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How Audio Research Made Tubes Great Again!
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- Опубликовано: 15 авг 2024
- For more info about this Audio Research SP3A contact Novalux Stereophonic's Facebook page / novaluxstereophonic
Thanks for watching, this channel is supported by the kind generosity of my Patreon backers: / audiophiliac
Instagram: / steve.guttenberg
0:00 The SP3A, historic and still vital!
0:51 Audio Research took a big chance
3:05 The MM phono stage
7:14 SP3 vs a new tube preamp
10:40 Feelin' groovy
13:25 Audiophiliac Viewer System of the Day!
14:36 Outro
Great review Steve! I bought an AR Sp3 new, made in 1973. Yes, I’m an OLD audiophile 😊. I got away from the hobby after marriage, houses etc. Several years ago I remembered my old friend that had been in a plastic bag in the attic for twenty five or more years. It still looked like new. I contacted ARC and after some negotiation, they agreed that they had the parts to re-engineer one more SP 3-C. This model was never in production and represented their best and last effort at maximizing the original design. I agreed, and my baby began its rebirth. After many months, my baby came home and sounded fantastic! Every aspect of its sound is greatly improved, and without the noise that you found in the reviewed 3-A . I’ve been enjoying it for about three years now without a problem. Props to Audio Research Corp!
Wow. You're lucky. I've love to have one
I was a tech there for 40 years, and the SP3 is one of my all-time favorites.
Even some equipment that Wasn't high end has held up well for 50 years.
I have a couple of rather modest old pieces that still make me very happy.
Still listening to my Audio Research SP 16 Pre. $2500 at the turn of the century. Never a malfunction/repair. Tames high powered solid state amp.
I use an AR SP9 III for 30 years now, and I am a happy guy! Best regards from Vienna, Austria 🙂
I'm not surprised that a 50 year old tube preamp is still a practical proposition. I regularly visit a friend who uses a Leak Varislope preamp. It is just the thing for playing vinyl. Its also great for shellac as the different equalisations available are just the thing for his 78 collection, from back in the days before RIAA equalisation was a standard thing. Front end is a Garrard 401 with SME series 3 arm and Shure V15 cartridge. I am often surprised at how musically enjoyable 78s can be...
My SP9 II is my most treasured audio component. Not fully tube, though, but hybrid. At the time it was being sold in the late 80s, it was kind of considered "entry level." But after all these years, it remains honest and lucid and musical to my ears. It was display unit at CES and I got a great deal on it because I was writing ad copy for ARC at the time. I took it to TC Tubes in St. Paul last year for a cleaning and checkup, and it's again as good as new.
Love the story, thanks for sharing.
Another SP9 (pretty sure Mark III, made in the 80s) owner here; I can attest to how sublime they sound. The switches and knobs feel like something out of a submarine, or a vintage aircraft. The phono stage is flawless, and I use all the other inputs (except the one labeled 'CD', which is arbitrarily muted) for modern digital sources, all of which the SP9 seems to "smooth". The SP9 feeds a vintage PSE power amp and then Magnepan LRS speakers. Nice mix of old and new! 😎
It is clear that the preamplifier sounds good. It was built for music and nothing else. When we are done with digital streaming services and so the analog, organic sound will win again. The simple is usually the best. I love putting on a vinyl record and hearing the sound. I know it is genuine and as intended. Have a good time, Steve.
What else would a 2-channel preamp be built for? Off course they are built for music.
@@dontcare563 Well... Yeah, you are right.
I've not yet watched this video, so may be covered... But I'd love to know what a cd player sounds like through an amp like this. My cd player (rega Saturn r) was chosen for it's analogue (ish) sound.
always this black & white thinking, Analog vs Digital discussion and shooting against Digital Users …it gets so fckn boring.
Be happy with your type of setup. Vinyl is not the non plus ultra and it will never be because ,,the best,, is everyones own categorization. Vinyl makes a lot of mistakes in the playback but also digital as well so there is no best in general, at the end its only the own opinion.
Audio Research is the best. I still have a 100% analog system and picked up their mesmerizingly good analog multi-channel MP1 directly from a very well-known audiophile reviewer name. It bested even my Conrad Johnson MET1 preamp and because there's no tubes it doesn't have any tube rush for quiet passages.
Paired with a similar high quality Mch McCormick (CJ) amp and Innovative Audio's amazing cabinet speakers...I will have that system until I venture beyond 5.1 channel. The sound on a proper recording is just amazing.
Great video Steve! Digging the shirt!
I've been using a rebuilt Dynaco PAS 2 since the early '90s and have never seen a need to replace it.
The PAS 2 isn't very good. Doesn't hold a candle to the SP3.
In 1982 I was looking for an upgrade to my Nakamichi 610 preamplifier and decided to purchase a tube preamplifier. The choices came down to three preamplifiers which were a VTL, Audio Research and VacuumState. I chose the VacuumState for its sound quality and I’m still using and loving it today. It has been upgraded over the years to current specifications. Incidentally I’m still using the Nakamichi 610 preamplifier in my office system and it’s still sounding as neutral as it did the day bought it. I really enjoyed this episode today as it vindicates what Iv’e been telling my younger audiophile friends, which is buy the best equipment you can afford and like the Sound of. Then keep it and enjoy it.
If you are interested in the technicalities, I suggest reading "The Tube Preamp Cookbook" by the late Allen Wright, the man behind Vacuum State.
I got to know Alan before he passed and I’m very good friends with Joe Rasmussen, Alan’s right had man in Sydney at (Custom Analogue Audio). Joe has done all the updates to my preamp and has designed and build or modded my entire main system. Which is incredible.
STRONG WORK Steve!
Vintage gear has a major role in the secondary market. Fully understand, with the exception of The Music Room and a few others, that brick/mortar stores selling new gear don’t benefit from this. However, I have a pair of McIntosh MC-60s that sound wonderful and frequently wonder how they’d compare to contemporary gear. Thanks for this review!
Thanks liked that very much. The SP8 was my first preamp😊
As for the noise thats why you you used ortofon cartridges with built on transformers for the high output to give the best Signal to noise with tube pre-amp tube sections. The problem with anything AR built was service. If you wanted it done correctly it had to be sent to the factory to get the best pretested parts.
I hope that ARC has improved their service situation with their business reorganization. I don’t mind shipping them equipment but I do mind a waitlist.
Two years ago I had to wait over six months to have an amplifier serviced at the ARC Minnesota facility.
Communicate with their service department was first rate.
I could watch a whole series of vintage gear reviews! I love my nearly 50 year old speakers.
McIntosh, HK, also used Cheap push buttons in the 70's. For me it's the Luxman CL35 MKIII that I really enjoy today. I have completely Recapped/Upgraded wisely.
Have a Vintage system that’s dates to 77 and continue to be amazed every time I turn it on. Although it’s solid state, I have had older tube amps and preamps….and always enjoyed the resolutions and the depth on musical notes. 😊
Love your posts. Reminds me of listening to my dad’s system some 55 years ago, when I fell in love with audio.
Love your shirt Steve! Where do you get your shirts? Love them all.
had a Sp11 loved it, it was the golden age. the Sp6 was very good as well.
Love old gear. My second system is a full Nakamichi system from the 80s. It sounds really great. Nelson Pass designed the amp so no huge surprise there. The tape deck, well, it's a Nakamichi, but even the CD player sounds great.
Good morning, Steve! 🎉 I’ve been reading up on this preamp since it showed up here, recently, and looking forward to this video! I’m grateful for the depth that you bring to your work on this channel, and to all of your viewers! ❤ P.S. I had owned a beautiful Sony reel to reel machine in the late sixties, and used it like a digital music server, taping LPs onto “set and forget” tapes. With the chaos of my late adolescence and early adulthood, I let that machine go, probably in the summer of’70, never to be replaced, or forgotten!
I don't remember how I ended up selecting my VAC PA 100 100 tube amp and ARC LS15 tube pre amp back in 1995 But I'm glad I did as I use them to this day They have kept me for the most part out of the audio rabbit hole I was listening to them last night and couldn't get the smile off my face
Love that one! I actually just bought one with black and gold front. Maybe of note even AR "abandoned" tubes with their next iteration (I'm assuming), the SP4. I've got one of those also, but seems it has not aged quite a well and that one has metal knobs (I would presume before the SP6?).
Still enjoying my Eico tube Pre-amp from the Sixties just so musical and warm sound thanks for sharing this video
Such a nice preamp for the very high end. Cheers.
Great video Steve, I’d really like to hear your opinion on high end car audio systems someday.
It was not just turntables & a few reel to reels. I would remind you cassette decks were coming into their own in 1973. The top of the line, Nakamichi 1000 Tri Tracer came out in that year. I bought a Nakamichi 600 in late 1975, made great recordings with it with high bias tapes that still sound good at almost 50 years old.
Well in 1978 my concept for a great system was I had a GAS Ampzilla ..I used a Hafler preamp I use the VPI turntable. I can’t remember the cartridge way back then, and my speakers were the top of the line infinity. Never tried tubes back in the 1970s, so did I miss something. Probably.
Older engineering only deficits were metallurgy and material technology. Rubber coated wire and too much vanadium, the planning and execution is timeless.
Hey Steve, back in the 70’s I heard the Audio research 3 preamp and power amp with Magnepan 3 panel speakers at lyric HIFI, that was at the time one of the best sounding systems I heard. Other greats were the Dayton Wright electrostatics and the IMF transmission line speakers. I was 15 years old and worked at Tech Hi-Fi on 8th and McDougal in New York City so yes the Ohm F. 😅 I ended up buying IMF TLS-50’S With an AGI preamp, and an SAE 31B power amp due my bedroom size.
Latter to be replaced by a Dayton Wright spl preamp and a modified phase linear 400. How did I afford all of this at such a young age, I sold a lot of ohm speakers with a big commission, I also sold John Belushi, a very big system, and a few other celebrities at the time. It was wild in New York City at that time, money, drugs and Hi-Fi and I was in high school. Shout out to Saint Mark’s bar and Grill, TR3 , Maxes Kansas City and CBGB’s for making life exciting.
Wow, you've been around! Thanks for sharing.
@@SteveGuttenbergAudiophiliac I think you have too.
Hey Steve and Supermc wasn’t it a wonderful audio world back then when you could buy an AGI (Dave Spiegel) for $399.00 and feel great Those days are long gone and the current high end audio world is for the ultra rich. @@SteveGuttenbergAudiophiliac
Hey Steve, to one Steve from another (but this one’s in England). I always enjoy your content - mostly just the sheer sense of joy and genuine enthusiasm you manage to convey; but also love the crazy shirt too 😉 This Steve is also a 1973 model, and could probably also do with some loving and careful restoration. Whether this one sounds as dynamic as it used to … meh! Probably not - more mellowed with age, but the good kind of mellow. Keep ‘em coming Steve. Always makes me smile ❤️
Thank you very much!
Excellent video, I now pronounce YOU high resolution.
Good morning, Steve! Thanks for posting this video
So New is not always Better ! 😊👏👏👏
This was my gateway drug to a lifelong audio addiction. Great preamp that I ran more than 15 years as every other component was replaced.
50 years, wow, thanks Steve 😊
I always admired their work.
I have had mine, SP3a-1, since 1976.
100% Solid
I've personally owned the SP6E with MG2 . I still regret letting them go.
$4000 seems reasonable considering all things.
Owning greatness like this makes a person crave more and then more again.
I was a Dealer for ARC competitor Conrad Johnson and Maggie competitor Theil .
These were aspirational times !
but...
Vinyl wasn't all that good back then.
Digital, Schiit and Klispch are sooooooo much easier now-a-days !
Tony in Florida
That was a great preamp
Still using my SP14 together with my Audible Illusion modulus 3A. I prefer the SP14 plus the 3A is a tube eater!
The SP3 has many similarities to the classic tube preamps of the 60s like the Mac C22 and Marantz 7. The biggest difference was the addition of a regulated B+ power supply and more modern resistors and capacitors with closer tolerances and higher quality materials. The biggest downside was the build quality, which made use of a printed circuit board and a lot of hand wiring to controls and switches. A real bear to work on, and the circuit boards get scorched due to heat from the tubes and the power transistor. I had the chance to have one in my system, and my impression of it was that it was a very pleasant sounding preamp, but not the ultimate in detail or bass performance. It blew away most solid state units of the day, but they were rapidly improving and sounding better and better by the mid-to-late 70s.
What is the primary difference between the vintage ARC products vs modern voicing? Their latest stuff seems to combine the best traits from SS and tubes together in one product.
A Back to the Future review! 😮
Has a Dynaco vibe…
You're somewhat incorect in your recollection of high end audio ca. 1974. The motivating reason for the existence of Audio Research Corp [ARC]., and high end audio in general back then, was that transistor designs were sonically inferior to the best that tubes were capable. Engineering per se was not in question, nor was it a primary consideration. As the staff of TAS constantly pointed out, transistors sounded GRAINY, while tubes presented a continuous, non-grainy sound, that later came to be called "liquid". THAT was the raison d'être for ARC, and all high end audio at the time. Also, the best version of the preamp was the SP3a-2. And, the ARC preamp that suceeded the SP3a-2 was the SP4, which ARC promoted as using some magical pseudo-tube/non tube, which in reality turned out to be simple transistors. It failed. The SP6 came several years later, and was a return to form for ARC.
I couldn't afford the SP3s back in the early 70s, but my Dynaco PS3 had no hiss or hum with shorted input. I couldn't tell if it was on!
You can easily DIY this preamplifier -- the schematic is available on the Audio Research Database
Do it! Tell us all about it!
The ARC used unique boards
Steve, a fun and worthwhile review. However you must know you skipped a step. WZ Johnson did bow to the solid state trend by next introducing the SP-4. And ARC promoted it thusly: "The SP-4 surpasses our best vacuum tube preamplifier in the most important areas." They followed that with a less expensive SS preamplifier with fewer controls, the SP-5. In addition they introduced a few SS amplifier models as well.
But then (I suspect due to failed market acceptance) Johnson returned to tube products with the SP-6. That had multiple upgrade versions, in turn followed by subsequent tube designs as mentioned by others here. Possibly the SP-10 remains the top dog of classic tube-based designs, at least for vinyl playback.
I didn't forget the SP 4, I was a sales salesman and those were very ill considered designs!
@@SteveGuttenbergAudiophiliac Well I expected you remembered the 4 and 5. But your comments sounded like ARC was alone in continuing tube designs in the face of the SS trend. Instead they too ventured into SS but fairly quickly came back. Not a biggie and beside the point of your enthusiasm for the SP-3A.
"I had fun"; isn't that the point? Also, this just proves you don't have to constantly be on the upgrade merry-go-round, it's okay to be happy with what you have and have fun.
Shirt!
1 year younger than me!
I bought a pair of JBL L-45's back in '73. They still sound good.
I still have mine from 1973. Plus at Teac 3340.
That's cool! Just curious, do you have a lot of tapes?
@@SteveGuttenbergAudiophiliac I have several dozen tapes.
I never did like the audio research tube sound. To me it always had a sort of gray or bleached tonal quality, with some grain.
I’ve always preferred the warmer more “golden toned “ Conrad Johnson tube gear.
I like the old Audio Research preamps better than the new ones. By old, I mean before they went with the 6H30 tubes. The newer 6H30 Audio Research preamps sound like solid state preamps to my ears. I also don't like that 6H30 tubes can't be rolled because as far as I know, there is only 1 manufacturer of 6H30 tubes. I prefer tube preamps that sound like tube preamps but not mushy or too euphonic. After owning tube preamps from CJ, Audible Illusions, Convergent Audio Technology and Audio By Van Alstine, I now prefer my 6SN7 tube based preamps, the LTA Reference preamp with NOS Sylvania 6SN7 and NOS Mullard 4024 (12AT7) tubes and my Aric Audio Motherlode XL, a 6SN7 based tube pre with tube rectified 5U4GTB power supply.
I agree with most of what you said
It is a Classic.. When fully restored, with top shelf parts, the only thing lacking for me personally and relatively, is the bass response.. Bass not as impactful as more modern designs, BUT has a lot of bass detail..
Amazing!
Nice piece.
I ❤ AUDIO RESEARCH.
Love it
Audio Research has always been good quality and very good sound quality. Now their prices are to high and the selection not to my application. Their preamps will make just about any system sound better with all source components.
Great! 😊
I want such shirt
Vic at HiFi Buys, thank you.
Audio Research, a strong legacy.
A Linn sourced Audio Research system feeding Acoustat panels was my teenage gateway experience into what home audio could be.
- Open and transparent
- Resolving and dimensional
My 70's teenage audio love language up 'til that point, was simply loud, clear, bass, and highs.
Vic was the guy, HiFi Buys 62nd st Indianapolis.
It was classical guitar of all fffing things! Blew me away. He came back in the sliding glass door and I asked him to crank it up a bit, ... he explained that's about all it's got.
wtf?!
Damn, I was gutted that it couldn't get much louder. That incredible sound, yet it can't get loud.
𝙏𝙃𝘼𝙏 sent me on a quest for ever increasing dynamics, greater impact, higher levels.
I've lived one foot in hifi, the other in pro audio since.
Thanks to Vic at HiFi Buys
Are those your black and white paintings? I like!
Hey Steve!! Have you watched any of NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts? Trying to pin down why they sound so good. A stand out is the Chaka Khan concert, which immediately reminds one that a lot music is over-produced/compressed (I.e.: notice the full range of the kick drum).
Also ruclips.net/video/NFIlJLTch6Y/видео.htmlsi=X4wPbkcAXevlNbCM
ruclips.net/video/NFIlJLTch6Y/видео.htmlsi=X4wPbkcAXevlNbCM
I have a Luxman from that era. It's dead silent.
Can you dig it?... I knew that you could.
Who owns A R next week !
12AX7's come in a range of qualities. Do you know if the preamplifier had new production or NOS or used tubes from the golden age?
Yes, vintage Amperex 12AX7s.
Oops! I didn’t know the speaker brand shown (open baffle) at the introduction. Can someone please identify them for me? Thanks.
Pure Audio Project Duet 15
Honestly with that much age, it needs a cap job. That would cover some noise, buzz and lower bandwidth. You mention it was overhauled?
All electrolytic caps were replaced. This unit was fully overhauled. The remaining noise floor is inherent in the original design - Tube rush and the nature of a tube based phono stage…
Only electrolytics need replacement. The old film caps are better than today's caps save for the 300 dollar per cap versions
@@jm_1214 "Investigation of performance degradation in metallized film capacitors - Applied Surface Science Volume 273, 15 May 2013,
...
... in the course of time, the capacitors gradually lose their capacitance [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. The degradation is usually associated with processes involving a breakdown of the insulating polymer in-between both metallized surfaces."
Steve I like your shirts. Very nice, don't mind let me know where to purchase from??
4 shirts
Correction, 6
❤im still use my ar ca50 every day.cd🎉i stream with my ss amp.😂
Please put more useful content into your talking scrips. You have a deep knowledge and experience base that is missing here.
This came off as advertising for a collection of audio products.
Sp6b has an credible phono stage. Makes the current jfet stuff stuff sound terrible
Tubes over SS is the old Class AB vs D. The day will come that class D is the norm. And people will be paying more for the old school class AB SS amps
People have been saying that about class D for 20 years. Still hasn't happened.
@@intothevoid9831 really, you may want to pay closer attention. Not saying they have overtaken yet but the market is definitely still growing year after year.
This viewer systems are in most cases awful, not gearwise but basic things like an symmetric setup or correct subwoofer placement. Nearly all People did so much wrong things with basic stuff. And most dont even have enough or at least some room treatment wich is the key & basic for quality. Just sad… and with this people you wanna discuss about high quality playback. Find the mistake
Well then, I want to see your perfectly set up system so I can share it with the world! Don't be bashful, let's see it.
Is it because your taste in music is fifty years old?
Naughty plant pot, wasn't it just 🪴