Vintage Gear

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Throwback ThursdayVintage Gear
Rare B&W Speakers Anchor Skyfi’s System of the Week
SV Staff  |  Sep 19, 2019  | 
The super-rare Nautilus Signature 800 Edition of B&W’s iconic 800 Series speaker is the star of the show in a “System of the Week” recently featured by New Jersey-based vintage audio specialist Skyfi Audio.
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Vintage Gear
Rare Find: Altec Lansing 604-8G Coaxial Speakers
SV Staff  |  Aug 14, 2019  | 
It’s not every day you come across speakers built around monstrous 15-inch coaxial drivers but New Jersey-based vintage audio specialist Skyfi Audio recently landed a pair of pristine Altec Lansing 604-18 speakers.
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Vintage Gear
RCA CT-100 Color TV
Steve Guttenberg  |  Aug 16, 2012  | 
RCA's CT-100 may not have been the first consumer color TV in the U.S., Westinghouse's set beat it by a few weeks, but that model didn't sell in significant numbers. Both sets were on the market less than 100 days after the Federal Communications Commission finalized its standards for broadcasting color television.

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Vintage Gear
Rediscovering Luxman’s Legendary CL35 Tube Preamp
SV Staff  |  Oct 28, 2019  | 
If you like vintage audio gear, you’re going to love New Jersey-based Skyfi Audio’s latest acquisition: The third and best iteration of Luxman’s legendary CL35 MKIII tube preamp (circa 1978).
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Vintage Gear
Sennheiser HD414
Steve Guttenberg  |  Sep 11, 2012  | 
The Sennheiser HD414 was a game changer in 1968. In those days hi-fi headphones were all big and bulky, closed-back designs, and the compact HD414 was the industry’s first “open aire,” on-ear (supra-aural) headphone. It looked, felt and sounded like nothing else and forecast the future direction of headphone sound.
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Vintage Gear
Shure V-15 Phono Cartridge
Steve Guttenberg  |  Jul 10, 2012  | 
The original Shure V-15 phono cartridge debuted in 1964 as a "statement" design. The engineering team was headed by Jim Kogen, who later became a Vice President of Engineering, and after that the CEO. The V-15 Type II arrived six years later and it was the first computer-designed cartridge. The Type III was the best selling model in the series, it came along three years later, long before the CD changed the course of audio history.

Shure was huge in the mainstream market, but by the late 1970s and through the 1980s most analog-loving audiophiles had graduated to moving-coil cartridges (the V-15 was a moving-magnet design). I preferred the sound of moving coil cartridges, but conceded the V-15's tracking abilities were well ahead of most of the expensive Japanese moving coil designs of the time.

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Vintage GearAudio Video News
SkyFi Celebrates 1-Year Anniversary with a Nod to the Golden Age of Hi-Fi
SV Staff  |  Jan 31, 2020  | 
SkyFi Audio, the New Jersey-based company specializing in vintage audio and reconditioned high-end gear, is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a nod to one of the titans of hi-fi’s Golden Age.
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Vintage Gear
SkyFi’s ‘To-Die-For’ Vintage Setup Spans the Decades
SV Staff  |  Dec 26, 2019  | 
SkyFi Audio does more than just sell cool vintage gear. The New Jersey-based hi-fi specialist offers a “Stereo Concierge” service for audiophiles who crave a unique system but don’t have the time or inclination to research and find “the right” gear.
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Vintage Gear
Sony D-5 Portable CD Player
Steve Guttenberg  |  May 17, 2012  | 
Sony introduced the world’s first portable CD player, the D-5, in late 1984, just a year after its first home player, the CDP-101, revolutionized the audio market. In the 1970s, Sony Walkman cassette players were as ubiquitous as iPods are now, and the new Discman players were poised to be the next big thing.
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Vintage Gear
Sony Trinitron Television
Steve Guttenberg  |  Jul 18, 2012  | 
On April 15, 1968 Sony held a press conference in Japan to announce a new type of television, the Trinitron. The research team had just finished hand building ten prototypes, so they were shocked to hear Sony executives promising the TV would be in full production in less than six months! The very first Trinitron, the KV-1310, was in stores in October. A year later Trinitron came to the United States.
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Vintage Gear
The 800-B Receiver: An Avery Fisher Masterpiece
Bob Ankosko  |  Feb 03, 2022  | 
We jump into the audio time machine and head back to 1961 to revisit an early stereo receiver designed by hi-fi pioneer Avery Fisher.
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Vintage Gear
The Advent VideoBeam 1000 Projection System
Steve Guttenberg  |  Aug 08, 2012  | 
In the early 1970s, the biggest consumer TVs were 27-inch direct-view CRT sets, so people must have been blown away the first time they saw TV projected on an Advent VideoBeam 1000’s 7-foot screen. The first Betamax videocassette recorders were still a couple of years away in 1972, and broadcast and cable TV were the only viewing options.
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Vintage Gear
The Grado Phono Cartridge: A Classic Lives On
Steve Guttenberg  |  Mar 26, 2013  |  First Published: Mar 20, 2013  | 
In the days before the CD arrived in 1982, LPs were the format of choice for music lovers. While the turntable played a significant role in determining sound quality, you also needed a great phono cartridge to get the music out of the grooves.
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Vintage Gear
The KLH Model Nine Rides Again
Bob Ankosko  |  Jun 17, 2021  | 
KLH, the iconic audio brand co-founded by audio visionary Henry Kloss in 1957, is well known for the great sounding two-and three-way acoustic-suspension speakers it designed and built in the 1960s and ’70s. All had simple names — Model Four, Model Five, etc. — and featured unassuming but nicely finished wood-veneer cabinets. What you may not know is that KLH also introduced the first full-range electrostatic speaker — the legendary Model Nine.
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Vintage Gear
The Klipschorn Speaker
Steve Guttenberg  |  Oct 22, 2012  | 
The Klipschorn was such a revolutionary speaker, it can still hold its own with some of the best of today’s home theater speakers. Paul W. Klipsch founded his company in 1946 in Hope, Arkansas, and built his first 12 Klipschorn speakers in 1947. They were fitted with Western Electric 713A compression tweeters and 12-inch JBL or Jensen woofers. The Klipschorn was designed to fit into the corner of a room, using the walls and floor as extensions of the speaker’s bass horn.
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