RESTORATION

The Consolette was Saul B. Marantz’s first amplifier design, back in 1952, so we were surprised to see this example looking so shiny. Its secret? The dedicated work of Duncan McAllister...

Take two classic Marantz Consolettes...

In our last issue we brought you a whole series of hi-fi history articles, as part of our 30th anniversary issue. These were great fun to put together, working from solid sources in some cases, and in others getting on the blower to elicit personal memories from companies that were... well, rather less organised in their archiving.

Inevitably, the hardest hunt was for pictures of early models. Even with a company as established as Marantz, the only pictures we could find of the earliest models delivered by Saul B. Marantz and Sidney Smith in the 1950s were tiny, poor quality, and black-and-white.

Until we happened upon the images you can see here, of a gleaming golden Consolette Model One preamplifier looking for all the world as if Saul himself had just finished polishing it up with a soft cloth.

This was, it turned out, the result of a fine restoration job by one Duncan McAllister, who we tracked down in Canada, and who most kindly Dropboxed us many high-res images and details of the restoration. Far beyond what we needed for the history article, we kept them aside to share with you now.

Before and after

There are two schools of thought among lovers of classic audio equipment — should you leave everything as it is, or should you try to get the best out of them?

“That’s true,” confirms Duncan. “I’m sure some of your readers might say that I’ve utterly destroyed these units by cutting out some the original components! To a collector or a purist, these preamplifiers are best left in original condition. As with antique car collections, the specimen is worth more with original paint, original upholstery, very little in the way of modifications. So if I’d wanted to retain a maximum resale value, or perhaps to keep these units in a display case to admire, then I would’ve kept them stock. It was a difficult decision to make, but as a record collector, I was interested in restoring these preamps for the purpose of listening, and for that I wanted to bring them back to their original electronic specifications, for the cleanest sounding audio possible.”

It was a pair of Consolettes that found their way to Duncan (the mono Consolettes were commonly ganged in pairs once stereo took hold in the later 1950s). Most of their original Telefunken tubes had been replaced with newer Mullards, and the units were missing their oak cabinet.

“As you can see by the original photo [left], the preamps came to me in fairly rough shape,” Duncan told us. “Cosmetically, the two mono preamps were scuffed up and not quite matched, one being a little darker than the other and a year apart — 1955 and 1956, judging by the components and serial numbers. I had no idea if they worked or not, and when I first put them on the bench, I thought they were dead. I powered them up and the tubes lit up, but not a sound. No

hum, no hiss. I twiddled all the knobs and no scratchy noises, nothing.” But then he plugged in a music source. “And out came a magnificent wall of sound from both channels!” says Duncan. “After all those years, the preamps powered up first time and were still pleasantly quiescent. Quite a testament to the early engineering of Saul Marantz! But there here were problems that needed remediation — components were either defective or way out of tolerance.”

Still, given their working condition, very little was done in the way of major modifications.

“What I call the ‘analogue’ sections, I left as they were,” he says. “That includes the excellent variable phono equalisation circuits designed by Saul Marantz himself, with all original silver mica capacitors and carbon resistors. I left all the filters and tone circuits as original. All the switches and potentiometers have been opened and cleaned and treated with Deoxit. Only two of the pots have a slight scratchiness in one spot on the dial. The only modifications I made were related to circuit stability and components in the audio path, such as power supply capacitors, grid and plate resistors and decoupling caps. I removed the metal-can multi-section electrolytic capacitors and cut them open, replacing the original innards with new electrolytic capacitors, then resealed the cans. You can hardly tell.”

But their original ‘tin box’ external power supplies were missing, so Duncan decided to build his own.

“From what I read, the original tin boxes were woefully underpowered anyway, and tended to burn out frequently. They incorporated a selenium rectifier, which certain purists insist gives it that certain sound... but selenium rectifiers deteriorate with age — no good after 60 years. I decided to build a supply worthy of the quality of the preamps, a hybrid tube/solid-state supply, with two separate, individually-adjustable filament supplies, and one tube-regulated B+ supply.” All of which left just the missing cabinet. “I took the measurements from old Marantz brochures and then created a replica cabinet in my workshop, using a single piece of one-inch-thick solid oak from about the same time period. I made the cabinet for the external power supply [small box shown right] out of the same wood.” How does it sound? “Many audio aficionados have told me that these are exemplary phono preamps, and they’re not wrong,” he says. “With the exception of a bit of tube hiss, they are quite possibly the best preamps I’ve ever heard — but only after having restored them.”

And what does he play through his restored stereo Consolette preamplifier?

“My Lesa turntable,” he says, “another restoration! It’s one of those monster idler-drive fully-manual decks circa 1971. There’s scant data available on this model [the MTT6 — Manual Transcription Turntable 6], but I managed to contact the original design engineer at a seniors’ home in Italy. He told me it was a rare, experimental product and very few were made, still fewer exported. I’d found it in a back alley in a dumpster with rainwater pouring out of it...”