Brett, if your Sansui is stock and has had no maintenance that you know of, it very well could need a good cleaning and alignment. They are coming up on 30 years old and electrolytic caps in the power supply and elsewhere are really only reliable for 15 years, less for crappy brands. The variable capacitor used as a tuner has adjacent plates with air dielectric. If the plates get dusty the capacitance gets screwy, so they get cleaned too. Your volume pot on the tuner should be cleaned too. Analog FM tuners also require a periodic alignment. I have no idea what an alignment is, but it allows the tuner to lock in on stations much better. You can probably find a local tech who can clean it, or you can do that yourself with Caig products (ask someone you trust online how to do it.) Techs with equipment to do FM alignment are getting more rare nowadays. If you go to fmtunerinfo.com there is a list of other very qualified techs around the country. Alex Lok in Raleigh (theanalogstore.com) is another good tuner guy, has all the equipment, he is a friend of mine, but I used Ken because he is a Sansui expert, rebuilding 5-10 of them per month! I think Ken's work set me back about $400, quite worth it to me.
The stock output RCA connectors on the Sansui are nickel or something not so great. After 30 years the crud could be quite serious. Cleaning them and the inside of the IC connectors that have been connected to them might give you a noticeable improvement. You can use Caig or just q tip (or paper towel if it needs some scrubbing) with rubbing alcohol.
I was thinking last night
that the Bolder ICs are likely to be
very low capacitance because Wayne's SB mod removes the output gain stage so output current is a known issue. He would not recommend a IC cable that would make the situation worse. I also forgot to say that resistance is usually not an issue with any quality copper conductor IC wire unless the wire ga is too small for the load, or the length is very long, or some combination of both. Any 1 meter cables designed by reputable company will have neglible resistance. Lamp cord uses diluted, recycled copper which is anything but pure. Decent ICs and speaker cable are a great investment, doesn't have to be expensive, just not "AV cables" from Target. Of course expensive cables are often more refined (but not always- buyer beware)
Sometimes you will hear the phrase "PRAT" meaning Pace, Rhythm, and Tempo. It is the feeling of rhythmical drive that you get when listening to music with a beat. Jim's description is characteristically more sophisticated and excellent.
You will know it when you hear it, it is more of a feeling than a sound, your body wants to move with the music. It is a subtlety that will become more obvious as your listening experience and system performance increase. A good preamp and a good source (strong output stage
) are key to this, as well as solid, clean 60-200Hz bass response from speakers and room acoustics. A carpet on the floor will help reduce floor reflections a little which can smear or null the bass at those frequencies and cause them to sound weaker, losing prat.
Seeya!
Rich
