I know that my blog is hardly neglected since I am in Hongkong. But to be honest it is extremely difficult to find issues about vintage hifi products here. To me it seems to be a hermetic sealed community, which has some interest into such things, but no interest to get in contact with foreign people. Hongkong, a city tremendously believing into the future with a hard limited affinity to history, is not the place for such themes.
So I visited again my "friend" at the flea market in Sham Shui Po, who everyday sits there and assembles his own tube amps made from vintage parts. Last weeks he has got a new sets of WE input transformers with a ratio of 1:10. When I was there he installed a pair into his standard tube amp. After perfect matching he did play for me some some classical piano music, – I was sitting in the perfect hot spot of his speakers at his stand, and I was very surprised about the sound coming from his Japanese speakers from the 1970ties (maybe Sansui or similar). Maybe it was as well because of his open stand, without any side walls, but it did sound extremely balanced and natural.
A little late round the next corner I did have the chance to listen to another set with Uesugi brothers preamp and some Japanese vintage mono tube power amps in combination with some quite ordinary JBL speakers of the 1970ties. No, not the well known 4000 series of studio designs, some more ordinary floor standing three way units with 12'' woofer and particle board enclosure. This set was not even able to bring half the authenticity and life of the flea market set up into performance. I would expect for 10 times the money...
Last not least I would like to get you some idea of the situation here about hifi. Just look at this image it will tell another story for the analoge enthusiast. But to be honest, I did find a record store in town, – with exactly the same new high end releases known from Europe, and that of course for the same amount of money.
Stay on, I will com back quite soon and maybe I will bring another interesting entry?
Volker
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