Musings

Vintage HiFi for Music Lovers

We own two Carver receivers that we’ve used for over 30 years to play music from CDs and vinyl records. Both are proud mem­bers of a dis­ap­pear­ing breed of hifi com­po­nents designed and man­u­fac­tured in the US, and aimed at music lovers. They’ve become col­lec­tors items, prized by peo­ple who still own CD/DVD play­ers and turnta­bles for vinyl records.

Carver receivers appeal to audio­philes who appre­ci­ate high qual­ity music with sig­nif­i­cant detail and def­i­n­i­tion dur­ing play­back. There’s a warm spa­cious­ness to their sound that few of today’s dig­i­tal devices and com­pressed codecs can equal.

Although we also own dig­i­tal com­po­nents with today’s stan­dard HDMI, USB and coax inter­con­nec­tions, includ­ing WiFi access, we far pre­fer the sound pro­duced by this Carver Receiver.

That said, these vin­tage devices are com­pat­i­ble only with audio devices that include legacy input and out­put con­nec­tors — no HDMI con­nec­tors on board.

Built to Last

Our Carver receivers were built to last. They weigh more than 30 pounds. Their build qual­ity reflects tra­di­tional prin­ci­ples that no longer drive con­sumer brands: the notion that con­sumer devices should be designed for long life­times and ease of ser­vic­ing.

This is a stark con­trast to today’s real­ity, where brand name devices are designed for early obso­les­cence. All too many 21st cen­tury devices break just days or weeks after the war­ranty expires, and end up in a land­fill not long after.

Unlike today’s con­sumer elec­tron­ics you can still buy spare parts on eBay for our receiver, 33 years after it was man­u­fac­tured. Long after the Carver brand went out of busi­ness, as a sad con­se­quence of US labor costs that could no longer com­pete against cheap off­shore labor.

Thanks to the Carver’s core design, if you know how to use a sol­der­ing iron and have the skills to work with cir­cuit boards and ana­log parts, you can fix the Carver’s typ­i­cal fail­ure points (the out­put relays) in about 30 min­utes. Sadly, my hus­band and I lack the skills and the know-how to do this.

Preparing for a Tune-up

The design flaw of this receiver is the way its out­put relays fail after 10,000 hours of use, prob­a­bly due to heat-related chal­lenges. We’ve learned that our receiver needs a tune-up about once a decade, when its out­put relays even­tu­ally fail. It was over­due…

Our Carver stopped work­ing last year, so I’ve been on a 6-month quest to get it repaired. I bought replace­ment parts on eBay for about $30, and down­loaded a copy of the ser­vice man­ual writ­ten for repair tech­ni­cians.

Then I had to solve the real chal­lenge of obso­les­cence, find­ing some­one who knows how to use a sol­der­ing iron, under­stands schematic dia­grams, and can put those skills to use to repair a vin­tage ana­log device. These are fast dis­ap­pear­ing skills…

Vintage Items, Specialized Skills

I’m not the only one look­ing for prac­ti­cal repair options for vin­tage gear. For­tu­nately, I live in a place where eco-minded peo­ple are exper­i­ment­ing with options to help us all keep stuff out of the land­fills.

For exam­ple King County’s Eco­Con­sumer group is on a mis­sion to help peo­ple repair bro­ken house­hold items, includ­ing torn cloth­ing and bed­ding mate­ri­als. They’re exper­i­ment­ing with com­mu­nity-based solu­tions.

They’ve begun host­ing Repair Café events. They line up vol­un­teer “fix­ers” will­ing to take a stab at repair­ing house­hold items that local com­mu­nity mem­bers will bring to those events.

The event hosts try to match on-site repair spe­cial­ists with the items need­ing their atten­tion. Besides man­ag­ing atten­dees’ expec­ta­tions about what’s fea­si­ble, the event host declines items that are out­side the skills or scope that the day’s vol­un­teer fix­ers are will­ing to tackle.

Luck­ily for me, last weekend’s Repair Café included two spe­cial­ists who know how to repair a broad range of con­sumer elec­tron­ics, includ­ing vin­tage receivers like mine. They’d brought the right tools for the job includ­ing the sol­der and sol­der­ing iron.

That said, my Carver could not have been fixed if I hadn’t come pre­pared. Thanks to online research and advance plan­ning, I came equipped with the right spare parts. I also had a copy of the ser­vice man­ual on my iPad, so the tech­ni­cian could check the wiring dia­grams. These were the key resources my fixer needed so he could do his magic with the sol­der­ing iron.

Many Needs

While I waited for the spe­cial­ist to repair my Carver, I looked around to see what other kinds of repairs were pop­u­lar. To my sur­prise the busiest “fix­ers” were the women oper­at­ing the sewing machines. They restored a num­ber of torn gar­ments, bro­ken zip­pers and dam­aged quilts.

I over­heard that a num­ber of the items await­ing repair had recently been pur­chased from thrift shops… A sewing machine had come from a pawn shop — indica­tive of how badly these events are needed by peo­ple strug­gling to make ends meet.

While I was there, the fix­ers repaired a weed whacker, sev­eral lamps, a Singer sewing machine, a juicer, a gar­den orna­ment made of stained glass, at least two music com­po­nents, and dozens of torn gar­ments. Plus my vin­tage Carver Receiver.

I couldn’t help but notice that most of the vol­un­teers pro­vid­ing repair ser­vices are well over 40 years old.  Their skills may be a dis­ap­pear­ing art…

The room was crowded through­out the event. There were always peo­ple wait­ing in line for the next avail­able fixer. Clearly, the Eco­Con­sumer group is on to some­thing that our com­mu­nity wants and needs. Atten­dees went home delighted.

I’m grate­ful to have found some­one at the Repair Café with the sol­der­ing skills my Carver needed. This made me happy all week­end.

My hus­band and I are thrilled to know our vin­tage Carver is now ready to keep work­ing for another 10,000 hours!