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Folks,
Here's more information on the Thaedra. For Paul, the sockets at the
top of the pc cards were for monitoring the performance during burn-in
as well as having a series of diagnostic points for servicing if
necessary. You are correct in that there were NO shielded wires used
as it wasn't necessary because of the ALL steel construction. There
are however, some shielded Vampire wires in my upgrade to squeeze out
that last bit of noise performance. Also, the metal wrap (in both
directions) around the transformer is NOT aluminum but rather, pure
MU-METAL. The transformer is what I believe, a work of art, as I am
also a transformer engineer. It is a C-CORE which was machined to a
flatness of ten-thousanths of an inch, unheard of in those days but
necessary because of the MC input. Of course today we have either
torroids or R-Cores (which I used in the Electra) which just weren't
available back in 1975. Yes the correct date of manufacture was 1975
and not 1977.
Not only were the switches sealed, they were also HERMETIC TOO.
Getting the parts for this extravaganza was a real feat. As a matter
of fact, the beautiful and incredibly expensive "Stackpole" switches
are not even available anymore as the company has long since gone out
of business. As far as parts quality then, I chose to use only the
finest parts that I could find --REGARLESS OF PRICE. This meant
precision 1% metal film resistors and polypropylene and polycarbonate
capacitors. This was unheard of in those days.
As far as trying to build something like this today, the cost would be
enormous for the following reasons.
1. The metalwork would cost about 5 times more and with the plating
(due to today's environmental concerns) would be huge. You must
remember that the plating on the Thaedra steel parts was true nickel
over zinc, if I remember correctly. We did not use flash or
nickel-bright.
2. The individual parts cost today such as resistors, capacitors,
semiconductors, etc. are much greater than 25 years ago.
3. The manufacturing overhead is considerably higher today because of
rents, utilities, INSURANCE, etc.
4. Advertising rates are much higher today than 25 years ago
I could go on and on.
My biggest gripe today is the exhorbitant pricing that manufacturers
are getting for gear that has NO FEATURES. No phonos, no tone
controls, limited functional switching, no filters, etc. I think these
guys should be boycotted out of business.Hopefully down the road,
after I make my new amp, I'll be able to make a new preamp but it
won't be cheap. That is in order to do it right AND obviously, it will
have to be significantly better than the original Thaedra. A tall
order even for me.I have however, worked out the basic concept. Anyone
out there got deep pockets?
James Bongiorno