Musi-techni.com…A personal page about music and technique of music
At the time I am writing these lines, “vintage” sound equipment are the fad. Yes, you read me right; it is a fad! The X, Y and Z generations are discovering music and the equipment that baby boomer where using to listen to their music when they were younger.
To be more precise, I am talking about hifi equipment made from the 70’s to the early 90’s. Often these equipment being produce by Japanese manufacturers.
I am always surprise (not a good surprise) to discover how much some of them are ready to spend to buy some vintage stuff that, according to old guys like me, are not worth the price they pay! On some Facebook’s discussions group, forty years old equipment are sold double what they did cost at the time they were new! It does not stop there, some of these equipment needs to be brought to their young performance (by changing electronic parts like condenser and other parts which are not cheap either)!
For the same amount of money, these people could buy a brand new and more quality equipment.
I have to mention some selling equipment that are about ten years old and describing them as “vintage”…..
This fad, like all the fad that happened anytime, will one day stop. Then people are going to try to sell those vintage equipment trying to get back a bit of their investment without success. All those equipment will go back to the garage, basement and attic.
I know about this, because I have been buying audio equipment all my life. The average age of my equipment is around 22 years old. (My oldest equipment is 44 years old and my newest about a year old).
In the near future, I will put up a more precise article about purchasing these type of equipment (maybe it’s already done!).
As an example, I will use house. Some people buys house that have more or less damage, fix them (often by hiding these problems under a coat of fresh paint) and sell these house for profit. They call this a “flip”.
Some people do the exact same thing with audio equipment. It could be an amplifier with burned output that is fix with non-original cheap replacement transistors. Those type of fix will never bring the specs of an amplifier even close to the original specs when the amplifier was new. Worse; in some case, the amplifier will not work for long and burn the outputs again! Audio recorder (Reel to reel and all kind of cassettes) have belts and rubber parts that have to be replaced because of age. The only available parts now are cheap replacement! Speakers suffer from the same problems. Cones, with age, become dry and breaks. Suspension of speakers are the worst in this aspect. The only solution is to “recone” the speaker with a replacement cone. But these replacement cones must be available!
I am the first one to understand that craze. I have it since my teens, almost fifty years ago. But there are good brand new equipment out there form the same price (without falling in the traps of the crazy extreme hifi stuff!). In the next article, I will give you tricks to buy vintage audio stuff.
Prudence is the key word when you buy vintage equipment.
Pierre
© musi-techni.com 2025