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As you can see,
this particular project aimed to give the Quads
a very contemporary feel. The hammered
charcoal finish and modern connectors
are very much a break from Quad
tradition, but with the gold-plated
Quad II reissues still fresh
in our minds, I wanted to also do something different,
other than try and re-create
how these units would originally have been in the 1960's... |
| I'm aware that many Quad
fans regard resprays as sacrilege,
but the state of the existing paintwork was
such that a good result would never
have been achieved merely by cleaning.
Also, as these Quads were badged by Redifussion,
with inherent modifications from the standard
Quad II design (and
accompanying extra holes in the body-work)
the vintage value of these units was already
greatly reduced. As a respray was necessary,
I thought a break from the norm would
be fun. The work carried out is very
much inspired by Keith
Snook's excellent Quad refurbs (see
his d.c.~daylight
site) and draws heavily on his
ideas, incorporated with my own. The
paint used was "Hammerite"
which gives a very hard wearing,
textured finish. |
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With all
the re-wiring now complete, you can
see (photo opposite),
that all the new connectors are now linked
to the components -
not forgetting the parallel 1.5m ohm resistor
across the rear of the RCA/phono
input socket. It was at this point
that I began noticing some rather unusual behaviour
from the Quads... |
| ...instead of the output transformer
giving speaker level signals, it was producing
much more substantial voltages.
I now realised that these weren't standard units,
but instead were 100v line drivers used by
Rediffusion to drive distant
Tannoy monitor systems. Quad produced
many variations on the Quad
II theme for various clients - including Rediffusion
and the BBC, and
these two Quads had been adapted with 100v
line driver output transformers! I now had to set about
finding and fitting new standard
output transformers...
Check back soon for progress...
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may
'98