MrSpeedy
East Midlands
www.vintagediesels.co.uk
Posts: 4,789
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Sept 18, 2013 22:34:24 GMT
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Back in late 70s/early 80's the Pioneer KEX73 was a brilliant component unit. I don't remember anything as good back in the day I sold the last one I had back in 89 when I bought a brand new KEX900 Centrate which I still have today I would love to bring this into the 21st century somehow, with a proper ipod connection etc! One of those KEX73s' has just sold on Ebay. Finished only a couple of days ago and went for £275!! Did look nice tho
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g40jon
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,569
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Sept 18, 2013 22:42:17 GMT
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If you have really deep pockets there is this company which will completely gut your retro radio and fit all new internals, so essentially you will have a modern unit, with oe looks www.tadpoleradios.co.uk/As others have said there were a few high end radios available from the late 70s onwards, but they do fetch a premium for obvious reasons. With the unit you have, the main issue will be that you only have a mono channel, so it will be comprimised from the start and there is no way to really get around it. Yeah you could probably make a small curcuit board to give you a 2 channel rca out, but it would still be mono. I'd be inclined to either find a similar style head-unit with at least stereo output and go from there or spend the big bucks and get it gutted and fitted with modern internals. EQs were popular back in the 70s and 80s, many included a booster amp and some even had line outs, so it would at least bring you closer to having modern functionality. Getting well matched speakers to the power output you have will work wonders for sq. If you only have a few watts to play with, buying power hungry, low sensitivity speakers won't help one bit. I have a few sets of period shelf speakers and regular door speakers, none of them are all that powerfull(all around 10 to 20 watts rms), but they all sound very respectable off of low power output radios and are capable of decent volume too. All depends how far you want to take things
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Sept 19, 2013 0:55:53 GMT
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There was never any question of using the original radio. Thats why i was asking in the first place.
I don't need to use vintage speakers when new speakers are so abundant and hidden behind grilles anyway.
Best bet so far is a line out.
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craig1010cc
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,998
Club RR Member Number: 35
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Sept 19, 2013 7:04:47 GMT
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If you have really deep pockets there is this company which will completely gut your retro radio and fit all new internals, so essentially you will have a modern unit, with oe looks www.tadpoleradios.co.uk/Ohhh, thats a very nice site, would love one of their ones. Is a good source of inspiration of what headunit to look for
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g40jon
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,569
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Sept 19, 2013 7:31:21 GMT
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With the radio, you may think that the £365 that tadpole radios charge for their conversion service is pricey, but when high end period equipment still command prices of over £200 for relatively low power compared with todays modern on-board amplifier, I personally think it makes sense to go for the conversion, if high end is what you are looking for. You either go high end throughout the whole system, or not at all, as the system will only be as good as its weakest part. Your kinda missing the point on the speaker front. I am not saying you should buy vintage speakers. What I am saying is thst you need to match your speakers to the input power they will be recieving. e.g. Say you had an stereo putting out 10 watts rms per channel and hooked it up to a set of high end component speakers rated at 50 watts rms and a sensitivity of 85db@1 meter and then compared it with the same radio powering some middle of the road 10 watt rms speakers with a similar frequency responce and a sensitivity of 95db@ 1 metre, the result would be that the cheaper speakers would cream the high end speakers on volume output and would give as good sound quality as you could expect running off an old head-unit. Depending on how your line in was added, you could possibly get a stereo line out, as the guy who modded your radio (if they have done it using the best method) will have converted your stereo input to summed mono using either a resister cicuit or a more sophisticated opamp circuit. You could tap off from this point and essentially bypass your radio, but this would mean your only volume control would be via the ipod, so you'd be better off just connecting your ipod direct to your external amp and save the hassle. If you could live with mono, you could add a line out from your current radio after the volume control, but prior to the amp stage which would give you you low level rca output, hook it up to an rca line driver, so you could split it to give multiple mono channels whilst maintaining signal strength. You could use a passive splitter, but this will drop the signal stregth the more you split it and thus reduce audio quality. You could apply this to a stereo radio too and if you only required left and right rca out you wouldn't need to split or add a line driver.
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Sept 19, 2013 17:06:57 GMT
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Back in late 70s/early 80's the Pioneer KEX73 was a brilliant component unit. I don't remember anything as good back in the day I sold the last one I had back in 89 when I bought a brand new KEX900 Centrate which I still have today I would love to bring this into the 21st century somehow, with a proper ipod connection etc! One of those KEX73s' has just sold on Ebay. Finished only a couple of days ago and went for £275!! Did look nice tho That doesn't surprise me, TBH the 73 was probably a better unit than the 900 but had to upgrade at the time as the 900 was king! I wouldn't mind another 73 for my MK2 Escort, but at £275 it will have to stay on the wish list.
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bgt
Part of things
Posts: 151
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Sept 19, 2013 19:15:32 GMT
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Hey wow, I actually have a KEX73 in my car (with a very small Pioneer amp from the same period), my dad had it from when he had it in his Mk1 Golf GTI. I had no idea it was worth that! I'm suddenly really glad I got it back from the guy who bought my old Corolla now!
I have it hooked up to a pair of modern Pioneer 5.25"s. Decent sound. I run it with an aux cable to one of those magic cassette tapes (which fouls the quality a bit).
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Sept 19, 2013 19:31:43 GMT
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Hey wow, I actually have a KEX73 in my car (with a very small Pioneer amp from the same period), my dad had it from when he had it in his Mk1 Golf GTI. I had no idea it was worth that! I'm suddenly really glad I got it back from the guy who bought my old Corolla now! I have it hooked up to a pair of modern Pioneer 5.25"s. Decent sound. I run it with an aux cable to one of those magic cassette tapes (which fouls the quality a bit). Awesome. The sound quality out of those was/is excellent. You can hook that up to the later Pioneer component amps which were available to 2x200w, but you will need a DIN cable adapter for each channel. Back in the day the GM2 & GM4 was the most popular, but this GM120 (2x60w) will fit directly onto your 73 www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PIONEER-VINTAGE-CAR-STEREO-1980-s-COMPONENT-AMP-GM120-GRAPHIC-EQUALISER-CD5-/111169103572?pt=UK_In_Car_Technology&hash=item19e231e6d4
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bgt
Part of things
Posts: 151
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Sept 19, 2013 20:03:11 GMT
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Nice, thanks for the advice! IIRC the amp is a GM43, so no graphic equalizer. My dad did have a GM120 in his GTI, pity he didn't keep it!
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Sept 19, 2013 20:28:25 GMT
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Nice, thanks for the advice! IIRC the amp is a GM43, so no graphic equalizer. My dad did have a GM120 in his GTI, pity he didn't keep it! Just like the cars but you cant keep them all I still have some vintage Pioneer stuff in my loft (not 100% on what I have exactly), but I wish I had kept it all
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Mar 18, 2017 22:03:18 GMT
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When i used to be a regular on talk audio alot of the top end installs used Mckintosh head units. Quite 80's style and regarded by many to be the best head unit for SQ, even now. But anything retro is non removeable, so always at risk of getting pinched. Personally i would go with the retro Becker, but last i heard was that there was no longer a UK distributor.
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Mar 19, 2017 19:08:54 GMT
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I'd love a marantz, but the only one for sale is on ebay USA and its $299, anything for under a tonne at all? Can't see any headunit weighing anywhere near a Tonne, most are a few kg.
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Mar 19, 2017 22:15:42 GMT
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I'd love a marantz, but the only one for sale is on ebay USA and its $299, anything for under a tonne at all? Can't see any headunit weighing anywhere near a Tonne, most are a few kg. You're replying to a thread that is nearly four years old? A ton refers to slang regarding money to the value of £100.
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Mar 19, 2017 22:34:26 GMT
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Can't see any headunit weighing anywhere near a Tonne, most are a few kg. You're replying to a thread that is nearly four years old? A ton refers to slang regarding money to the value of £100. And a Tonne is a unit of weight. And I was replying to a thread that was resurrected by someone else.
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Mar 23, 2017 23:48:20 GMT
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You're replying to a thread that is nearly four years old? A ton refers to slang regarding money to the value of £100. And a Tonne is a unit of weight. And I was replying to a thread that was resurrected by someone else. You'll have to forgive my mis-spelling as a 19 year old, I'm sure you'll get over it.
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Mar 24, 2017 21:16:13 GMT
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And a Tonne is a unit of weight. And I was replying to a thread that was resurrected by someone else. You'll have to forgive my mis-spelling as a 19 year old, I'm sure you'll get over it. That's okay I work with mechanics so I'm used to it.
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