EXPERT Stereosuite

[chunnybh]

Just finished restoring it.

Here are the specifications for this EXPERT Stereosuite
• Stereo “Eighty Seven” Cabinet and stereo amplifiers £87
Two mono block amps based on EL84 output tubes.
• Expert acoustic column- £33 each
Goodmans Triaxiom 1220
• Garrard 301 (1957 cost £25+ £10 tax)

AMP TUBES:
• GZ30
• EL84 2PCS
• ECC82 (12AU7)
• EF86
• Selector switches: ECC83
This was put together after Expert was sold off. Post 1957, could even be as late as 1963. Thornton Heath or 27 Brownlow Road 9.( Not sure which Brownlow location as there are several Brownlow Roads in London- The address is from a stylus case labeled Expert Stylus, unfortunately half of the label is missing)
The cabinetwork is veneered with teak. Oddly the insides looks like solid teak panels. The base board is made of a strong plywood frame mounted on OSB(Needed really to support those silly legs). As for the design, well I just hope it does not come back into vogue again. I remember stuff like this even in the 70’s. Cleaning took a while as it was tacky with nicotine, fortunately the insides were nicotine free so I am assuming it was shoved in a corner, unused for years.
I am going to keep this going for a few months and see if I really like it. If I do, the only improvement I will make is fit a new slate plinth for the turntable.
Renovation work:
• The amps are a simple push pull configuration and originally had Hunts capacitors. They had already been recapped sometime in the 70’s with Phillips (Mustard) caps which are very reliable. By swapping caps, I managed to keep one amp more original than the other. All caps that were out of spec were replaced. A few resistors were replaces. Replaced two EL84 tubes and one EF86.
• The selector switches and pre-amp was full of old cracked red-drop capacitors. This was the most difficult job as I had to dismantle some of the switches to replace the caps. Some of the signal cables were replaced.
• The Garrard 301 turntable was totally dismantled, cleaned, oiled and reassembled. I replaced all the springs with new replacements.
• The SME 3009 series II tonearm was cleaned and reset. It has two headshells with it, one with an Audio Technica AT-5 and a Shure M-95-HE both with vinyl and 78 styli.
• Speakers are Expert acoustic columns fitted with “reflectors”. They house pristine 12” Goodmans Triaxiom 1220.
• The phono preamp is a generic Solid State unit that even after re-capping sounds nasty so I have replaced it with my Cambridge Azur 651P. Originally it might have had a crystal/ceramic head that would not need a preamp, something like a Decca Derium.

Youtube videos: Sounds a lot better in person ofcourse.

http://youtu.be/leVSGRf59Vs

http://youtu.be/_TxHYSP1U5I

http://youtu.be/czi7bfMl9Hc

http://youtu.be/0hydHG3nsmk

http://youtu.be/nAqridhA38Q

[emgcr]

Very well done Chunny---this is a major success and restoration, also one of quite some significance historically. Where else on the planet could you go to see such a set-up ? A few of us have EMG valve grams but Expert is rarer than rare. I can imagine just how many hours have gone into this and what a fine result---sounds wonderful ! Would love to hear it "in the flesh" one day. Superb.

[FloridaClay]

It does look like it was influenced by the fad for Scandinavian design of the period. It was much in evidence here in the States at the time as well. Be that as it may, it is fascinating to see and must be brilliant to hear in person. Great work.

Clay

[Orchorsol]

Fantastic, well done Chunny! What an improbably rare find. I wish I could hear it in the flesh, but the impression through the limitations of Youtube is that it sounds fabulous. You must be very pleased indeed.

[chunnybh]

I was also amazed at finding this in original condition. Apart from a few knocks and aging to the woodwork the components are in pristine condition. Even the amps were clean with no signs of rust to the chassis. The speakers look like they were made yesterday.
Even the cartridges and styli are original to the system. The stylus box is marked, Expert Pickup with the address as 78 Brownlow Road (Tel 1005).
Looking at the dates of all the components, this system must have been put together 1962 at the earliest. This would suggest Expert were still in business up until then.
The one thing that does not tally is the Solid State preamp. This is a one of those cheap generic Japanese designs of the late 60's early 70's (I've seen them branded with different names, this one is branded Eagle Products).
I suspect originally this would have had a passive preamp with simple step-up capacitors.
There is an extra switch next to the main selector unit which threw me for a while but it looks like it is a filter for 78's. Works well.

The more I play this the better it sounds.
Next restore is the EMG DR14. Now that is a rusty mess.

[Steve]

Very good sound, Chunny. Well done on the restoration.

It sort of doesn't bear thinking about but when this was originally assembled the Expert Senior horn gramophone had only been out of commission for some 20-25 years. That's like us reflecting today on high end gear made between the beginning and the middle of the 1990's! I know what you mean about remembering furniture like that. I too hope it doesn't ever "return".

There is an "Expert Stylus" company (nothing to do with Expert Handmade Gramophones, obviously) and I believe it is still going strong today?

[emgcr]

There is an "Expert Stylus" company (nothing to do with Expert Handmade Gramophones, obviously) and I believe it is still going strong today?

Yes, the company is alive and well and can help with most styli.

Wyndham Hodgson
Expert Stylus and Cartridge Co
Omega House
50 Harriotts Lane
Ashtead
Surrey
KT21 2QD
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1372 276604

Email: "[email protected]"

[chunnybh]

It sort of doesn't bear thinking about but when this was originally assembled the Expert Senior horn gramophone had only been out of commission for some 20-25 years. That's like us reflecting today on high end gear made between the beginning and the middle of the 1990's! I know what you mean about remembering furniture like that. I too hope it doesn't ever "return".

Has anything really moved on since the 90's?, or even from the 60's. Blue-ray is it and that is not really catching on as most people don't want to change format yet again, never mind the over priced retail prices. I personally thing it rules, but only when it has been mixed by someone who knows what they are doing. I have two different mixes of the same Pink Floyd B-ray and the one stereo version played through the Stereosuite via a blue-ray player still sounds better than the 5.1 surround sound version. Then again the 1973 quadraphonic version on vinyl beats them all. What I am saying is the Stereosuite with it's EL84 based amps and the Garrard 301 turntable still out performs most modern sound systems. A 78 played on the Stereosuite sounds amazing but it also highlights the surface noise, where as on an Expert Senior, well that's simply magic. Age does not seem to matter.

Expert Stylus Co, I had a few Moving Coil cartridges re-tipped by them a while ago, good to hear they are still around. If I remember correctly they charged me a small fortune for a re-tip and one with a new cantilever. Since then, I have been grafting cantilevers from cheap styli with surprisingly good results.

Here is a picture of the Expert Pickup stylus box with the Brownlow address.

[Orchorsol]

These needles came with an Expert tonearm.

[Steve]

Has anything really moved on since the 90's?, or even from the 60's. Blue-ray is it and that is not really catching on as most people don't want to change format yet again, never mind the over priced retail prices. I personally thing it rules, but only when it has been mixed by someone who knows what they are doing. I have two different mixes of the same Pink Floyd B-ray and the one stereo version played through the Stereosuite via a blue-ray player still sounds better than the 5.1 surround sound version. Then again the 1973 quadraphonic version on vinyl beats them all. What I am saying is the Stereosuite with it's EL84 based amps and the Garrard 301 turntable still out performs most modern sound systems

I'd have to respectfully disagree. Of course a lot of things have moved on quite incredibly since the 1990's and greatly so since the 1960's / 70's! Turntables are back in development as we speak and some modern designs can extract far more information and are far more musical than even some of the famed decks of the past 40 years: Townsend Rock Reference, Linn LP12, Michell Gyrodec. No lordly old Garrard can honestly begin to compete with any of these "vintage" decks, let alone the likes of these babies:

VPI Classic 3
Oracle Delphi Mk VI
Hanss Acoustics T-30
Kuzma Stabi XL
Bergmann Audio Sindre
Origin Live Sovereign

There are quite probably several hundred "high end" turntables out there being manufactured (some hand-made!) by enthusiasts for vinyl LP's. Admittedly some come with an eye-watering price tag - £20,000 anybody? The point is though that sound reproduction from vinyl records has come a long way and is still improving as we speak.

As for digital, that too has come along leaps and bounds since the late 1980's. Even though the resolution has stayed at Philips Redbook standard for 'CD' ie. 16 bit / 44.1kHz, the Digital to Analogue convertor technology has improved 20 fold. The drive or "transport" mechanisms have also improved. A modestly priced CD player from a respected hi-fi brand today will almost certainly outperform a "top end" CD player from 25 years ago. We also went from mastering at 8 bit to 16 to 20 to 24 bits. We've had multi-bit, single bit (Bitstream), upsampling, multi-DAC's, ring DAC's and now "Hi-Res" 24 bit / 192 kHz HD remastering / DSD.

It isn't simply convertors, transports and mastering technologies that have improved though. Research and development has proven that chassis damping, reduction of jitter, Class A power supplies and twin transformer topology among other things contribute to the overall improvement in sound quality from Redbook.

As for DVD technology we all know it is "old hat" already as Blu-Ray is definitely better for sound and pictures. DVD-Audio never really got out of the starting blocks but DVD-Video has already become one of the most successful home entertainment inventions of all time. However, not many people are willing to "double-dip" with films in another format. I'm one of those people and who can blame me? Blu-Ray still cannot offer anywhere near to the wide range of films that the DVD format has on offer. It simply failed to catch on after its (premature in my opinion) launch in 2007. However there are a handful of manufacturers of audio/visual equipment still producing very high quality DVD players with up-scaling technology to permit standard DVD resolution to be viewed on HD TV sets. Of course, the vast majority of TV's today do already upscale anyway. It's simply a question of whether the DVD player's video board is superior to that of the TV's.

I've just purchased such a DVD player from a giant of the US High-End audio market. It does indeed render a well respected Sony Bravia up-scaling engine fed by a 14 year old DVD player via RGB scart somewhat redundant. The CD playing element utilises the same DAC's and transport as the DVD(ROM)- something that the Hi-Fi world might have poured scorn upon only 10 years ago due to the suspicion that cross channel interference (not the EU variety) would adversely affect the analogue audio stages. However this specific DVD player is an ingeniously designed modular unit that literally has the video element as an entirely separate board that was added to provide DVD video playback to a "CD player" that was in reality just a DVD player without pictures! Sneaky or clever? Whatever the marketing idea was behind it, it certainly works brilliantly to convert my DVD films to near HD quality whilst the audio only CD element has even beaten my Leema Antila IIS Eco CD player to the punch. So technology can improve over time. It's all about R & D, modern and synthetic materials, careful component refinements and most probably of all, the "collective collaboration" of all those companies working in this field. By collaboration we are really referring to the modern art of watching what competitors are doing and learning from their developments / mistakes via internet/fora/customer/dealer feedback etc.

You mention multi-channel sound and Blu-Ray audio but in a similar way to the Quadrophonic craze of the early 1970's, surround sound for music reproduction is never going to catch on in a serious and widespread way. Most consumers (note, not "listeners") do not even bother to listen to music in true stereo anyway. Those listeners who do buy music and play it back on decent equipment do appear to still prefer good old fashioned stereo to anything else. Crikey, thanks to yet another "revolution" by The Beatles, even humble one channel mono has made a serious comeback! So many artists from the 1960's and 70's have followed suit with reissues of their core output "Remastered in glorious mono" no doubt to boost their considerably reduced pension pots.

In one sense what we wish to hear might not have changed much over the past 30-40 years but the capability of the equipment to permit us to get ever closer to the master tape, has definitely increased in the process. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING made before 2010 can begin to compete in either the analogue or digital chains with some of the best equipment manufactured today. It's simply not possible. Of course to fully appreciate this fact you probably need to be a consumer with an unlimited budget as what we are saying is that for no-holds barred very best uncompromised by market / budget constraints equipment, the very best today beats the very best from yesterday.