Obscure QUADRAPHONIC RECEIVERS & AMPS....any good??

Well I cleaned top side boards with denatured alcohol and put her back together. So far i only hooked up head phones and listened to FM with no antenna.

I have a set of AR-2's and want to get another pair for a truly retro set up

I heard there is a way to get the numbers back. I don't see how its possible though.

Athanasios

Just hooked up a pair of old AR-2 speakers that i put a set of soft dome tweeters in and redid the crossovers. Sounds nice, using another AR pice the XA turn Table. it has a slight hum but cleaning the phono plugs and head shell leads helped a bit. If i touch the chassis the hum goes away. Grounding issue I take it. Also it definitely needs recapping. The four large silver 1200uf 90v caps are from 600 to 950 uf's.

But Dexter Gordon's GO !! record sounds sweet for now

Athanasios

One more thing, I don't think this has built in decoder. But I did find a ARS Stereo 4 demodulator i'll try to buy !!

Now i need to find some Q4 Media.

Athanasios

Nashou66 said:

One more thing, I don't think this has built in decoder. But I did find a ARS Stereo 4 demodulator i'll try to buy !!

Now i need to find some Q4 Media.

Athanasios

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I'm not sure, but I think the "ARS Stereo 4 demodulator" is sort of a early Quad matrix decoder...not sure how well it works...maybe someone else can fill us in??. (Early quad decoders were a bit dodgy even when the receivers they were connected to were excellent...).The "Realistic EV4 Stereo 4 adapter" should be built into the ARS-747 (...it say's it's included in the 747 in the 72 catalog). I don't know too much about this one...I'm assuming is an early matrix decoder (synthesizer....i.e sorta like pro-logic) for one of the very earliest EV4 Quad Formats.

When you get 4 speakers connected to the unit....put some music on and flick through the modes and see if you get any sort of Quad effect or anything out of the rear channels that sounds like something being decoded rather than the Front Stereo Channels doubled up in the rear.

If the onboard quad decoding doesn't work too well, you can still always connect a DVD player set to mix down to 4 channels to the 4 channel inputs till you can track down a decent outboard Quad (synth) decoder...Like a Sansui QSD-1 & connect that up to it.

Cheers.

Thanks so much for this ad. I have the 2010 putting out 50 watts per channel with 320 total watts. I also have the assembly manual. Not a lot of 4 channel amps putting out that kind of power. I have 4 Dynaco A25XL speakers hooked up to it and a sansui QSD-2 for the 4 channel input.

What a trip down memory lane! Thanks to all for posting those cool pictures and comments.

1- I had a Lafayette LR-4000 back in the day. It was one of the more popular receivers in Chicago. Lafayette had lots of stores here. They had a great selection of Quad software, so their stores were "Quad destinations." LR-4000 also got a stellar review in one of the hi-fi mags. Great full-logic wavematching SQ decoding. I decided to sell it when I entered the business. We didn't sell Lafayette, so I couldn't resist owning something we sold: Marantz, at "accomodation pricing," the allure was too great.

2- Most of these US marketed pieces were almost as hard to find then as they are now. Still, there is some truly incredible looking and performing gear. A boyfriend of mine had a Technics Quad receiver. It looked nice and performed well, but it's matrix performance wasn't as good as some.

3- Heathkit had some cool stuff. The danger in buying a used Heathkit is the build quality. If it was factory assembled, it was built well. If it was purchased as a kit, there could be issues like cold soldered joints. One customer told me he had a "Healthknit" Quad receiver. Being that savvy, I hope he bought it assembled. LOL!!

4- There was a Columbia SQ "inner sleeve" that depicted hardware from every brand that incorporated an SQ decoder. The photos are b/w. Most of those pieces made it to very few stores. Many of you likely have that sleeve.

5- Pioneer, Marantz and Sansui were the big Quad receiver brands in Chicago. Although we were a big JVC and Sony dealer, we rarely sold a Quad receiver that wasn't Pioneer or Marantz. We sold lots of Sony stereo receivers, but few Sony Quads. I owned a Sony STR-7065A (2-ch) for many years. It tested at 87W/ch RMS, even though it was rated at 60. I later gave it to my cousin and she still has it, nearly 40 years later. We hosted several "amplifier clinics" and "tape deck clinics." We knew which pieces regularly outperformed their specs and which didn't.

6- There were incredible overstock and discontinued sales. I bought my Akai CR-80DSS at Lafayette for $239. When QX-949 hit, we sold the Pioneer 4000's at $299, or $499 bundled with cartridge, turntable and 4 speakers. We also bought a slug of Marantz 2440's and sold them at $99. I still have mine, which has come in and out of retirement several times.

7- Marantz units typically had an amplifier that significantly out performed power ratings. The tuner sensitivity wasn't great. With an outdoor antenna or proximity to transmitters, the tuner performed incredibly. Marantz Quad offered flexibility and upgradability.

8- The Magnavox compact system was pretty low-fi. The phono jacks for speakers are the first clue. These units were sold at dedicated Magnavox stores, department stores and appliance stores. Though we sold few Sony Quad receivers, we sold lots of their Quad compacts. Compacts and their modern cousins, "HTIB," or "Home Theater in a Box" are for those who don't know the difference, or don't care. I have a Sony HTIB for my fourth system, which I inherited when my Dad passed.

9- Most of these pieces had good/great performance and terriffic build quality. By the late '70's, things like pressboard case bottoms (Technics), high negative feedback (great for THD, but slows down the amplifier) and rack systems with a single power supply for all "components" sent hi-fi in the wrong direction. The decline in cost and performance continued until new technology like DTS and Dolby D, along with the continued growth of Denon, Onkyo, Yamaha and Pioneer Elite brought respectability and high build quality back to receivers.

Linda
Vintage Quad Vixen

Quad Linda said:

What a trip down memory lane! Thanks to all for posting those cool pictures and comments.

1- I had a Lafayette LR-4000 back in the day. It was one of the more popular receivers in Chicago. Lafayette had lots of stores here. They had a great selection of Quad software, so their stores were "Quad destinations." LR-4000 also got a stellar review in one of the hi-fi mags. Great full-logic wavematching SQ decoding. I decided to sell it when I entered the business. We didn't sell Lafayette, so I couldn't resist owning something we sold: Marantz, at "accomodation pricing," the allure was too great.

Linda
Vintage Quad Vixen

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As I've mentioned before, Lafayette was one of the only companies, besides Sony, to engineer their own logic designs for SQ. While they did 'copy' CBS in offering front-back and full wave-matching as well as Vari-Blend in the SQ-W, the implementations were 100% Lafayette's own designs - no cheesy off-the-shelf Motorola IC's for them! Lafayette used designs that, at first glance, seemed less sophisticated, but because of that, they were faster - there was less circuitry used that slowed down the logic's attack times, leading to performance on the SQ-W that could be mistaken for a Tate in many cases. Other companies, like Marantz with their logic adapters, just used the stock Motorola SQ chips that had poor sound quality and performance. So if you can't find or afford a Tate, a Sony Full-Logic SQ decoder or Lafayette SQ-W are the only real options if you want quality performance.

If the Tate DES IC's had been designed and manufactured correctly from the beginning and not delayed by 5 years, Tate Audio was planning to sell them as 'add-on' boxes that would take the SQ decoded outputs of a receiver or non-logic decoder and apply the Tate directional enhancement - thus allowing any SQ decoder to become a 'super decoder'. Wouldn't that have been cool? Sansui should have done the same thing with the Vario-Matrix - there were so many non-logic QS and RM decoders in basically every piece of quad gear that an add-on Vario-Matrix circuit would have been a big seller. And the chips were priced so low that the add-on unit could have cost less than $75 retail. The 3 Vario-Matrix IC's (4 are needed in a Type-A decoder), like the Motorola 3-IC SQ Logic chip set, are still widely available, so it would be neat if some quad fan with an EE degree would make just such an add-on VM decoder. I'd love to be able to use the RM position on my Sony SQD-2020 with Vario-Matrix.

Christie, a company that used to make 35mm theater projectors and sound systems (but now is basically an all-digital projection supplier) used the Motorola SQ Logic IC's in their "Sound-Around" (what a great name!) all-in-one theater sound system - it had the 35mm optical power supply, switching, Dolby Stereo decoding with logic and time-delay, speaker EQ and 100 watt amps for every channel, all built into a small 3-rack high unit. I think it sold for $1,500 or so. The Tate DES chips needed to implement logic-directed Dolby Stereo required extensive - and very specialized - re-engineering to get them to work in either SQ decoding or for Dolby Stereo decoding - plus they were expensive. Christie built low-cost sound systems and so used the Motorola SQ IC's to create a full-logic Dolby Stereo decoder, complete with logic-directed center channel. A few other companies also used the Motorola SQ Logic chips in their theater processors. Dolby's short-term use of the Sansui Vario-Matrix chips in the SA-4 and SA-5 theater sound adapters was the only usage of that technology for Dolby Stereo decoding although Sansui did try and get companies interested in it during the early 80's. (I'm not forgetting Quintasound, but that was a one-time thing) Going through some boxes of old brochures I found a Sansui brochure yesterday dated 1987 that has a unit that's an all-in-one video processor/mixer, stereo-surround decoder + amplifier and video/audio switcher and dbx expander/impact restorer - the amazing thing is that it also has a QS decoder built in and has a button on the unit that says "QS Surround" in the QS logo typeface - unfortunately, it's not a Vario-Matrix design. I can't imagine why Sansui didn't make it a VM design considering they still had billions of VM chips, and by 1987 logic decoders were becoming more and more popular.

I guess it's the very last QS decoder ever produced?

I got to this page looking for information on my Fisher quad receiver and decided it qualified for the obscure units post. I compared it to the Sansui QR6500 I also have. It is a Fisher 40 (I have never seen another like it -ever- not on E-bay or even a google search. My brother sent it my way after he added a bit to it: It has 4 channel discrete amp and a decoder comparable to the Sansui (in my opinion). It has the pre-amps wired out to a 800 watt car 4 channel car amp with a 60 amp transformer powering the amp. I have 4 Braun L-810s around it and an Alesis M-EQ230 (30 band 1/3 octave eq) to enhance the frequency ranges. The difference is that it really blew the cajones off the Sansui for depth and smoothness of frequency range with the smoothest, deepest, punchiest bass I've ever heard. The other major difference is that the rear channels on the Fisher seem to carry the full bass range all the way around where the Sansui seemed to drop off a bit. Seems funky, but it sounds awesome. Cheers, bro.

Hey gang been gone for a while. Just won a Fisher 601 on the bay for just over 100$!! Not free like the ARS747 but its the original Fisher and in better shape.

Still looking for a cheap pair of AR 2's or AR 2x's to make a retro quad set up.

Pics to follow once its here.




Athanasios

Does anyone have a Hitachi Quad receiver? just curious how they stack up, I have a SR 802 (2ch.) that has a nice clean sound and it sounds somtimes better than my Maantz 4270 ! take care Joe

The above post is a quad record sleeve from Edgar Winter's "They only come out at night" shows some interesting equipment. Photo is a nice SA-8000X Technics receiver

Notice there's only one "good" Full Logic decoder in the bunch, the Lafayette - the other logic decoder is a half-assed Front/Back job from Pioneer. The rest are junk non-logic designs with 10/40 blend, except for the Audionics, which was really made by Total Audio Transmission Equipment, i.e. Tate Audio on an OEM basis for Audionics with Sony designed Phase Shifters (the same used in their SQD-2020's and other discrete logic decoders). It had switchable blend so you could turn it off and hook it up to the 'soon to be available' Tate DES IC decoder add-on that was planned.

That sleeve that was included in every early Columbia/Epic and associated SQ LP. It says "the sound of things to come." Although, to be honest, it should have said, "the discs have come, but good performing decoders will come later." I still have my Marantz 2440, but upgraded it to the SQA-2B full-logic decoder in '76." I agree with Disclord, the Lafayette, which I had back then was the only good decoder depicted on that sleeve. At the time of that sleeve, I thought SQ meant "sorta Quadraphonic." lol!! And I sold the gear at that time.

Linda

Disclord said:

Notice there's only one "good" Full Logic decoder in the bunch, the Lafayette - the other logic decoder is a half-assed Front/Back job from Pioneer. The rest are junk non-logic designs with 10/40 blend, except for the Audionics, which was really made by Total Audio Transmission Equipment, i.e. Tate Audio on an OEM basis for Audionics with Sony designed Phase Shifters (the same used in their SQD-2020's and other discrete logic decoders). It had switchable blend so you could turn it off and hook it up to the 'soon to be available' Tate DES IC decoder add-on that was planned.

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I buy these for the looks more than how they sound. They are interesting and deserve to be played and enjoyed, there is a time and place all the equipment out there. It all depends what you are looking for.

Teledyne model R30401. I havent turned on the receiver yet, its supposed to work. On top of the receiver is a Peavey Vintage tube amp.

Here is another Teledyne

How does the blue display on the right of the piece in post #57 work? Is it a light display? Are they tinted lenses that move with the level knobs?

Also, is it powered by steam or electricity? Oh, wait, I think I figured out that part.

Yes the display on the right is a light display. I plugged in the Teledyne for the first time today. It was supposed to work, usually I inspect and clean the inside before I apply power. I didnt hook up any componets which is why I am assuming the display was not on. I will try later tonite after work and see. At least it didn't go up in smoke.

Jack the Reefer said:

Here is another TeledyneView attachment 4975

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wow! and with the MM adaptor! never saw one , but have heard of them.