This would prove to be a defining moment in my foray into the world of audio, music, and plywood! A second defining moment was when my Father put together a speaker kit, making a single rather nice looking speaker to hook up to his Wolensak reel to reel tape player. I can still see him playing his Henry Mancini tapes through that surprisingly nice sounding audio system.
Enter my teenage years. I was able to acquire a Harman Kardon tube receiver from a neighbor, which doubled as a heater for my bedroom. Needing some speakers, I took a bookcase, and wanting to be like my dad, put a plywood face and back on this bookcase, cut some holes in the front, mounted speakers, hooked up the wires, and viola! stereo sound, or so I thought. Funny how my speaker didn't have the warm, rich sound of my Dads speaker. Maybe it had something to do with the charity shop speaker components?
I felt I was really flying when I saved up some money from a summer job and splurged on a Lafayette LR-5555 Stereo Receiver! 55 watts per channel of classic power!
The problem was that those 55 watts of classic power were going into my charity shop speakers! It didn't take very long for AC/DC to freeze all of the cones in my speakers.
Just starting High School and not having very much money, I couldn't afford a good set of speakers, so a friend and I embarked on a journey of discovery and speaker building. We settled on a bass reflex design, with the math telling us that bigger is better. We bought two 15-inch woofers, two 12-inch mid range horns and two piezo-electric tweeters. We used half-inch plywood and lots of insulation on the interior. The finished speakers were almost 6 feet tall by 3 feet wide. They fit rather well in my basement room. I was able to rattle the upstairs floor with the power they would produce. I was amazed, one day, when I actually skipped the needle on the record I was playing due to feedback from the the speakers!
Towards the end of High School my parents bought me a set of really nice Speakerlab mid range horns. At this point, I realized that the size of my speakers was somewhat limiting, so, with my friend, we rebuilt them using 3/4 - inch plywood, making them a much more manageable 3 feet by 2 feet. I stained these speakers and carried this system with me into my marriage, where my wife suggested that they were, maybe, a little too big for the family room.
As fate would have it, we discovered we had a neighbor who built stereo speakers on the side, selling them commercially. Jay Adamson, built two very well designed, speakers that looked really nice in our family room (18 inches by 12 inches). We bought stands to put them on. You could really crank them! The bass parts in the remix of Elton John's "I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That" were unreal. (We still have these speakers in our family room and continue to listen to them daily.)
In my city they have a yearly Parade of Homes, where contractors show off their best and brightest homes. We would typically go and dream of owning one of these amazing works or art. About this time, one of the homes had been built by Dave Wilson, of Wilson Audio. He has a listening room crafted to be acoustically pure. He had a set of his WAMM speakers in the room with a wall of hi-end stereo components with huge amplifiers in the room behind the components. There was a grand piano in the room, but nobody was playing it. The music coming from the speakers was so pure that you would have sworn that someone was playing the piano. So now my appetite was whetted, but I knew that hi-end audio was out of reach.
When I saved a bit of money and did some research, I discovered that in the Mid-Fi offereings, Adcom was at the high end. I made a purchase of an Adcom pre-amp and amplifier. Not a bad pair at 200 watts per channel.
This has done me well over the years, and today still powers the custom Jay Adamson speakers in my family room.
However, as much as I like the Adcom system, I miss the sweet sound of my Harman Kardon tube receiver. I also miss the sound of my Dad's Marantz 2010. I had always wanted a Marantz 2285B. Mainly because it has 85 watts/channel old school power, meaning more like 120 watts/channel. It also has the functionality and inputs/outputs that I need. Most of all, it is rumored to have the sweetest, tube like sound, of all the Marantz receivers. But the Marantz was too expensive when I bought my Lafayette.
About two years ago I purchased a Marantz 2285B from eBay. Cleaned it up, etc. It now sits in my den with a set of same era Bose 901 speakers on stands.
I have to say that the pictures, above, are accurate. The monster Marantz does power the Bose 901's very well. The sound is rich, sweet, and the bass will rock you good! If you ever get the chance to buy a Marantz 2xxx receiver, go for it. You will not be disappointed!
Till next time,
Bill
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