More trivia part three

[dynaco_dan]

Hi there

Today I am going to talk about different things.

Please remember that this time period was before internet and fax machines so that most communication was by letter at snails pace.

Dynaco A25's were a very popular speaker here in Vancouver. First out at $115.00 +/- cdn. The speakers apparently went from Denmark to the USA and then back up into Canada. We paid double duties I believe. Then someone decided to deliver to Canada direct. The price plummented to the lowest price I ever saw here was $54.00 cdn and then at door opening only 2 pair were available. Sound familiar. At the warantee depot for Dynaco here I saw lots of dead speakers. I don't recollect ever changing out a tweeter on any model of Dynaco speakers. But the woofers, well that's another story. Everyone thought that the 60 watt rating meant disco levels. The voice coils of some woofers looked like someone had put a match to the form. The form if I remember correctly was a white cardboard. Toast is what some of them looked like. The insulation on some wires were blistered like the insulation had been boiled. The warantee covered all these examples if and only if the glue that held the voice coil on the form had failed allowing the voice coil to slipoff of the form. When you listen to a Dynaco A25 ( this can be any speaker, any brand ) at low levels in their enclosure listen for a buzz, which usually meant the voice coil is rubbing. You can turn up the volume but the buzz won't go away but will get louder. This is using a sound generator or a record or cd with different frequency sound tracks. A music record can at times show up a buzz or rattle as well. I don't mean a resonant buzz either. The cure is replace the driver.

The most speaker damage I remember was caused by the very popular SCA35 and the Pat4/Stereo 120. Low price for the masses, very very decent equipment but hard rock disco levels non-compatible with hifi speakers. You should have seen some of the owners squeam as they said how they only had it just a little loud. Yeh sure.

Dynaco required that the warantee depot buy the warantee parts from them. Dynaco would then send a replacement part upon the defective part being received and then after a while the warantee repair fee would follow. Unless a warantee depot had a few bucks to buy extra parts, generally the customer had a little wait.

Acoustic Research on the other hand had sent dozens of speaker cartons full of spare drivers, spare cartons, amp and turntable parts all at no charge. The woofers were individually boxed and so were the midranges.

When I became involved a shipment of tweeters had arrived from AR. This shipment had come with the cardboard flats with the holes in them for the tweeter bodies so that they could be shipped without moving in transit. If the tweeter was placed in the hole it cannot move sideways and you would also need a substantial layer of cardboard on the bottom of the magnet. On top of the tweeter you would need cardboard with a depression to hold the bolt frame from sliding sideways and also a hole for the tweeter domes, in this case AR3a tweeters. This order was probably packed by a new shipper and there was no rigidy between the top and bottom carboard and all of the tweeters slid sideways destroying all of the domes. If you are all crying now you should have seen the look on my face back then.

If they had used the midrange boxes they would not have lost any. AR was, as I remember exceptional in their support. AR as was Dynaco bad mouthed here in Vancouver ( sound familiar ) stores. Low markup and commission. They always had at least one AR grille cloth off to show you how ugly they were. Even with a defective AR3a in a demonstration they still sounded goooood.

KLH was never very visible here in stores with a few exceptions. I had the opportunity of hearing borrowed KLH 9's with Dyna mk 111's, PAS 3x Thorens TD124 w/shure V15 type 2 and direct disc records. Sounded nice.

Infinity Servo Static 1's with SAE amps in a closed store session one evening. They didn't have any quality records or master tapes. The potential of this system was not reached because music source and low powered amps could not bring these speaker to bloom.

Enough ramblings for today..

If this trivia is of interest leave me some feedback otherwise I'll just continue to talk to myself. Mumble mumble. lol

Or jump right in with your own trivia, there must be others out there with stories of interest. Eh.