Hi Mr. Pig, I've enjoyed your posts. I understand where you are coming from. If you are considering vintage gear that has great value. Take a look at Adcom. Some of Nelson Pass' finest efforts. Funny, the amp models are GFA-whatever. GFA stands for Great F%$*&ing Amp. That's no joke.
One thing I should mention is that I spent quite a few years hanging out on another audio board that is the largest vintage site there is, and their definition of what vintage gear is predates my personal definition. My interest in gear really didn't match up with theirs, but the site I called home before them A.A. had turned into a wild west kind of place that was the antithesis of what it was intended to be. So that was my next best choice.
My personal interest is the best possible audio playback I can get for my middle class funds. When raising piglets and putting a wife through college, well the audio kitty is a bit bare. So I did shop the used market reverently, but with an interest in gear that is say 5 years old or newer. But the reality is that I have bumped into my glass ceiling, owning a system that is as good as my discretionary funds will allow. By most measures it is a good quality system capable of satisfying musical playback and refined enough to determine the differences between audio minutia. So the question is where do you go from here?
For the fun of it, and my personal education, I decided to look at some of those obscure and forgotten pieces from the 80's to 2000's. Now I am a pig of the 80's, being 47 years old, and this era is when audio was new and alive to me. I personally think that the US high end scene took off in the 80's, and was still relatively affordable to the average hobbyist. So I am buying a few pieces that are shiny and catch my attention, especially if the price is attractive. The N.E.W. DCA 33 being one such piece. It allows me to set a bench mark of what was possible in the 80's and 90's, and make an honest evaluation of what I hear out of the kinds of current production gear I can afford. There are some wonderful systems here in the Shark Tank that are way way past my humble means, but that is the cool thing about audio...there is a continuum with something for everyone. So for a diversion, I want to put together an 80's to 2000 era secondary system, and see what can be done.
My time at the vintage site was not a waste by any means, nor do I ever intend to speak badly of them. I still spend a lot of time there, as the traffic keeps things hopping. If it wasn't for my time there I would never have considered looking for and rescuing my Thorens TD 124. Which I find to be a wonderful table, and forced me to reevaluate many aspects of analog playback that I felt were set in stone. In many ways I think the table is every bit the peer of my Galibier Audio Serac, and I regularly interchange the two in my system. So old pigs can learn new tricks!
Never owned any of the Adcom GFA series, but I hear the new 4 digit model number ones are quite promising. Perhaps one day I will get to listen to them. I live in rural Eastern Washington, and while we have wonderful wines...the audio scene is nonexistent. I have spent so many years living with SET amplification that my system is not really accomodating to many traditional amps. With the Hawthorne Trio speakers here I have a bit of flexibility now that I did not have before. Thanks for the story behind the Adcom model designation!
Regards
Mister Pig
