The only mark on the thing seems to be a slight scratch on the tuning knob, which I will gradually try to get out.  The weighting of the analog tuning knob is also terrific for such an inexpensive model.  I would imagine that in 1982 the quality of tuning knob feel was not unlike the sound of a car door closing on a dealer's lot as an arbiter of sales.  I've heard that Lexus spent tons of money getting that closing car door sound and feel just right- to exude a certain quality.  I can definitely see people in Crazy Eddie's during the late seventies and eighties on Route 347 near the Smith Haven Mall making that final decision between two similar receivers just by the way the tuning knob felt.

The spring-clip speaker terminals are better than average as well.  My NAD 3125 terminals are absolute junk by comparison, not to mention they have rusted and need to be cleaned or replaced.  The R300 must have been stored in a less humid environment because the terminal springs look rust-free and snap closed with authority.  In the near future I'd like to do a comparison between the R300 and the NAD 3125, as I think they were comparably priced.  Still a lot to learn about the R300, and I have to re-clean the balance control as it still has a little crackle.  All in all though, pretty neat!  Anyone with any info to share, I would be most appreciative!

  

Duck, duck. . . goose

They should make little greeting cards for people who are into stereo, like the ones you see in Hallmark.  Instead of saying: Congratulations on the New Baby/Job/House/Sex change, they could say: "Heard you got new speakers, guy! Congratulations!"  Or: "Happy Anniversary on the occasion of you managing to keep a piece of gear for an entire year without deciding that there was something in the midbass that you ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT live with and selling it!"  Or: "Condolences from all of us here at the office on the smoky/stinky demise of your vintage 2 channel receiver."  They probably should make cards for the significant others who have to put up with all of the silliness, at least.  If such things existed, I could have sent D. a card to congratulate him on the arrival of a new pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.6 towers to his home.  Wharfedale is a a well-respected English speaker manufacturer that has been in business for over 70 years:

 http://www.wharfedale.co.uk/

They compete with some other big names, such as Monitor Audio and Bowers & Wilkins (the speakers they use to master with at Abbey Road). I even owned a pair of Diamond (version II, IIRC) mini monitors from Wharfedale that had been modified by an industrial engineer who worked for McCormack (of amplifier fame) at one time, but I lost them in a break up (I know, I know.  It was a small price to pay for the sanity of all involved, trust me).

D. has been a fan of Wharfedale for some time now, and for good reason, because he typically needs a speaker to perform the multiple chores of solid stereo performance and believable home theater sound all at a non-insane price.  Not many speakers can pull all of those off, but certain models of the the Wharfedale range have been exceedingly good at it, at least in his room.  He had been using a pair of Diamond towers (9.5, I think) that I really liked, probably because they had the same driver complement as my Dynaudio 220s- dome tweeter, 6.5 inch midbass and 6.5 passive.  I generally prefer the tighter bass of smaller woofers, and two or two and a half way designs, as they seem more "coherent."   The older pair were very coherent and had great imaging, with a wide sound stage.  As is his wont, however, when D. saw a great (and I mean GREAT) deal on the big brother Diamond 9.6 towers, he took the plunge.  So, on Saturday, I packed the NAD C350 amp, some cable and the Atoms (see Travellin' Speakers post) and headed over for some listening.  Turned out J. was back from Europe, leaving it ash-covered and financially destitute in his wake, so he would be able to join us.

After a very nice dinner and before any listening, we had to go outside and play some duck, duck goose.  Now, I have no idea why the goose is the one who should have to do all the chasing (although goose, goose duck just doesn't sound right), but we managed to convince D.'s daughter that calling mommy all of the time was the best option (by clapping and yelling: "YAAAAAAY MOMMY!" every time she was tagged) so we may not be invited back.  Why make Uncle J. run?  It's not nice as his Camel Ultrawides fall out of his pocket.  And then there's the problem of my arthritic pancreas.  After watching poor D.'s wife run around the yard a few times, we retired to the listening room.

D. has a great listening space- finished basement, concrete floor, good ceiling height and excellent distance to the listening spot (14.5 feet according to the HT AVR processor).  The Diamonds are BIG, much bigger than my Dynaudios, and they dwarf the Atoms even on stands, as you can see in the picture.  They're over a meter tall, with an eight inch woofer, reaching down to a claimed 28Hz bass extension.  This pair have a very elegant silver finish, that you would think would look out of place on a large tower, but it doesn't.  It's almost as if they look "brushed" even though it is a veneer.  Well done, Wharfedale.  Still, you couldn't hide these things and they are going to take up some real estate in a smaller room. 

Running the show was a Pioneer Elite 110 wpc VSX-21THX AVR, and as you may have guessed I haven't the slightest idea how it works or how it is set up (maybe D. will post an enlightening comment).  I have heard the amp section of that AVR numerous times, and have always thought it sounded quite good.  D. did run all of our listening either in PCM or analog direct mode.  The former used an HDMI output from a Pioneer BDP-51FD Bluray player, the latter the RCA outs from the same machine.  I own the same player, and it has a maddeningly slow load time, so much so that it detracts from the value it offers as a superb sounding machine with Dual Wolfson DACs (especially for sub $300).  He also played back some tracks with the AVR processor deciding what sounded best for "stereo" but I won't comment on that now for fear of committing heresy.  The speakers had been running for some time to "break them in."  More on that later.

One track we always listen to is Chick Corea's: Great Pumpkin Waltz from the GRP Digital Master album "Happy Anniversary Charlie Brown!"  Writing in retrospect, I guess the easiest way to describe what we initially heard using the line from Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I: "Nice, nice, but not thrilling."  Things sounded more or less clean, laid back, with extended but unrefined bass. D. popped in the Yellowjackets after that for something more frenetic, and the bass was certainly worse- fuzzy even.  J. agreed.  Not that the overall sound was bad- I just felt that D.'s previous Wharfedales were better, and he had not really gotten any improvement with the move to the 9.6 towers.  Norah Jones "Come Away With me" went in after that, and being such an ubiquitous test disc,  you know what you're listening for: the smokiness in her voice, the vocals hanging palpably in the sound stage. . .  and those thing just weren't "there."

So, we decided to switch amps.

The decision wouldn't have been such a big deal if it had been an amp of D.'s that he had lying around- if it sounded better, no harm, no foul, no credit cards injured.  Unfortunately, we switched to the NAD C350, which I had brought with me and was positioned on the floor on top of a dead Harmon Kardon CD changer to give it clearance from the carpet, and hooked up with swanky Ultralink RCA cables to D.'s Marantz DV6001 Universal Player.

Moments after playback started, the "there" was there- and D. noticed it before I was even willing to admit it.  Richer vocals, more coherent bass, a deeper sound stage, the whole shebang really came together.  J. put it best- maybe he'll chime in with an informative comment, but indeed, things sounded better.  And then we went back to Chick Corea to find the same.

As we were listening, I thought to myself: "well, I'd be happy with these now, even though they are well under the 200 hours recommended break-in time" and it hit me that it might be the LISTENER who needs to be broken in- to get used to a "new" flavor of sound added by a particular manufacturer's design.  Furthermore, D. had been under the impression that the Marantz was the inferior player, but through the NAD it just sounded great. 

We realized that NAD is also an English company, and that the C350 ( a few years old, now) was not only a very highly regarded 60 wpc integrated amp with a very uncluttered design, but it was from a marketing point of view an amp quite likely to be paired with Wharfedale products, and perhaps the symbiosis we were hearing was planned.  I have to admit the system worked very well together, even though the amp is less powerful on paper.  Did the Tara lab speaker cables have anything to do with the change?  Good gravy, I hope not.  Life is complicated enough.

We never bothered to listen to the Atoms.  At another time, they will be pitted against a pair of vintage $10 thrift shop B&W 600s, along with their bigger brother Paradigm Monitors, but for this night it was just the C350 and the Diamonds.  According to D., the Elite will continue to perform home theater duty, but he is definitely in the market for a dedicated 2 channel amp for music.  Maybe I can find another $125 used C350 out there somewhere. . .

The travellin' speakers

Chances are that if you like stereo (which is NOT the same as liking music, in fact one would argue that music makes people who like stereo miserable most of the time), you know and associate with others who do as well. I can't imagine the plight of the lone stereo nut. Lunacy is so much more enjoyable when you can point to others and say: "See? That guy is talking loudly in an agitated fashion about speakers and doesn't know his fly is undone JUST like that time when I did that at your Mother's house!" I for one am very lucky in that some of my closest friends would rather save their money for a dedicated AC line than buy new golf clubs, especially because I don't golf. Come to think of it, I haven't even been back to the local miniature golf course since the unfortunate: "ball washing incident." Lifetime bans being neither here nor there, it's always nice to go to your friend's place and listen to them complain about their gear instead of worrying about whether or not you've wired your stuff out of phase when the Dalai Lama pops in unexpectedly to visit (bonus points to anyone who remembers the Caddyshack movie advice from the Lama to Carl Spackler the greenskeeper- also on a golf course, coincidentally).

Listening critically somewhere else is always a daunting proposition, given the change in equipment and room acoustics. I am however, very fortunate to be in a position where I actually own a pair of speakers that I don't mind packing up and hauling with me when I visit so that I have something of a reference with which to compare. Some would call this a waste of money, but I need only point to a Nordic track, a coffee table book of the collected works of Robert Mapplethorpe a home defibrillator or a copy of the newly-arrived Census and say: "Voila! Choose one as exhibit A" to tie that argument up for the foreseeable future.

The pair I sometimes tote about are the small but generally excellent Atoms by the Canadian manufacturer Paradigm. Mine are version 5, and are finished in a very light natural cherry which matches absolutely nothing in my entire house. This was confirmed by my wife asking: "That's the only color they had?" upon my opening the box. Of course they had other colors, but THIS pair was open box and left over- the company has moved on to version 6. The pair I own could be had for only $178 with tax, and as you will soon learn, dear reader, that is the kind of deal that I can never pass up. In later posts we will explore together the impact that policy has had on the closet in my office, and the burgeoning relationship I have with the nice people at the local UPS Store.

Along with being cheap, the Atoms sound pretty good for their size, which is small, as the picture with Miss Meep for scale should show (goodness forbid she were to be any larger, it's all we can handle at a mere eight pounds). The best thing about the Atoms though, as if you hadn't already noticed of course, is that the woofer looks like a big, rolled up latex condom. That's actually the second thing my wife said upon their coming out of the box. "Do they? I hadn't noticed" I responded innocently, never giving away that the salesman and I were hysterical about just that point in the showroom, only a few hours earlier.

The woofers aren't actually made out of latex, they seem to be pretty standard plastic fare (although I am sure the Paradigm website indicates that they are something far more exotic, like diamond powder-coated triple laminate carp skin) but they sure do look funny. Older Paradigms (if I remember a pair I considered buying back in 1989) had nearly transparent woofers, and you could see right in to the voice coil and spider assemblies, kinda like you can with Vienna Acoustics speakers now. These woofers are white with only a slightly transparent quality.

As I said, they sound pretty good, and are very easy to carry around. The binding posts are not too robust, so switching cables should be done with care (who am I kidding, I just touch unravelled coat hangers stuck in the back end of the amp to the binding posts- after I strip the plastic shrouds off them of course- let the sparks fly, carpet be damned it's all about the sound!). So, they sometimes go with me for listening sessions. Which leads me to potentially big news. If a certain someone is very generous with his time, I may be able to review a Realistic STAV-3000 50 wpc receiver (1989 vintage) on these pages very soon! I was afraid I wouldn't get around to reviewing anything for a while thus leaving the reader (Hi Mom!) rather confused. But this is too good a chance to pass up, so we'll see if we can get around the busy schedules. In that case, look for a post describing the parameters of a bad review (as conducted by the proprietor, "with no warranties, express or implied, and no recourse") to be posted soon.