Facelift, Wood Plinth Refinishing For Linn Sondek LP12

My original Linn LP12 plinth in Black Ash, total strip down. This is not the first time I've done this!

Choosing my stain option, which I choose a rich shade of red laquer

 

The finished result! Beautiful......

From another angle at Ricky's workshop

This project was almost 6 months in the making. I had planned to refinish my Linn LP12 wood plinth, as I was kinda bored with the original Black Ash color scheme.

And since I am stripping everything down to do the refinishing of the plinth, I might as well do some upgrades! At the time, I was keen to get Linn's latest Karousel bearing design, but was horrified upon hearing the cost. Fear not, it's Mober to the rescue and I ended buying not only Mober's bearing design, but also the matching inner platter & out board PSU upgrade kit. All those parts came just a day before the MCO lock down in May, and Ricky's furniture workshop had to close as a result.

Ricky's workshop was allowed to resume operations by 3rd October and he went in to work on my Linn LP12 plinth straight away. After more than a week, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the result of the refinished work, as in the pictures above!

Ricky also does speaker cabinet repairs or any other hifi wooden bits refinishing as well. He is well known amongst those classic Thorens & Garrard turntable folks for supplying beautiful custom plinths. He is also a classic hifi & LP collector. So if you're reading this, that means Ricky shares your passion for good sound!

Ricky can be contacted at 019-3379357, should you require his services.  

Remote Bliss, Akai RC-G95 Remote Control For Akai GX-95 MKII Cassette Deck

 

Oh what joy it is to have finally found my Akai RC-G95 remote control, a perfect match for the Akai GX-95 MKII cassette deck. 2 weeks after getting my cassette deck, I set out to look for the original Akai remote to pair with the cassette deck.

I was looking at Yahoo Japan Auctions as that was the most likely place I could find it, but no luck. Salvation came from Ebay Germany. With one gentleman selling this remote, however he was reluctant to ship overseas, especially Malaysia. Willing buyer, willing seller but un-willing shipping?

For some reason, many Ebay sellers don't like dealing with Malaysian buyers. After 3 weeks of persuading him ship to me, he relented but wanted a premium for shipping. I agreed and after almost 2 weeks, the item arrived my door step via DHL.

What are the odds? both manufactured in Japan, then sent to different parts of the world, a cassette deck from China & a remote from Germany, finally coming together in my custody as a pair in Malaysia, to be paired for my joy!   

Reference Master, Akai GX-95 MKII Cassette Deck

 

Akai GX-95 MKII cassette deck, it's big, bold, yet luxurious

My hifi appetite can be insatiable! There is always an aspiration for top tier stuff if I am ever serious about something. And if you've been reading this blog, you'll notice my craze for cassette decks lately!

In my exploration, I came across this Akai GX-95 MKII model, which was made between 1991-1993 and available only in Japan, Europe and US markets. As part of the Akai Reference Master series components, the line up also includes a matching CD player, tuner & integrated amp. The original GX-95, a 3 head, 3 motor, dual capstan closed loop designed with real time recording monitor function as most top dog models do, was developed by Akai to be a Nakamichi killer in 1988, so to speak, and Akai made it the best they could muster, in every way possible. Then in 1991, Akai gave it a MKII facelift, with a slight improvement to specifications.

Let's look at the build quality, it's as luxurious as cassette decks comes, with that brutish, big and bold body in all satin black aluminum facia and side wood cheeks. It feature 4 bunkers inside the 2U all metal box, yep just built like the Yamato class battleship. Each bunker or compartment houses different sections of circuitry for best possible isolation. The top left bunker contains the power supply transformer & power supply board behind the cassette mechanism. The top right bunker contains all the operations and logic circuitry. The bottom left bunker contains power regulator board for audio only circuitry which is located in the bottom right bunker. With such construction method, the 2U box becomes super stiff, whilst achieving isolation for each circuitry. 

On the outside, the styling is plain classy restraint and functional to boot. The cassette well door is motorized and can be operated by wireless remote, as per most playback functions. Most body screws and the bottom panel are copper coated for EMI/RFI screening purposes. Those metallic Champaign footers are the real deal, where they feature glazed ceramic underneath. The back panel has an extra pair of RCA CD direct input for recording, other than the usual input & output. All this build leads to a rather heavy 10.2kgs cassette deck, 12.2kgs shipping weight, if came together with original packaging foam & box like mine!  

The back panel, note the copper coated screws and that funny grey power cord! My unit is a 220V unit from Europe, but somehow ended up in China, and now Malaysia....... 

The front facia is typical cassette deck design, but good ergonomics 

The bottom panel is copper coated on the out side, and look at those big, heavy real glazed ceramic feet! 

The top panel with wooden side cheeks visible, typical of Japanese high end audio in the 1990's. Somehow, Akai as a audio company faded away shortly after making their best stuff, along with a few other big Japanese brands!

Compatible remote sourced from Mr Oh. Doesn't look very good, but functional nevertheless!

I was looking around to source for a unit of Akai GX-95 MKII for sometime, then a buddy of mine whom I asked to look out in China found this unit in Foshan, Guangzhou for sale. A very quick deal and airfreight saw this unit arrived at my door step 3 weeks later. Alas! this unit came without remote as it was lost by the previous owner in China. So I managed to source a compatible remote from my hifi repair buddy Mr Oh! My search continues for an original matching remote to complete my quest.

The bottom end with it's 2 bunkers, on the left in this picture which is up side down, is the audio circuitry, and on the right is the power supply regulator for the audio PCB. Surprisingly, it's not copper coated on the inside of the chassis!

Seen here from top view and right side up, is the 3 motor, direct drive cassette mechanism is front, with power supply transformer & regulator board. On the right side is logic control PCB

Cassette dampening pad to keep stable pressure on the cassette in play back & recording mode 

The cassette mechanism, which is 3 head. The GX(glass permalloy) heads are proprietary to Akai

The Akai GX-95 MKII was swiftly plugged in to my system to check for function and sound quality. I am lucky to have got a fully functional deck. As for sound quality, it was a total opposite in character compared to my Nakamichi DR-3. The Akai brought out every last musical nuance & detail with every  type of tape used, and obviously for a deck of this status, sounded best with type IV metal tapes. With metal tapes, the Akai sounds full bass bloom and attack, with nicely focused mid range, and extended, yet airy treble & spatial cues. The Akai is able to project a  convincing 3D imaging trick, just like the best CD players can.

With lesser tapes types, such as type II chrome and type i normal ferric, the sound quality gets thinner & thinner, each with lesser bass bloom & energy, depending on recording quality, some type I normal tapes even sounded harsh. I think the Akai deck is just separating the rough stuff from the diamonds, due to it's SOTA of the time status as any respectable hifi piece should do. Also with this Akai deck, it made me realized that I don't have a pair of good enough high end RCA to match! While the beer budget Gotham RCA interconnects that I used all this while sounds decent with the Nakamichi DR-3 & Teac V-670 decks, the Akai just screams for a better pair of interconnects. Not wanting to spend too much hard earned money on what is a low-fi medium, I then procced to try a pair of Van Damme RCA interconnects. The mid centric Van Damme suited Akai much better, but was left wanting in the resolution department, for which I knew the JVC could just do better.

Salvation came in the form of an old friend, a pair of well used Audioquest Sky RCA interconnects. With it's 36V DBS die electric alignment system, the AQ Sky really brought noise floor down by a couple of notches, and with that, more tape resolution capability, and a smooth, wide open space heavenly high frequency reproduction! This is the 4th pair of AQ Sky to be residing in my system! I know, this is a 20 year old cable technology and surely there are better cables out there by now, but at what cost? What ever your opinion, I still hold the AQ Sky in the highest regard amongst all other cable-dom "king" contenders. The AQ Sky, just simply matches the Akai GX-95 MKII like a dog's best friend, that they are meant to be together!

Looking at the 3 cassette decks in my possession at point of writing, I find the Nakamichi to be the warmest of the lot, the Akai at the opposing end of the sound spectrum, and the Teac is just there, hanging on somewhere in between the 2 extremes. The Nakamichi's warm sound character is easy on the ear, sympathetic to system matching, that's why it's universally loved, but at times with poorer recordings, can venture in to the MCC(Mong Cha Cha) territory. The Teac is well balance and very in the neutral sounding character, which can also endear it self in a quite a few systems. The Akai on the other hand, is somewhat analytical, full of details, if slightly lean sounding, and will expose the weakness or lack or synergy in the hifi chain ruthlessly, if not addressed. That could be the reason, that the Akai is just not quite there as a Nakamichi killer, if feed back in the various www.forums indicate. But for me, it's the best deck so far and a keeper for sure. Sort of a last stop to cassette audio nirvana I guess.

Now back to ebay, Yahoo auctions and China buddies to source for that illusive matching remote...........

And do enjoy the video below of the Akai GX-95 MKII play back!

Something New For Something Old..........

Now, what's this?

This project has been in the making since April, as all the parts have become available since May but no progress until now. Can you guess what is this item featured on the picture?

Art frame? Or something else?

If the keen eyed amongst you already know, post your answer in the comment section please.

Stay tune for updates on this project as it will start moving soon!

 

A kick-ass hifi system for under RM3000

This is something I always have in the back of my head of what is possible if I put my budget just below RM3000 but I want to have streaming, local media play back and a little bit more if I wanted to have CD player to be added to the mix. Well hifi system can be very simple as one amplifier with one pair of speaker and you are done basically. In the old days, usually be CD player or cassette or even a minidisc player. In more recent times of course digital media is kind of the main stream. Keep that in mind, I just wanted something very simple and affordable which I can just set it up to listen in my living room area. It can be family entertainment and as well as for guest coming to visit.

Now to be realistic with limited budget , it is quite obvious to look into the used market. After all, used hifi gear does have quite many variety to offer. Since this is going to be in the living room area I will pick something not too space consuming. So for speaker, the ideal choice is a bookshelf speaker. It's quite a bit of searching for something that I like and need to be low cost. After some months of going through the search, I came upon a nice pair of Monitor Audio Gold 7. This speaker is the top bookshelf back for its days back in the 90's. Definitely is a very old pair of speaker. The speaker is discontinued back in 2009. I like this speaker very much for the high which makes vocal in music very prominent and not ear piercing at the same time. Well being a bookshelf although the lower end is not comparable to floor stander but it does it very well. The condition of speaker is really good given the years this speaker has seen. I got a good offer this pair for RM600. Quite a fair price to pay.

After picking up this pair of speaker , than the next important part is the amplifier. What should be a good amplifier for it. Being a British speaker is also means is quite the warm sounding speaker. Of course the gold metal tweeter is a bit more forwarding. Probably I am thinking of some British amp probably or even Japanese amp which is more neutral. The selection for me is, I wanted an amplifier that has everything in it with DAC, USB, Coaxial, Optical, RCA. Most old school amp will be rule out for sure. Have to be something a little into the millennium to fit the bill. Most newer generation amp with all build in doesn't come cheap and also not many choices as well to fit the budget. After some long searching, decided to get this little amplifier. The Sony UDA-1  USB DAC amplifier. This unit was launch in 2013 and is discontinued back in 2018. This is a shoebox size amplifier. Is has 2 USB input, one in front and one at the back. The DAC can support up to DSD128 and support hi-res as well up to 192khz. The back it has another USB, with coaxial, optical and 1 pair of RCA input. There is also a pair of RCA output as well. The standard speaker binding post can be use with bi-wire or banana plugs. It has a credit card size remote as well which is pretty cool. This little cost me RM1300.

Now the final piece will be the speaker cable. I am keeping in mind that the speaker is kind of forwarding with the metal tweeter and now with the Sony amplifier it will be on the neutral side. I was thinking a little bit of mix in the cable with copper and silver should be nice. I found this used unit of DH Labs T-14 speaker cable. It is copper cable with silver coating to it. I have this similar cable for my home theater setup which I really like the vocal the cable produce which is clear and sharp. The cable is 2.5 meter pair and it cost RM500 for this pair. Is probably quite a bit of spending here. 

With amplifier and the speaker, I can simply hook up a laptop or even my Ipad / Iphone to the USB and I am ready to play some music. The good thing is it can support hi-res which is good for me as I am using Apple Music which recently have launch the hi-res audio. The total cost of all 3 components cost RM2400. Pretty much it is ready to rock and roll. To make things a little more , I have added into the mix a Asus Tinker board S (Single Board Computer) install with Volumio player as a media player which I can use for streaming spotify, apple air play or even listening to internet radio. This little unit cost less than RM500 which will bring my total cost to RM2900. 

Overall, I am very happy with this setup. It fulfilled all I wanted to get it for listening to music with different sources. Probably I can add in CD player in the future. For now it is covering all that is needed. The overall sound quality is pretty awesome. A short recording of the sound. Recording