Vintage Oasis Turntable and the Pantera

Fascinating.

Thanks for sharing.

Larry

In the trunk and going home..

November 1978 Playboy magazine, even bought a copy off eBay

Fascinating, I love vintage HIFI. Started restoration of a Nakamichi 1000. Thanks for sharing. Also, got a monster Pioneer SX-1250.

Vinyl has been ticking up for the past 8 years. Now it's really starting cook, I heard they are repoping albums and "we buy old records" ads are showing up....
That is the wildest turntable I have ever seen, has a mid century danish teak vibe... I dig it, I'm a fan.Very Nice...

Lyall,
Very cool turntable!
Haven't heard mention of that TT since ....
I own a small home audio business and have been involved in audio forever. We manufacture hybrid amplifiers and dipole speakers. We also import speakers from Europe. I always enjoy rare and unusual audio gear. Your TT is certainly both. When not in the garage I'm in my dedicated audio room spinning vinyl.
www.arionaudio.com
www.analysisaudiousa.com
If I can help you with anything audio please give me a call 980-237-1988
Mike

While we are on the topic, who has a good sound system in their garage to listen to while wrenching?

Thanks guys, had to share since there's Pantera content & I knew there'd be audio fans of new or old equipment here. And Racecar Mike is in the business!

Fun restoration project and the designer has been very interested and helpful. His shop is located at Sears Point Raceway near the pit exit and he does electric motor work for Tesla. He began work on his Saturn TT after fire destroyed everything related to the Oasis.

I'm currently testing LED lighting while temporarily setup on my subwoofer... which I don't run in two channel mode.

The designer, David Gillespie has built a couple of these Turn Table stands for his close pals using a pair of Tesla 1k hp motor cases. This is his with the Saturn on top.

quote:

Originally posted by JTpantera:
While we are on the topic, who has a good sound system in their garage to listen to while wrenching?

I considered setting the Oasis up in my garage since I spend a LOT of time wrenching. I run an older Onkyo 2 channel receiver that drives my 3D Acoustics 3D6-3D10B Satellite / Subwoofer setup I bought new in 1981. First of the Sat/Sub systems before M&K took over then ruined by Bose

The Oasis played thru these for a few years before I moved on.

I put my Denon 4810ci in my shop with 2 Polk Rti12 speakers and a Velodyne DLS-R subwoofer. I had my Harmon Kardon turn table and Sony CD player hooked up as well. I also power my deck speakers with the Denon, 2 Niles OS6.3 outdoor speaker with a Polk Atrium 10 outdoor subwoofer. However, I got tired of having to stop what i was doing or come down off the deck to change vinyl or CD's. So I retired those 2 units and added a Denon Heos pre-amp. The Heos unit connects to my WiFi and I can play all my music that is stored on my computer plus several music steaming services and internet radio. The best thing is a can control it all from my phone.

Deck with Niles OS6.3 speakers and Polk Atrium 10 subwoofer.

The Denon gives my plenty of punch to fill up my shop and more.

Nice TT. Way better than my old Yamaha direct drive TT. Always enjoyed the pure sound out of LPs versus the digitized audio of the modern era. It's nice that LPs are coming back now that more people are realizing it, especially those that were raised on digitized audio recordings.

My garage has been finished for about two years now and no stereo yet. I guess it's time to fix that before 5715 gets back from the body shop.

There are several companies that have purchased old vinyl presses and have refurbished / modernized them. They sell many re-releases and new recordings. Over the last few years there has been much growth in vinyl sales. There are more high end TTs, arms and cartridges available today than in the past and prices are from modest to outrages. When we show our gear at trade shows we mostly spin vinyl.

quote:

Originally posted by JTpantera:
While we are on the topic, who has a good sound system in their garage to listen to while wrenching?

I had these Plasmatronics in my garage ... which may be the best place to locate speakers that require helium tanks to operate!

Cool reading about other Pantera owner's audio projects, and not surprised to learn some of these are a bit out of the 'mainstream'!

quote:

Plasmatronics

Dave How did you come to own that unique speaker?

Do those Plasmatronic speakers work? Throughout the years there have been several attempts to manufacture plasma drivers.

I heard these at Absolute Audio in So Calif in 1979. At the time there was nothing that sounded like them, at any price.

I came to own that very same pair some years later and planned to couple them to a set of Hartley 24" woofers (from the Mark Levinson HQD reference speakers).

Have since sold the Plasmas to a new happy owner but still have the Hartleys.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn the designer, Dr. Hill, drove around in a Pantera. He seemed just a tad ... eccentric ... splitting his time (as I recall) between laser weapons and speaker design.

And another side note on the connection with cars - Mark Levinson is now sponsoring a car in the IMSA GT Daytona class.

quote:

Originally posted by JTpantera:

While we are on the topic, who has a good sound system in their garage to listen to while wrenching?

Not a garage system, I haven't had a garage since 2009. But I have always been a nut for recorded sound. It is seldom that we turn a topic in that direction, but I don't think I've ever missed a chance to share when a topic does. I've got 3 pictures to share. (BTW my last garage system had Magnepan speakers powered by a 1970s vintage Phase Linear 400 power amp).

Debbie owns the living room system. My former living room system has been relegated to the bed room, its full of history, its like a museum piece, something I share with our grand kids ... "this is how they did it in the old days". That sort of thing. I also sleep to music via this system from time to time. Forgive the mess, I am working on a matching cherry wood storage system for the LPs, CDs, and DVD's. Rome wasn't built in a day.

This picture is actually 2 pictures I've patched together. Our bedroom in the condo isn't that large, impossible to stand back and take one picture of the whole wall. Opposite the foot of our bed is a pair of the original Quad Electrostatic Loudspeakers, designed in 1957. They are called ESL 57's for that reason. They are also known as Walker's wonders, because they were designed by a Brit named George Walker. The pair I own were manufactured in 1963, they've never been rebuilt and they're still working wonderfully. When you listen to music through them you forget about the speakers, you forget about the recording, and you loose yourself in the performance. There has never been any other speaker that involves a person in the performance like the Quads. They are the Q in the HQD system mentioned by Dave K. Dave, with the right amps they don't need the "H" (Hartley woofers) and they never needed the "D" (Decca tweeters). They can't play ultra-loud in a large room, but they are plenty loud for a small room.

Below each speaker is a Quad II-Forty single channel vacuum tube amplifier. Each amp is rated 40 watts via a pair of KT88 vacuum tubes. They were the first amps I found that delivered solid bass response with the quad speakers, before I found these amps I used subwoofers with the Quads to fill-in the bass frequencies. The subs haven't been needed since I purchased those amps!

The second picture is the front end of the system. Its stuffed into the night stand on my side of the bed.

Top to bottom:

A turntable system I'll detail with the third picture.

A McIntosh C504 preamp, which has the best sounding phono section of any McIntosh preamp.

A dbx model 164 stereo dynamic range compressor, known as a 1 knob squeezer. Essential for late night listening in a condo or apartment situation.

A McIntosh MCD7008 CD changer.

The phono system is admittedly not as wild looking as the Oasis system. It consists of a Luxman direct drive turntable, its very heavy, built like a tank, older than my Pantera, never needed any repair. I got tired of European belt drive turntables, this direct drive unit has been with me ever since. This particular Japanese turntable was one of Luxman's earliest turntables, originally designed for a British SME tone arm, but I retro-fitted it with an Audio Quest PT9 tone arm (manufactured by Jelco of Japan) in the early 1980s. The phono cartridge is also Japanese, a Sumiko "Talisman model A" moving coil cartridge feeding signals to the preamp via a Carver Corporation moving coil transformer. The transformer is also of 1980s vintage, but made in the US. The "model A" Sumiko cartridge was chosen because it is equipped with an elliptical stylus which is less finicky about vertical tracking angle than other stylus designs. Total nerd stuff.

I would like to install a shelf above the night stand to display my 1983 vintage "flagship" Magnavox FD1000SL CD player, but so far Debbie has put her foot down. The little CD player is as heavy as a Cleveland cylinder head. The robust CD transport, designed in 1983, will play recordable CDs! This is the CD player purchased for executives at CBS Records early in 1983 as the CBS Corporation moved ahead into compact disc manufacturing and marketing. It was also the first CD player employed in the listening studios of CBS Laboratories ... and was the listening standard for high end CD producers for a couple of decades. Its kinda cool, another museum piece ... like the owner.

Nice stories George...

Some great setups here and much like the Pantera, far from mainstream.

Fantastic that you are sharing your system with your grandkids George. Vintage setups are as close as we get to time travel.

alasorsa, very nice. A sub is almost a requirement in a big garage.

davek, those Plasmatronics are wild!

I have my originally bought in 1971, semi-exotic Marantz 6300 turntable (and my Marantz cassette deck with pan pots) sitting in my office not hooked up for years. I've wanted to set it up for so long, but all sorts of other projects seem to always take precedence. I still have my Kenwood integrated amplifier and matching Kenwood tuner, all in excellent condition along with 3 pairs of JBL 100 speakers. It's sort of funny how these older components have about a tenth as much distortion as new a/v receivers. I think you guys have finally embarrassed me into taking action. I'll have photos after everything is set up. This should be inspiration enough!

George, awesome HiFi setup. I've got a Luxman turntable as well - PD 272 Model.

quote:

Originally posted by JTpantera:

George, awesome HiFi setup. I've got a Luxman turntable as well - PD 272 Model.

Mine is a PD121.

George,
Great setup and still popular with many audiophiles. Back in the 70's a good stereo system was mandatory. Back then we didn't have 1000 TV channels, internet, and boat loads of personal electronics, we had cars and stereos. There is lots of vintage HiFi gear still around. It's not surprising that some forum members, passionate owners of early 70's (and beyond) Panteras, have 70's HiFi gear tucked away. The 70's cars and vintage stereo systems transport us back in time on many levels.

If anyone wants to get rid of or sell any vinyl that's in good condition please let me know.

Vintage Marantz in the office