Hi all, Jim from Surrey, England... new here but veteran vintage hifi hoarder
Hi all
thought i'd say HELLO to you all, I've just joined, I'm on audiokarma, pinkfish and various others although not particularly active but thought i'd drop in here too.
I collect "vintage mini hifi" components, i.e. anything under 36cm wide, preferably under 30cm wide, and have done for about 8 years now - I'll be launching a Minisystem Museum website this year to show some of my collection and as somewhere to put the 120,000 or so images of this sort of gear i have collected over the years, mainly from ebay listings.
I'm 53, live in the south of England in a tumbledown little cottage in the middle of the woods. Married, father, grandfather, petrolhead, 6'3" and self-employed with a one-man mail order business (not hifi related) that i started in 1996. Sadly, usually skint - and that was before covid almost killed my biz, but that's another story!
Cheers guys
Jim
thought i'd say HELLO to you all, I've just joined, I'm on audiokarma, pinkfish and various others although not particularly active but thought i'd drop in here too.
I collect "vintage mini hifi" components, i.e. anything under 36cm wide, preferably under 30cm wide, and have done for about 8 years now - I'll be launching a Minisystem Museum website this year to show some of my collection and as somewhere to put the 120,000 or so images of this sort of gear i have collected over the years, mainly from ebay listings.
I'm 53, live in the south of England in a tumbledown little cottage in the middle of the woods. Married, father, grandfather, petrolhead, 6'3" and self-employed with a one-man mail order business (not hifi related) that i started in 1996. Sadly, usually skint - and that was before covid almost killed my biz, but that's another story!
Cheers guys
Jim
Comments
Great intro post. :-)
Loving that you select hifi based firstly on physical size.
Hoping your business is recovering!
thanks for the reply...
Yes, the 'size' thing came about by accident really, I've always been a collector/hoarder but have a main system in the house that I'm happy enough with but i work in a 3-room office in my garden and wanted something for in there.
I started picking up various amps and components fairly randomly, whatever i liked the look of, and then settled on collecting dual-mono fullsize amps which i still have one cabinet full of, various big pioneers and other Japanese makes, but i could see that space would be a problem if i was going to carry on collecting them.
I sell CB radio equipment for a living (no, not many people still use it, it's a small and shrinking market and will never make me rich) and one of the "classic" makes of CB is York ... i spotted a little York setup on ebay, separate preamp, power amp and tuner, and purchased it, about £30 i think it was.
I was particularly taken with the fact they could squeeze such surprisingly well made gear into such small boxes (less than a foot wide and the 3 together are about the thickness of a London yellowpages from back in the day, stack about 4 inches high) so i started looking out for other similarly sized systems and components.
Someone local to me very kindly offered me a Toshiba Aurex 15 system, again with separate pre & power amps, and that is really good, and i was hooked!
Other reasons are that (when i started at least) the mini systems & components were cheaper than collecting full-size ones, and actually more difficult to obtain (the thrill of the chase is a main part of why i like it!) so these factors and the fact that i could fit more of them in the space i had, meant that i gave up on all the rest and concentrated on these.
The Inca Tech that seems very prominent here is fairly typical of the sort of gear i particularly like, small yet high quality, although sadly current prices have prevented me from obtaining one, and most of the other British small hifi too, although i have a good range of Mission stuff... not really on a par with the Inca Tech, but hopefully at some point I'll get one!
I found that there wasn't any websites specifically for hoarders of this sort of gear, although i know there are quite a few collectors out there as I'm regularly outbid on obscure items on auction sites, so thoughts of a Minisystem Museum started to form - still haven't finished the site due to shortage of time but at some point i will.
Anyway, enough of my waffle for now!
Cheers
Jim
Amazing collection! Does it all work?
Maybe we will meet someday, neighbour (I'm East Sussex).
I heard a great system late last year, all Yamaha; you would have loved it! I'll go find out what it was and report back.
Here it is, pretty awesome when seen as a while system. Sounded very respectable as well, though I feel the speakers are capable of more than I heard on the day. Real high fidelity without a doubt, and the whole lot is older than I am.
I would give those Yamaha NS-1000X houseroom anytime, there cannot be many in the country. They are brilliant.
cj66 Yes, i have the Aurex 10, 12 & 15 systems, and a 30/50 system as well, that's a little larger, midi sized so about 33cm wide. Sadly no Quad, i don't have much in the way of British hifi... i have a Cyrus 1 & 2 and a few obscure amps from Stern-Clyne, Dulci, Elizabethan, Parcel and others but other than that I'm a bit lacking on the British gear, mainly due to consistently high prices. I'm pretty close to where the A24 and A25 meet
Alan Yamaha did make some lovely gear back in the day, i have one of their switchers that was originally for high-end hifi shops to enable buyers to audition their choice of source, amp & speakers just by pressing a few buttons... up to 20 pairs of speakers, each with their own level adjustment to compensate for sensitivity differences so they're all the same volume for proper objective comparison. I love some of the Pioneer 70's stuff too, i have a couple of their dual-mono amps. Yup, i'd give a home to the 1000X speakers too!
I have a slightly silly collection of speakers too, TDL, Castle, KEF, Jordan Watts etc, just picked up some rare & beautiful South African made floorstanders that might possibly be the only pair in the UK, for the pricely sum of £11.50 on ebay... i had a 45 mile round trip to collect them but definitely worth it.
This summer I'm going to turn another room over to the collection so I'll be able to space stuff out a bit better and I'll take more photos of the other cabinets & bookshelves. Wiring all of them up so they can all work is the biggest job!
Jim have fun I met in the real life some kind a lovely people here, Dave, Alan, Ben come to mind often, that remind me Ben Photo to paint Maria at last has decide which one she wants you to do, I send a copy via that electronic pigeon called "Int The Net later".