Woo hoo! Telefunken V76 score!! (pics inside)

[Underthebigtree]

To confirm what's been said here, Oliver told me that the first tube stage is the most important - that's the one to put the 804s into. As one of my units is loaded with tubes and the other is empty, that's what I'll do.

Good to know about the choke not making a huge difference. The "bad" one is missing 1 choke and the other appears to be bypassed. Someone also did a helluva hatchet job putting new caps in.

Much as I'm a DIY'er, I'm now toying with sending my babies to Oliver. He will match 'em up, replace the 220V PS with 120V, and make them sound essentially the same as they did the day they rolled out of the factory, and will put a 5 year warranty on the whole thing to boot. I've heard nothing but good things about his work, and I can spend that time on one of my other DIY projects. I think these are such noble, wonderful creatures, that they deserve the best treatment around.

Merry Xmas,

Nick

 

[CJ]

Man, you north county guys have all the loot!
Whats the Ollinator gonna chrge you?

On the choke, that amp was tweaked for years and years. They tried every little thing to try and improve it. The V72 was probably rev'ed for about 40 years! Thats a lot of tweaking time. So it was the OCB nature of the white coats that made them add that choke.

 

[Underthebigtree]

Ollie charges $450 per to take a unit, working or not, up to original working condition with a 5 year warranty.

For my butchered unit, that sounds good. For the one in really clean shape, it seems high. But it seems worth it to get them both to run off 120V, and to match them up so that I can have a high degree of confidence in using them for stereo recording tasks.

As to how I'm going to pay for it, the real estate prices here in Marin county are really low - relative to downtown Tokyo or maybe 5th Ave in NYC. And the rest of the cost of living is equally ghastly. Thus, I'll do what every red-blooded audio geek does to supplement his habit - sell other gear I'm no longer using. In this case, a Symetrix stereo parametric EQ (excellent for room tuning), and a lunchboxy thing with a pair of Auditronics 110's.