To our customers and fans:
It is with great sorrow that we announce our founder, Jim Showker, passed away on Friday, March 30th, 2018. He will be dearly missed. Jim’s son, Justin, and the rest of the staff here at Vintage Stereos intend to carry on his work into the future.
We made this page as a dedication to Jim- to hold his many words of wisdom and display some of his other hobbies. Jim had so much knowledge to share about restoring Sansuis and he really cared about helping others who were also enthusiastic about the subject. If you care to dig deep into what he has to say, there’s a lot of incredibly valuable information in here. Check out it out:
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Shop Action
A time capsule of what business was like in the shop back in the day. Not much has changed. Sunday, March 20, 2016 People mention in their emails how much they like this page. Thought we’d do another one. I don’t think we’ve ever had such a diversity of gear in the shop at one…
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Secret Stuff
Some of this is repetitive, but is worth reading through. I’ve done a lot of posting on some audio forums and I’ve just included some of the best posts. From Audiokarma Post March 2009—Secret stuff OK, here it is. This is what you do to bring up a 9001 to best performance. I was going…
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9090 Series
The 9090 series of receivers which includes the 8080 and 7070, along with the db suffix models, is a phenomenal receiver. These were designed and built before the dollar/yen revaluation in 1978-80, and consequently have the same quality parts throughout, like the earlier AU integrated amps, and the QRX 9001 line of Quad Receivers. The…
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Restoration Tips
Here’s a few things we have learned, mostly the hard way, about working on these monsters. If you’re thinking about or are currently in the process of restoring a 9001, we hope you find this post to be helpful. The Dial Cord When you take the front panel apart, you will have to deal with…
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Restoring the 9001
The Sansui QRX was built from late 1976 to 1979. It is the best of the Quadrophonic receivers, and also the most complex, with densely packed electronics and lots of pc boards, over 15 to be exact. There are roughly 174 electrolytic capacitors spread around on all these pc boards. Some are easily removed to…
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Electrolytic Reliability
Real World Electrolytic Reliability And Aging Electrolytic caps are a deep subject. You can find any number of scientific papers on the web written about their use, design, reliability, and so on. They are the only basic electronic part left that has not been improved to the point of virtually lasting forever. They have a…
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FM Follies
If you’re new to this, and really interested, you might want to scroll down and read this from the beginning, starting in 2014. April 23, 2016 This page has really become like a blog. So, I’ve sorta changed the format and will put new updates at the top. The earliest stuff will be toward the…
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The Rare Sansui Project
The Rarest Sansui Project Having a tiny little company that is just about the only place in the country restoring Sansui units, especially QRX’s, to their original glory, has its occasional perks. About 4 months ago I got a call from a nice gentleman in Chicago. He said that he had some Sansui Tube gear…
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Aeroprakt A26 Conversion
Getting the Ukraine Plaine I wanted, An Aeroprakt A26 to A20 conversion Imagine having a light plane designed by a design team from Boeing or Douglas. Do you think it would be a pretty decent design? Well… how about a plane designed by a team from Antonov Design Bureau? That’s the group that designed and…