Date: 01/25/90 12:22:28 EST
From: #SBDORS%WMMVS.BITNET@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU
Subject: Grado and Fisher

On cheap cartridges:
   The bottom of the line Grado is sometimes an excellent cartridge.
Although even the best of them have tracking problems with high
frequency stuff, this isn't that major a problem even with rock stuff
if you are careful to pick the things correctly.  With classical
music where there isn't as much processing involved, they sound
amazingly clean and lifelike.  For $20 it's the best investment
you can make; I bought three for the radio station and two of them
were excellent (one of them had severe mistracking problems on
our high frequency distortion test record).  I like it.  Arguably
it's in the same class as the V-15VMR, and it's much better than my
Stanton 681EEE.  Though I have not tried the high-end Grado
cartridges I am going to when I get my next paycheck.

On old Fisher gear:  Avery Fisher was one of the founders of the
high-fidelity field.  His 1930's radio/turntable is certainly far
above anything his company is manufacturing now.  The tube stuff
Fisher made in the 60's was excellent, and the early transistor
stuff wasn't all that bad.  My father still has his 700T transistor
receiver (and yes, the output stage is flat out to about 1 MHz).
The local theatre here in Williamsburg has a Fisher tube power amp
driving the main speakers (Altec VOTT's).  Fisher ruined a good
concert hall, but that's another story.  In any case, The Fisher
was some of the best stereo gear around, then the company got
bought out by the Japanese when Avery Fisher died and now they
make equipment that I wouldn't even want in my parts bin.  If you
have an old Fisher tuner, keep it.  Especially if it's one of the
ones with the nuvistorized front end.  The nuvistors tend to
become gassy over the years, but with replacement these are nice
hot tuners that with good antennae will get a clean signal off
of anything.
--scott
   who finally got his Citation IIIx tuner aligned, and is disappointed
 
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 90 23:02:03 
From: rutgers!intelhf.hf.intel.com!qiclab!al@uwm.UUCP (Al Peterman)
Subject: Re: Fisher Tube Gear

In article <2065@uwm.edu> slinger@NADC.ARPA (J. Slinger) writes:
>
>	I recently moved into a new house and much of my stereo buying
>has been put on hold lately. However, in the house is an old tube stereo
>that is mostly unused and quite dusty. The tuner and amp/preamp is made by
>Fisher or "The Fisher" as they call it. I dusted the tuner off and tried it
>out. Sounds good. How good was this old stuff, anyone know ? The tuner is a
>FM-50-B if that rings a bell. I know the later Fisher stuff is really awful.

In the "good old days" of tube gear (pre 1965) there were 5 major American
manufacturers.  They all produced good gear, but some were better than others.
In rough order it would be McIntosh, Marantz, Fisher, Scott and Harmon Kardon.
The Fisher gear was engineered and built in New York.  Almost any of this tube
stuff was well built, and despite terrible specifications by today's
standards, sound rather good.  Some of the best of this tube gear has become
collectible and demands very high prices (your FM-50B is not one of them) but
even the non-valuable can be very pleasant to listen to.  

The problem with later Fisher (and Scott, Marantz and some HK) is that the
Japanese companies decided to buy "respectability" by purchasing these
companies and then marketing junk under the old American companies names.
Fisher was bought by Sanyo, and the result is Sanyo gear with the Fisher name.
Marantz was bought by Superscope, and I'm not sure exactly who bought Scott
and Sherwood but they are also now run-of-the-mill Japanese gear. Harmon Kardon
was bought by Beatrice Foods (along with JBL) in the 70's.  They made some
rather poor stuff for quite a while, but recently have gone back to "upper-
mid" gear, that they advertise as high end.

I'm not sure this belongs in high-end audio, but then again it ain't rack
stuff...

-- 
Alan L. Peterman                                   (503)-684-1984 hm
                     Airborne N33291              Cessna Cardinal RG
                     Net   !tektronix!(psueaa,nosun,ogcse)!qiclab!al