Good Day! Well the sound of your videos always have very good quality! Remember there is always someone complain about a thing. We cannot satisfies everyone. Nobody does even Christ do not! Please do not care about these trolls! So go on with your excellent work ! Thank you for sharing your knowledge! Thank you very much!

Great video, baseball cap audio sounds very good.

Your intro resumes pretty much why i think this is one of the best, if not the best, channel on youtube. No money involved on the will to make this videos and teach SO MUCH in great detail. I can't thank you enough for so much i've learned with you. Cheers for Brazil. Please keep up the great, great work!

Hi Tony Ceps hat with Mic works great , and you look like Hollywood star too :-)). my comment about equalizer is that they color sound , they have phase shift too , when I was younger I thought they are great but when I get older I understood different between good win and young win , then I choose no more equalizer in my system . I work as engineer designing electronic past 30 years and I enjoy each second of your video , better then any film , with some cheeps and beer it is much better . some time I watch them several time too . I like also your persistence to find faulty parts , and reverse engineer , I teach my self a lot from your channel even with 30 years designing electronic experiences .

Each time I watch your videos I learn something new. Thank you

i love equalizers. always have. i'm 51. i now own a couple equalizers i used to drool over when i was young. audio control c101(which i recently recapped and replaced all 101 leds in the display, full cleaning. its beautiful with mic. and an ads , and a fisher 12bnd(partial recap) and an optimus 10bnd(partial recap). my marantz pre/pro has 7-9 bands . all my computer sound cards have built in eqs. i've also been playing around with those 10 band eq boards from china, actually have a 15 band that'll be here soon. eah. any speakers in any room can benefit from an eq. spectrum analyzers are fun to look at too....how about the vintage sansui with motorized sliders? you should try to find one and restore it. just the cool factor of those. almost forgot my minidsp 2x4. active xover, 15 bands of parametric eq. yeah buddy!

Sound is excellent! 👍

Bless you man ....I LOVE ELECTRONIC stuff to repair ,play , test .....i v been search You Tube Channel like yours i think more than 9 years ,i dont know how you appear ,THANK YOU VERY MUCH ,i learn very much from you.

Excellent work. I learn a lot from watching your videos. The proper tools is essential in refurbishing these equipments; I'm learning what I need too.

Graphic or Parametric Equalizers are very useful with the right analysis tools such as REW or some form of RTA. Otherwise you are just guessing tuning to taste. I tend to use these aids to help me make the sound as correct as I can get it.

Electrofight sounded very good!!.... great video as always Tony!

Great learning experience here, again I'm not a technician but really love watching your videos this is because during the lockdown and as a hobby I have manage to clean, troubleshoot and repair some of my audio gears (preamps, amps, car radios). Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise on these audio pieces, you are really very helpful and thanks also for putting all the efforts in providing videos like this, greetings from the Philippines..

I want to compliment your improvement! I went back to the Motorola 57 (5 years old) and you've really tuned into technology that makes YOU sound better and allows you to change viewing perspectives while working. Also, your editing is excellent.

I think your sound is better on your shirt than the cap bill. I am just glad you are keeping the older gear running right. I grew up with SAE and others like Bedini and Threshold, and so on. I am so glad you are here to make the gear perform at maximum. Thank you for all you do Tony.

There is nothing better than a stormy day in the Lab........I live for it......great atmosphere for electronics

Love those vintage beasts. Regards from Portugal.

Wow Tony, I didn't think this video would be very interesting coming in, but boy was I wrong! No schematics, the complications introduced by sliding potentiometers, sick componentry that only really shows up in use. You kept looking, used common sense and finally got this old beast into great shape! Kudos Tony, I learned a lot.

Good detective work Tony even without a schematic! Even better with properly soldered connections!

LOVE THE VIDEO!! Used to work for a USA based sound reinforcement company (that's what they called amps, speakers, and mixers used at concerts while I was there) and I HATE those linear pots!! I much prefer the radial pots and the actual coils used in EQs. Most coils are replaced by chips and resistors now days because silicon is cheaper than copper. Overall I love your videos as it takes me back to when I worked on audio circuits and had fun trouble shooting the problems some had when they came off the assembly line. (Like why the 50 volt caps were blowing up when attached to the 75 volt supply!) As for equalizers, I have found that I like them on my computer to compensate for some audio on you tube videos that have various problems and I like them for my car. This is the best use I have found for them. Be well and THANK YOU for the effort you put into these videos. I know it's not a little bit.

When I was into audio more, early 90's, I had a nice system. I still had an EQ that I could cut in or out on my amp. It was a dbx1531x and I found it could make up for what the room lacked. I know a 'straight wire with gain' so they say is best, but I think an EQ has it's place when used correctly. Good video.

Dear Sir, I enjoy your channel so much, and it sounds great, have a nice weekend...

Awesome collection of test equipment tools. I stopped using regular Equalizer, still have Pro Audio Yamaha from 80s. Instead I started to use DSP based correction. Eventually I go for full DSP crossover with class D amps.

I bought the SAE Mark Nine pre-amp in 1981 for $200.00 along with a Yamaha P2100 power amp for $300.00. The very first equipment that I owned for DJ'ing instead of renting every weekend. I loved this combo. I don't remember when I sold the pre-amp. I still have the Yamaha but it needs a quick solder job on the input connections that are right behind the cover. Just by being dragged around the state from town to town messed up those points. Loved this video, I sure have learned a lot watching your videos. Keep up the great work, Tony!

Thank you very much for that Master Class!

Microphone crystal clear; I used a lot of different equalizers back in the seventies, the sliders drove me crazy and eventually took them out of my system. As time progressed technology improved and studio recordings dramatically took a turn for the better. Currently I use a NAD amplifier with a touch of bass and treble, " no loudness " to give a nice flat uniform response.

Interesting video Tony. For your amusement --- I used to work for a company in Montreal during the 70s that was licensed for Altec Lansing "Acousta-Voice" technology. The idea was to match the system to be the inverse of the room's acoustic resonances, using frequency analysis and filters. The goal was to fill the room with louder sound without booming, feedback, etc. It was initially done with passive parametric filters. After the tuning was done they replaced the variable filters with lower cost fixed ones. The results were awesome for the time. If you Google it you'll see some of the cool vintage gear I worked with ...

Another Great video Tony ! Interesting preamp . Eq , I use a little if needed . Usually just add a little base . Depends on the song .

Use to be a more expensive contraption out called a 'Parametric Equalizer'. At the time, I was young and into stereo equipment and worked myself-up from cheap monthly payment-plan no-name system to Dual 1264 turntable, Avant 6AX three way spkrs and a Realistic STA2100 receiver/amplifier-(much liked) a nd a ten band graphic equalizer. Did the same thing with adjustments as you demo'd above. Then I purchased the parametric equalizer and it was good at bringing out bass, drums..singing, it made a difference. BTW I still have the Dual 1264 TT I purchased in 1979 and it works great. Except I made an awful one time mistake. I auto started the 1264 with the tone-arm locked down ! Anyway I put myself on a course and journy finding all info on the guts of it and knowledge of all the mechanisms under the platter..wow. At the moment it still sounds great but no auto-anything, can't lift the tone arm using the OEM silicone damped arm lifter. But purchased another arm lifter that I will rig temporary. My albums from the seventies-on are all immaculate and my hand isn't. So record groove damage could happen, hence the temp manual lift Iv'e got until I once again lift the whole mechanism out, diagnose all the damage and get the parts..too much said LOL.

This is a great idea, THE CAP VISOR MICROPHONE !! Ha HA it WORKS GREAT though!! INNOVATION and its execution WORKS GREAT EVERYTIME!!

Awesome!! As usual... Thanks Tony!

Another great video thanks Tony

For most, bass and treble do the trick. A loudness control is handy for most people, both more than an eq. I used to find old recordings really needed an eq. You could boost the very top end or cut it to get rid of hiss. Some speakers were squeaky, the higher mid cut was welcome. I really enjoyed seeing you suffer like many of us and fix it no diagrams. Sure you can buy them or scour the net but often you can feel your way around, like driving without a gps, it's a good skill. Actually my Xerox diagrams were called roadmaps.

The hat mic sounds fine. I’m like you, could never stop fiddling with equalizer levels. Today I have a high end MARANTZ AVR and I let Audyssey take care of room correction. It always sounds great and I never fuss with any levels

The Graphic EQ's marketed to audiophiles used to come with multi-band "test records" you could use to adjust each band (by ear..using test "warble" tones) based on the interaction with the room and the speakers. I've been using EQ's since the 80's. I re-built an old Soundcrafstman 2020 10-band EQ quite a few years ago. I upgraded the PS and the Op-amps. I use it to attenuate the "boomy-nes" of a floor standing sub which is placed in a corner. The op-amp upgrade really made a difference. I use a (discontinued) Ashley 15-band (pro) EQ on my main system. No "test record" though. I basically use the same "curve" from the old "Soundcraftsman EQ record". I'm planning to build a 5-band sub-woofer EQ. (don't know of any mfgr. that makes one..) Errrata: Now folks will be sending Tony baseball caps. Would you like a "Cigar" themed cap?

Awesome, going to enjoy this one!

best preamp ever i love this unit i have repaired a few if you get stuck

Cool! Tony's AUDIO CAP. Sounds great.

About the EQ, sometimes it is useful for compensation of tonality imperfections due to room modes, dull source material, bad speakers etc. If the width of each band is not too narrow and if it has a "true bypass" switch, it can't be a bad thing.

Brings back memories.

I could stay up all night working in your lab.👍

nice work Tony, never seen such an elaborate equaliser! The jury is out on equalisers for me - I use them on my vintage systems that incorporate them but my main system is just balance and volume, which sounds just great but if you have a worn LP etc it shows it for what it is, the systems with equalisers you can tailor the sound a bit. Wishing all the best to you and your family.

Your sound to me sounds good Tony.

Tony, great work as always! You need an eq for your mic to add a little bass back to your voice.

Tony, Great video as always. Very informative. The audio with the baseball cap mic is good. I do think I would have to do something about that always on indicator light. It would drive me nuts. Either a #1835 incandescent bulb (55V) or maybe a diode in series to drop it below emitting voltage when off.

This is an all discrete design with an LCR equalizer section. Very good, this is best but most expensive way to do analog EQ, not a string of noisy 1970s OPAMPS. As for the need for EQ, any recording studio, scoring stage, mixing room, screening room, theater, I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot, have equalizers in the speaker path. And many of these rooms were designed from the ground up by acoustics engineers, yet still need EQ. There is nothing wrong with EQ provided it's measured and calibrated. And beyond that, many home preamps such as the unit here have defeat switches. So if you want purist sound, then switch the EQ off. But it's there if you ever need it for a particular recording. Parametric equalizers are much more useful IMO as they can tune out a null or peak very precisely, but are also more difficult to set up properly. A graphic EQ is a nice compromise for average home needs and are also used in many professional installations.

Excelent job!

Hi Tony. Concerning equalization I always have a certain preference for music and love the bass pumped up, especially listening to pieces like smoke on the water, and a certain section from Moulan Rouge where the bass is vibrating furniture, hence the Pioneer SA9100. Doesn't do wonders to your hearing though but when you have Freddy Mercury screaming in your ear, sure make the day goes better. 🤗

When I was much younger I tried to be a "purest" and hated having anything in my signal path. I've relaxed over the years and tend to use tone controls pretty often just to get things sounding pleasant. Of course the speakers, placement and room conditions play a role and I don't have the "highest end" of speakers any longer (though very decent sounding AR floor standers from the early eighties). However, every recording is different as we all know and even with all of that aside some recordings just need a little equalization in my opinion.

Awesome job man!!!

on an EQ no amplifier is perfectly flat (in my experience) no speaker is perfectly flat (in my experience) all add some color to the signal some very little some way too much. Not many listening situations are acoustically perfect either. I have found that using an EQ to compensate for all of those variables to be the simplest way to get good results to make the signal larger without adding anything to it. I found it very helpful when setting up live events it always made the audiences feel more comfortable they would not even notice I and the system was there. The key element for me is using a series of tones to match the bands of the EQ that are all the same level and adjusting each band to sound at the same level, the early people always complained about the sound how ever. After that I will play some test recordings of known music to verify the results. It can even improve some not optimum set ups like beat-up speakers in a gymnasium though it wont stop echo and bounce back uncle frogy

14:40 - 18 volts sounds like a LOT of output for a preamp even peak-to-peak! I always thought preamps output 1 or 2 volts at the most.

Tony, one thing I think that would be a big improvement to your channel would be to run a second camera for scopes, meters etc. This would free you up and you wouldn't have to re-aim all the time. The second frame could be picture in picture up in a corner. It doesn't need to be hi-res either. I use a old 720p camera for this purpose and if you've seen any of my vids you'll see what I mean. Sound & lighting are great, no need to stress over those. Keep up the great videos and thanks

Sounded a little better when you adjusted the record level down brother, and thank you for teachings!

Fantastic troubleshooting vid ! I loved it ...but you can keep " Electro fight "

In 1983 I bought a JVC system, including the revered SEA-R7. I held onto all of it until 2007, I still regret letting that EQ go. I rarely ever boosted or cut frequencies, but the delay time and the cross network were always used.

Having an audio spectrum analyzer with microphone/pink noise to guide EQ adjustments (see what is going on) can make them more beneficial. Without one I just wind up chasing my tail. I've not needed one for home use (started with a cheap fisher rack system) since getting better quality gear years ago, but for PA stuff they are very handy.

4:20 I have the same experience, tried to set EQ/tone control all time, and then ended up keeping it flat/defeat and never touch EQ/tone control again. About hi-fi gear with only volume control, I think it's good and I like it, because the amplifier looks clean, not looks busy with too many knobs that I never touch.

Tony...I posted this message on Uncle Dougs channel yesterday and thought I'd share it here with you and your watchers: I bought an ESR70+ ESR meter to make it easier to test electrolytics both in and out of circuit, and I noticed a few issues that might be of benefit to yourself and other viewers who do their own electronics work. While I haven't used a different brand of small ESR tester, to my understanding they all use basically the same type of square wave oscillator to test caps, so my findings might apply to a broad range of them. First of all, they do not work well at all for testing cathode bias caps if the parallel bypass resistor is a lower value such as a 250 ohm resistor across a 50uF 50v cathode bypass cap on a pair of p-p 6L6s. The ESR70+ reads the circuit as leaky and the measured cap value can be very flaky. More important is that after testing numerous caps I removed from circuits which appeared to be in good shape according to the ESR70+ , when testing them with my old Sprague TO-6, almost all of the same caps which tested "good" with the ESR70+ out of circuit showed a great deal of leakage when tested at the working voltage of the caps using the TO-6, and needed to be replaced. Right now, I am going through a Marconi TF2331 Distortion Analyzer which uses a lot of 'lytics, and I have thus far found all of them are leaky and need to be replaced, whereas the ESR70+ only picked up problems with a very few of them both in and out of the circuit...! YMMV, but I'm beginning to wonder if my ESR70+ is of much actual use. Luckily for me, I always check HV caps with the TO-6, because I tend to use it to form new, or test and reform any usable old HV caps.... Sorry for the long post...! Jordan... Show less REPLY

Nice discussion and troubleshooting as always, Tony! The blue Philips electrolytics are in my experience often good, despite their age. On the equalizer board the small metal ones at .22uF seem to be tantalums! I wander why they have put them in a passive circuit! Also the "bullet-shaped" ones seem to be Kemet tantalums. I have replaced some 15-20 of those in a Wavetek signal generator, and have yet more shorted ones to yank out of it..

I have an amp with room correction, I place a mic at the listening position(s) and run the automatic measurements, and the amp does its best to flatten the frequency response to the room. It's awesome. Not perfect, but still awesome. Especially for tightening up the bass. Doing something like that manually would probably take me days of listening to white noise, and it would still require me to have some way of measuring and visualizing the frequency response.

I always used my equalizer to tweak music to my ears, to my mood, and to compensate for worn albums.

Its coincidence that i wad just working on an SAE 101 computer direct line parametric equalizer digital readout its a fantastic EQ just like yourself and your tutorials they do work differently from a graphic EQ they zero in on a pitch and you can up to16db +- and still cut that 1/3 per octave in treble or bass they remove cabinet resonance its tighter sound allround it can really taylor sound NOT COLOUR IT by any means i opened it up i was having problems with my system found out it was the preamp AUDIO RESEARCH all's well its in surgery now but I have others in its place i do think with the removal of tones bass /treble an EQ is essential to smooth out sound people in those days were using them as an add power booster to the amp just an octave or two goes along way thanks for the many years of KZfaq SERVICE i mean that

Yes at some point I fooled around with one so much that I would get one song in one position sound terrific! The next song I started playing I would do the same thing again! I had the same thing going on in the car until one day I said screw it and mind you I never sell anything but I got rid of all my equalizers and never looked back! Treble Bass and loudness is enough to monkey around with. IMHO

I prefer the classic Marantz and McIntosh and others that have 3 tone controls Bass, Mid-Range, Treble. That provided most of tonal quality needed to make the great sound. Equalizers used on those stereos that cant produce good sound. Some on here might not agree, but if that was not the case most systems would have builtin EQ. I made a 32 Band EQ, but it takes up space and like you was fidgit with the controls for every album I played.

I still have my DAK BSR equalizer from 1985, a 10-band. I find it very useful for oddball recordings, especially old LP's.

I always liked a 5 band EQ, Anything more is cumbersome IMO. I have a basic setting that suites me listening needs. I tweak it slightly to match the recording I am listening to. ELP has major differences in sound levels vs say Rush. Old and new recordings also vary because of the equipment used at the time of recording. Combine that with the conversion from analog to digital and the base recording is altered twofold. The EQ gives me the ability to tweak them back to my listening preference. I have always had and loved the ADC "Sound Shaper One". It's basic, simple, and just works.

audio is very good !

Faders are great for performing behind a mixing board. You can control several tracks at the same time --- otherwise, potentiometers all the way! Only three of my synths use faders, the rest are pots. But when it comes to mixers I opt for faders.

My friend made measurements on his audio system and corrected the graph by equalizer so that it has a perfect linearity on all frequencies. Its equalizer has 31 frequencies (Behringer FBQ3102HD Ultragraph Pro). The result was fantastic, he says.

I was involved with the design of the Soundcraftmen 2012 equalizer. I presently have a digital 1/3 octave equalizer in my present system. In IMHO they have only two uses first is to help control the acoustics of the room and the second as a precise roll off filters. Like the soundcraftsmen the SAE Mark 9 uses L/C filters which causes a lot of phase distortion In my book that would put this in the a non audiophile category along with the soundcraftsmen.

For car or boat audio systems I ALWAYS install a stand-alone EQ unit. This is to give me flexibility to be able to fine tune considering the listening environment. I also like to be able to reduce 2 to 4K “ biting” highs that may be the speakers I am dealing with or just in the recordings of rock or pop music. For home use, don’t often need EQ. For recording or live sound-I prefer to have it, but may not necessarily need it.

I like your videos except the intro... a stationery warning (a few seconds max) would be fine for legal purposes instead of Starwars thing... just my 2c ;)

I mostly use my EQ in line with the reel to reel tapes. They make a good substitute for a noise reduction system (like dbx or Dolby). At the recording, everything above 1kHz gets boost, everything below gets reduced. Playback is in the opposite settings, of course. It's easy for me, because mine has a reverse switch (Pioneer SG-90).

Follow you through a blind circuit analysis all the time. Real nuts and bolts , spinning wrenches checkout. As far as the lamp use a power strip to kill equipment after its use,eliminating lamp glow possibly. It begs to reason when you turn a switch off on an instrument are you still slightly power

Had the same issue with the capacitors on the SAE MARK XXX preamp, which is very similar to the mark 9 other than the equalizer. Those sliders are all ALPS units but are very hard to find if you have a bad one. The Phono section is average buts sounds good enough.

34:45 I suggest sir try steel wool #00000 or 3M Gray and White abrasive pads. Its much slower than Dremel tool but safe. Great video as always sir. Thumbs up.

I had the IXb way back when. Not one of the nicest sounding pre-amps... and one of the many pieces of audio equipment I have owned in 50 years that I have no idea what I did with it.... not very memorable ... Nice clean work!

As someone with damaged hearing (many ear infections as a small kid due to parental unit's smoking) I have used equalizers for years to bring music back to approximately where it should be. Would not sound right/good to anyone else, but it fits my needs.

To be honest, I like having an equalizer. my hearing on the high end has already began to roll off a bit, so I tend to boost the highs, as well as the lows a bit. While cutting the mids because they seem too overpowering to me. So at the end of the day, my equalizer tends to look like a bathtub curve in the end. I especially like having an EQ for each channel, becuase then I can tweak each one slightly different to give me a better stereo effect.

Xray humor - a true story. I supervised the installation of casework at an imaging center. On the last day the techs were wanting to run a test on the CAT scanner. They needed a volunteer. I volunteered and they CAT scanned my head. When finished I asked them if they found anything. The said, "No." I then asked, "Is that good or bad?"

Hi Tony, thanks for another great video. I'm not sure about the explanation for the led lighting when the switch is off though. Surely those caps across the switch only allow high frequencies through, not 60Hz to the PSU? Or do the caps actually leak power frequency?

Since you wanted opinions on EQs - a simple graphics EQ like this is going to be of very limited use, maybe for correcting bloated bass due to boundary gain or something. Ideally you want a parametric (5 bands with low shelf and high shelf would be a good starting point), plus something resembling a measurement microphone (your lav mic definitely isn't ;) ), ideally calibrated, interfaced to a PC running REW, so you have an idea what's wrong in the first place and can design (or have the software design) an EQ preset to correct the issues. Parametric EQ is something that lends itself to digital implementation, where it can't introduce any extra distortion unlike a tone control amplifier - as long as the signal is kept out of clipping of course, so a pre-gain adjustment is pretty much a must-have. Those with a Windows-based playback system can use Equalizer APO, for example. Regarding the power supply, the LB+ probably feeds the more sensitive sections like the RIAA - the regulator is likely to be quite noisy with such a high-voltage zener, and the RC filter would really knock that down, along with whatever hum may be remaining.

Thoughts on EQ ...? EVERY system, in any normal sized residential listening room, benefits from EQ. The single most important aspect of sound reproduction is the loudspeaker/room interface. The acoustic transfer function determined by the speaker location and the room's dimensions create resonances that need tamed by EQ. The proper EQ tool is parametric not graphic, as graphic EQs simply don't possess adequate precision. Also, EQ only works correctly* within the minimum phase region. This region is below the room's transition or Schroeder frequency, approx 250hz (varies according to room dimensions). Sound behaves quite differently eithet above the transition region or below. Above the transition, the smaller size of the wavelengths determine that Ray Acoustics rule the day. Below the transition region, modal resonances rule. Pressure "Rays" above ... Pressure "Waves" below ... * The two distinctly different behaviors require different approaches. EQ above the transition isn't a valid technique, because an EQ change only exists in a single point in space. Whereas below, down in the modal region, any change in EQ is effective uniformly throughout the space. ----------------------------------- EQ is a final step band-aid. Prior to EQ'ing, experimentation with room geometry, and with placement of both speakers and listening position truly pays off. - A room's dimensions determine the resonant frequency modes. - Loudspeaker placement determines which modes are excited. - Listener location determines which modes are heard.

Microphone audio good: Great job finding the problems especially without a schematic diagram. Also loved hearing your nostalgic stories working on jukeboxes, do you own any?

graphic equalisers in hi-fi setup are too crude to be used to compensate for problems you might have because acoustics are too complicated to be corrected in such a way. best thing is to go for is either having bass and treble controls if you like to contour the sound a bit for instance if one likes a bit more bass for electronic music or more treble for 80's disco. If someone is facing some tonal problems 90% of the cases it's a case of a bad speaker placement. enough videos on that subject. I recommend The Hans Beekhuyzen Channel. He did some nice videos on the subject. If one is facing some serious problems with a room itself like standing waves or so instead of graphic eq it is better to have a go with a room correction software like room eq in combination with EQ APO for windows pc gives you a badass room correction solution using open source software. It takes some playing with measurements and filter design to get it right but it is worth it. Due to psichoacoustical aspect of audio reproduction. You can never set eq by ear to sound right on all music because we can't perceive phase angles versus amplitudal differences. For instance most of the time first thng people do is just crank the bass control up when they don't hear enough bass but due to room nodes bass frequencies may just have been canceled out by the room itself. maybe just setting one speaker slightly asymmetrically would solve the problem.

The mid ranges tend to be harsher for our ears. It is very common to see them scooped out. Eventually our ears settle on whatever sound is being heard. If nostalgia or other excitement kicks in then our brains fill in the discrepancies in the sound. Generally speaking ... it is better to attenuate a band and increase the overall volume than it is to amplify a band. Finally .... guitar players have big egos and they occupy a lot of mid range in the mix. They tend to fight the singers for who is louder in the mix. Food for thought. ;)

Equalizers, like any other piece of audio gear, have their place; if they weren’t needed, nobody would have invented it. I suspect that most people don’t need anything more complicated than your standard tone stack (treble and bass controls), though. A good amp, and a good set of speakers, should have a nearly flat frequency response; it’s the various input sources, though, that can complicate things; line-level inputs (aux) from an mp3/CD-player, outputs from a computer’s sound card, microphones, phono/turntable, cassette/DAT-player, and so on (and don’t get started on RIAA equalization, Dolby, etc...) Here’s where an equalizer can come in handy (along with a mixer board, no doubt!) Since I’m not an audiophile, I’ll leave it at that. 😊

I set my room up with REW (Room equalization wizard) and run flat. I've tried graphic equalizers before and they seem to mess things up worse than leaving it be. As you said, after a ton of fiddling you end up with a smiley face and frustrated. I can see a parametric or DSP if your room is really bad but I haven't needed to go that far in any rooms I've set up for myself.

An EQ is a disadvantage. Extra unneeded wiring and electronics. I never use em. Don't even use the bass or treble. I do use the loudness button though as nowadays with wife and kids around I usually almost always listen at low levels. And as I age (57) how good does the sound need to be with my aging ears anyway. Sigh. Keep up the great videos :)

Greetings: I am a regular with Shang0o66. But I subscribe here, too. I am a retired audio/video maintenance engr. from the Hollywood post production industry. You repairman help fill my diagnostic need without having a lot of test gear.. I never felt the need for one, but did appreciate the various sound chambers provided by my DSP equipped Yamaha RV-X2600. Also the provided mic allowed me to balance the level from all 7 speakers plus subwoofer for those .1 LFE signals. Somehow I caused the failure of the RF output. I would ask you to do the repair but the shipping from : LA would cost too much. Also craigslist has working replacements for $200. I think the test input level should be 1.0 P-P, Because the EQ defeat probably bypasses most of the EQ components, I would resolvee any preamp issues in DEFEAT mode before focusing on the individual EQ bands. You either failed to check the caps in the other eq bands or forgot to tell us the results of that testing. Also, you overlooked the option to swap wires from that board at both the inputs to fe EQ board and the output of same to narrow your testing (not both at the same time). It would be nice to know the voltages out of the PS. The H depends on that load current. Yes, you occasionally talk beyond my listening tolerance, but know you are educating those without a high voltage education. HTH Doc chiron

I have a10 band eq from radio shack that i have had for over 20 years and to me it sounds great I've used for music and watching movies and if I set just right it sounds just awesome with movies

Neat bit of kit, with all that stereo/mono switching, it would make a great workshop pre-amp, although the phono preamps would go to waste there. Those sliders are so big because they are stereo, a rather rare beast I was suprised to see those inductors in the eq, I'm so used to seeing it done with op-amps. As for graphic eq's in general, I've lost interest in them, if you need one, then maybe different speakers etc. is a better answer. The only bit I am not a fan of is using a slider for volume.

Graphic equalizer -> analysis paralysis. They're a useful tool, but the more bands you have, the more you'll need something to help you decide how to use it.

cool, I own one of these - first and only owner

Equalisers - my view is that they are a studio tool rather than a hifi component. If you need to set an EQ curve on everything, you have the wrong speakers for the room. There were however some vinyl records that were EQd with reduced bass in order to squeeze more playing time per side, so you had to bring that back up again at the listening end.

I noticed you have a Hako De-soldering "station". How do you like it?

51:48 - I'd replace the bulging filter cap (2nd from left) it appears to be directly connected to that resistor that's running hot.!

The EQ is useful if you an RTA and pink noise to set it up. Beyond that you need a very good sonic baseline in your mind derived from alot of listening to a high system to set one up.

could you make a small video of the plus and minus of all your capacitor tester/analyser ?

I am surprized to see the chokes in the eq section, ni ic's. I don't know the year so that may be why. My experience with chokes is from s pop eaker crossovers. Don't chokes create phase shift? But by your traces, phase did not seem to shift. Am i missing something.