General HIFI > Amplification (Pre/Power)

Radford Reissue

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omodo:
http://www.radfordrevival.co.uk/sta-reissue/

Interesting, transformers wound in UK, but not much other info

STA-15 2750 GBP
STA-20 2800 GBP

data:
Four and a half grand  :o Nice big power transformer.

Mario will love that internal shot  :D

zenelectro:

--- Quote from: data on March 10, 2012, 10:32:54 AM ---Four and a half grand  :o Nice big power transformer.

Mario will love that internal shot  :D

--- End quote ---

For $4k5, I'll have plated through holes on my circuit board please or better still point to point.

Not the best design WRT servicing. The boards have to be removed or tipped up to get access to the
solder joints to replace any components.

Plated through holes would allow components to be easily de soldered / removed without touching the boards.
Additionally they are just plain more robust. Expected on a <$1k Mexican made guitar amp, but on a hi-end product
they should try a bit harder???

Still - they look nice and may well sound great :)

PS cleaned up my post was a bit stroppy :)

vitavoxdude:
Not surprised Terry you had to tone it down  :-X
It looks like a Target's version of a service mans nightmare.  :'(
Cheap looking valve bases, nasty caps and resistors with lots of interconnecting wiring, all a long way from service friendly and traditionly built but the PCB's reduce costs for the manufacture. Despite all this it is still being shirt salesman priced.  Compare this to Far eastern products and it's vastly overpriced.  They are obviously trading on the old name and hoping to attract some rich punters.  They will probably argue that back in the 60's when these were first produced they were equaly priced in terms of currency value and therefor offer good value for money.  Some of us know better.  I also spy that the socket on the back of the amp is not even wired in which means it's a demo model.  The audio game has got to be even tougher in the current climate so I applaud these guys for trying to regenerate a past icon but they really need to get into the real world and go through a redesign, ditch the PCB's and use components that do not make you want to look for a bucket.
V ::)

omodo:
interesting points, but almost predictable ::)

The original was built on a single sided phenolic pcb (ditching the pcb... really??), with no through hole plating, so perhaps the style of construction was chosen to be historically accurate and poor serviceability an inherent compromise



To be fair parts choices cannot be questioned without first listening to it, it could sound great as zenelectro said. The parts may have been selected to keep the original voicing, or not. I don't know this, and I'm pretty sure you don't either, so I would think it's unfair to speculate either way about parts choice, or that it could sound like sh!t (from looking at a photo of all things), in a public medium such as this?

Pricing compared to the far east, well that depends where it is made, if fully assembled in the UK then I would think it's fair? Anyway, it's not far off the price of some locally assembled DACs...... perhaps they too could adopt a far east pricing model?

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