Fisher 500C

November 26, 200916 yr

Anyone have any opinions on this vintage receiver as both a headphone amp and a speaker amp? Seems extremely popular even today and people say it mates well with some ESLs like Quads. Problem is it needs an assload of tubes and the p2p rat's nest wiring scares me.

November 26, 200916 yr

great all the way around if and only if you find one that has been recently gone over and repaired. Any 40 year old tube amp should need some sort of repair/refresh

November 26, 200916 yr

Author

That's good to know, thanks. Definitely a good idea to go through and re-cap everything before something blows up. I'm thinking about just disconnecting/removing any circuits I won't need like the tuner and tone controls so I won't need to deal with as many tubes... I hope that works. How much would you say a well-functioning example goes for?

November 26, 200916 yr

$350 to $700 and worth every penny

November 26, 200916 yr

Anyone have any opinions on this vintage receiver as both a headphone amp and a speaker amp?

I seriously love mine. :cool:

Enough to covet one of these beauties too.

Definitely a good idea to go through and re-cap everything before something blows up. I'm thinking about just disconnecting/removing any circuits I won't need like the tuner and tone controls so I won't need to deal with as many tubes.

Yeah, any Fisher of that vintage really should be looked at before any serious use as I found out.

I'd been procrastinating about getting it looked at as I'd been having too much fun listening to it. Some caps blew in mine and had to be replaced. :eek: :palm:

She's back from the tech now and working but I recently got one of those cap boards from Triode and having my local tech build it up and install it.

It does seem a shame to disable the tone controls and tuner just to save on tubes.

I don't really use the tuner section on mine as I live in a remote area with little in the way of FM radio stations. The couple of stations I do get show it to be a very capable tuner.

I do use the tone controls however and they are a very welcome feature.

I should add that my experience is mainly as a headphone amp.

I haven't really got any speakers on hand to do it justice but I would really welcome some knowledgeable recommendations that go low and fill a small to medium sized room.

Everything I read in the Stereophile article turned out to be more or less true.

I've been liking mine a lot. :rolleyes:

November 27, 200916 yr

Author

Seems the output impedance is pretty high and not very consistent which is not good for speakers. Also THD is pretty high in comparison to today's amps but not crazy high. I guess I'll have to just take a listen and a look at the beast myself, if possible.

Veneering on vintage receivers may be old school but you're right, it looks better than the BPCs of today.

December 16, 200916 yr

These old tube amps kill a modern SS amp for sound quality, IMO. Moreover, most of the new production tube amps cant match the iron quality of these old amps either. I have some rebuilt Organ amps that are superb.

JWN Handmade Vacuum Tube Amplifiers - Home

The amps with the EC on the front of the model are mine. One is an 807 PPP = push/ pull pentode and the other is a 6BQ5 PPP.

I am using them to drive these DIY speakers assembled from a Parts Express Tri Trix recession buster kit ($200). These transmission line floorstanders are fantastic and I have at most $550 in the complete cost .... including shipping from South Dakota which was around $100. The monitor version built from the same driver kit ($119) isnt far behind and the monitor was about $385 total including shipping from SD. These were prebuilt so I got an even better deal. If any of you guys want the speaker builders name let me know. He is the speaker building equivalent of dBel84's headamps. Headphones have become a distant memory.