Category: Geek Stuff

Where's my pocket protector?!

So as I mentioned in passing a month ago (has it only been a month?) I got this blinkie-light thingie (a power/line level LED meter) for my stereo. For some reason this particular unit is rarer than proverbial hens' teeth (could be the age, or the limited production run, or both), so when it showed up on eBay I immediately snagged it.

I bought one new back in 1979 (minus the oak end panels) when it first came out, but after a decade or so of use I grew weary of it, and somehow it ended up in the trunk (or boot for those in the UK) of my then-boyfriend's car, thinking it would get dropped off at Goodwill at some point. Unfortunately, this was while I was living in SF and because parking on the street is the norm,  when the inevitable car break-in happened, it was gone, along with whatever else happened to have been in there.

Anyway, after all these years I thought I knew everything it was capable of doing. What I didn't know—and just discovered today—was that it also had a peak-hold function that displays the highest signal level attained for a small period of time. I knew the silver button on the left side of the unit switched between line-level and RMS (power) display, but I started wondering why in addition to a switch it was also a potentiometer. So I turned it, and all of a sudden the peak levels were holding (the single LEDs that are separate from the  main readout in the photo above), similar to how the meters work in my Technics amp. How long they remain on is dependent on how far you turn the knob. Who knew? There is no mention of this whatsoever in the admittedly-sparse instruction booklet—and frankly I think my original unit simply had a standard pushbutton, so it may explain why I missed this all these years. (This unit may be a later production run than what I had originally.) Sadly it only seems to work on the line-level inputs, not the power level side of things, but it's still pretty damn interesting that it can do this.

I'm such a nerd.

WARNING: Geek stuff ahead!

When I first saw an Elcaset deck back in the mid 70s (shortly after high school graduation, as I recall) it sent my little wannabe audiophile heart aflutter. I'd just started building my first hi-fi system and design-wise the Sony decks were a perfect match to my newly-acquired TA-5650 V-FET amplifier. I'd yet to even acquire my own cassette deck at this time—so I viewed this as a viable, if pie-in-the-sky alternative. At $700-800 retail, they were hopelessly out of reach, and by the time I started making the kind of money where I could afford one, the entire format vanished from the scene.

From ARS Technica:

Paying tribute to the lamented, giant-size Japanese cassette Hi-Fi fans love to love.

Back before all-digital music, back before the Digital Compact Cassette, back before even the Digital Audio Tape existed, there was a strange audio device that briefly captured the imagination of Hi-Fi freaks across the world. The Elcaset, as it was called, was an enlarged cassette that started in Japan, wove its hidden, spinning spools around the world, and then finished, appropriately enough, in Finland.

The humble compact cassette was already more than a decade old in 1976, and its pros and cons had by then become fairly clear to most punters. It wasn't a huge reel-to-reel deck as was used by pro studios and was thus portable by the standards of the day—even though Sony's cassette Walkman was still a few years away.

The compact cassette's sound was generally acceptable for a generation raised on crackly mono Dansette record players. But the small tape size—two sets of stereo tracks squeezed onto a strip of tape just 3.81mm wide—and the slow playback speed of 4.76cm (1⅞ inches) per second rendered the device incapable of really capturing and playing anything near the full sonic range that music ultimately requires. What's more, there was often plenty of hiss that couldn't easily be masked.

So 40 years ago, a trio of rising Japanese electronics giants decided to inject some quality into the game, something that they hoped would hit the Hi-Fi market as well as aspiring consumers and indie studios. Thus Panasonic, Sony, and Teac came up with the Elcaset, a larger small format. It was virtually twice the size of the old cassette—more like a paperback book in size, at a hefty 15cm wide, 10cm tall, and 2cm deep.

It contained quarter-inch tape running at double the speed of regular cassettes, which naturally gave the format greater frequency response and a wider dynamic range, as well as much less hiss. It also had six tracks, despite still playing back in stereo—the third track on each side was for a cue function that was designed as an additional facility that studios could use but never fully implemented.

The other big difference was that the Elcaset's tape was gently pulled away from the body shell when it was played so that even the most scuffed—or crudely-made—frame wouldn't affect the audio signal.

To put it in technical terms, the cassette had a high-frequency bandwidth that hardly got over 16,000Hz, whereas Elcaset exceeded 25,000Hz and had a fine mid-band (the region in which most vocals and guitars live). It made a better noise, basically.

The best Elcaset decks had three motors, three heads for playback, recording, and erasure, closed-loop dual capstan, VU meters, and remote control. All in all, they sounded pretty damn good.

I like quirky.

I drive a MINI. I love my husband's blue hair (I'd do it myself if I had any). And then there's this:

A year and $400 later (believe me, a bargain!), these little buggers are finally back home after being completely refurbished.

How do they sound for all the time and expense? To be honest, not much different from what I remember. Every now and then I hear an instrument or riff come out that I don't remember hearing before, but for the most part, still the same.

And that's just fine.

I didn't send them off in hopes they'd come back sounding better; Considering my 40 year history with these models, I knew exactly what they were capable of and didn't expect a sonic miracle to occur. I sent them off because I knew after four decades, vintage audio gear, no matter how well it was built originally—even if it's functioning normally and has no obvious sonic issues—needs some TLC. Capacitors leak or dry out. Transistors age. Resistors fall out of spec. Contacts tarnish. While the guy I chose to do this work came with high recommendations, I didn't want to trust him with my then-newly-acquired Kenwood receiver—which also needed attention—right out of the gate. I wanted to make sure he knew what he was doing. If he fucked up these Technics units I'd be upset, but not as nearly upset as I'd be if the Kenwood got fried.

Yeah, it took months for him to start repairs (he's apparently popular enough among the vintage community and this is such a niche profession these days that he has a full workload), but he was as professional and thorough as any of the guys I've seen performing similar work on YouTube.  Once he started repairs he kept me appraised of the progress, sending photos that explained what he was doing.

I now feel confident enough that I can entrust him with the Kenny…even if it will take 10 months to get it back I know it will be as close to "as new" as humanly possible thereafter.

This was a question Ben asked me the other night. I didn't have a definitive answer other than to say it was a carryover from the original 1200 that preceded this, unofficially referred to as the Mk1. (To be honest I wasn't 100% sure the original 1200 had this, so I had to do some sleuthing and verified that indeed, yes, it had the same bubble.)

But why?

Chatting with my friend John (who used to repair these things for a living) cleared it all up. The original 1200—and indeed the 1100 which preceded it—were sold in two versions: one with a pre-mounted Technics tonearm, and one that allowed the customer to mount a 3rd-party tonearm of their choice. Since those arms came in a variety of sizes and configurations, the bubble was to allow for their varying heights. Why not make the whole dust cover higher? Probably cost.

The 1200Mk2 was never available without a Technics arm (although there are a number of after-market mods that allow you to do that if you're so inclined), so I was correct that it was simply a way for the Technics designers to pay homage to the previous generation. When these Mk2 tables first appeared on the scene in 1979, I hated the bubble—and was, in fact, not overly impressed with any aspect of the 1200, being wrapped up as I was in fully automatic operation and digital readouts—but over the years I've come to appreciate it's funky aesthetic and can't imagine it not being there.