Sympathetic Housings for Leak Equipment

[BakeliteBear]

I have some Leak equipment which needs some kind of housing to make it usable - Trough Line tuner, Point One amp, TL10 etc.

I am interested in what others have come up with. Can anyone post ideas they have come up with??

Thanks

[Herald1360]

Aren't the tuner and preamp intended to be front or top mounted in a cabinet with the TL10 tucked away inside?

[BakeliteBear]

Yes you are quite correct. It's just that they were probably originally used in cabinets that today might not be seen as very pleasing to the eye and probably hid away the parts we now like to look at.

I was wondering if anyone had come up with something a bit more contemepory and showed off the vintage equipment a bit more.

Maybe not??

[TonyDuell]

I would think that the styling of such a cabinet is very much a matter of personal taste (as an aside, most 'normal' people would have a fit if they saw the room that is conventially called the living room here, it has a row of 19" rack cabinets down the middle. I like it...). Some people would like to have a cabinet contemporary with the amplifier, so it looks like it did when originally in use. Others might want something modern that has doors to open to reveal the vintage tuner and pre-amp.

My suggestion is to make what _you_ would like, ensuring enough ventilation round the power amplifier (my Leak Stereo 20 can get hot enough to desolder the smoothing resistor if run flat out with no airflow _under_ the chassis). Make no modifications to the units. Then if you don't like it, you can try something else, you still have the original vintage Leak stuff unchanged.

[BakeliteBear]

I agree with all you say - we are not all the same! I have, however, had any capacitors changed that were out of value. The Trough Line is boxed and unused with its original labels, so replacing capacitors is an intervention some would argue I should not have made.

You say it could be mounted in a period cabinet so it looks like it did when originally in use - can anyone share images of those sorts of cabinets?? If you google images of Leak equipment there are virtually none which have them mounted in any kind of cabinet. I wonder how many are and how many are actually still used? Many Leak amps are shown on display in 'the nude' and whilst I am not a slave to 'Health and Safety' I would have thought it wise to at least mount it on some kind on base to make the bottom mounted components a little more inaccessible.

Much of the equipment I have came mounted in a grey painted plywood box of little or no merit other than its 'agricultural' functionality. I think it deserves better.

I am perfectly capable of coming up with my own design, but I always start from the point of seeing what others have come up with first - no point in reinventing the wheel. So has anyone done anything which might give me a starting point??

[Lucien Nunes]

Probably the most common configuration was like a normal radiogram with a compartment for the T/T and a panel through which the tuner and preamp would have been mounted. I.e. they would take the place of the commercial product's built-in dial glass and row of knobs projecting through the wood. There were manufacturers of audio furniture that offered either blank or pre-cut panels for the control units and motor board, into which you would assemble a system from your choice of components. The power amplifier was usually hidden.

As such, any deliberate exposure of parts other than the front panels is contrary to the designer's expectations. I do like to see the cosy glow of the amp and the finish is good enough to allow this. However the sides and back of the control modules are not so presentable, so I have in the past mounted them in wooden sleeves like those later fitted to the transistor amps. I no longer have it but I did once make a kind of free-standing double sleeve, just wide enough to accommodate the overhang of the panels, with the two units vertically stacked. That was used with TL12+ amps that stood either side of it. I don't think I have a picture unfortunately.

[Ted Kendall]

Try Googling Largs and Imhofs, both of whom made cabinets in the day, and perhaps Record Housing.

[peterpiper]

Hi all, a cautionary tale. Some years ago an old customer of mine asked me rebuild his Quad FM, 22 Thorens 125 and Quad II into a taller cabinet as he couldn't bend down so easily in old age. I duly built it all into a Grundig cabinet about 3ft tall. 2 weeks later he called me to say that the turntable slowed down after about half an LP side. After much head scratching I found that the heat from the Quad II was heating the underside of the Thorens causing the turntable bearing material (Glacier DQ I think) to expand inside the steel tube that held it causing friction on the solid TT spindle. The cure in this case was easy, The cabinet had a cooling fan which I had not wired up. Connecting this to the Quad II mains solved all problems.

Peter

[bikerhifinut]

Some links that might be useful.

http://hjleak.44bx.com/Leak_November...6_04092009.pdf

http://www.argaudio.it/files/Leak_Va...o_brochure.pdf

Pics there of the "Southdown" Cabinet that was commonly used to house the various Chassis.

Andy