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The Dynaco Tube Audio Forum

Dedicated to the restoration and preservation of all original Dynaco tube audio equipment - Customer support for Tubes4hifi VTA tube amp and preamp kits and all Dynakitparts.com products


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Peter W.
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    Post by Dogstar Mon Jan 21, 2019 3:49 am

    Hey Bob!
    Out of curiosity can you tell
    How many complete amplifier kits have since sold since the beginning of time?
    By chance are there any numbers of how many of the original Dynaco amplifiers were sold?
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    Post by Guest Mon Jan 21, 2019 8:51 am

    this here is your best bet for info and stats, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynaco
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    Post by Bob Latino Mon Jan 21, 2019 8:56 am

    Dogstar wrote:Hey Bob!
    Out of curiosity can you tell
    How many complete amplifier kits have since sold since the beginning of time?
    By chance are there any numbers of how many of the original Dynaco amplifiers were sold?

    About 350,000 Dynaco ST-70 amplifiers (kit and wired) were sold from 1959 - 1976. If I can find any statistics on some of the other Dynaco amplifiers, I will post them here at a later date. I did once run across a link that listed approximately how many of each of the Dynaco amps was sold - SO - I am pretty sure that someone can find it. If you do run across a link listing the approximate number each of the original Dynaco amps/preamp sales statistics, post the link in this thread.

    There is a lot of good Dynaco tube history at the Greg Dunn web site below.

    Greg Dunn's unofficial Dynaco home page

    NOTE - The information on this web page has not been updated in 15 years so some of the links are way out of date or just "dead links"

    Bob
    Peter W.
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    Post by Peter W. Mon Jan 21, 2019 11:36 am

    For the curious:

    Dynaco's first HQ is now a church, and is a 2-story row-type building of perhaps 2.000 square feet in the Powelton section of Philadelphia.
    Dynaco's second HQ is now a parking lot for Penn/Presby medical center, but was a single-story 3-bay former service station and garage, also in Powelton.
    Dynaco's third HQ is also a church of some nature, and started as a 2-story light industrial building in the Strawberry Mansion area of Philadelphia. It might approach 30,000 square feet.
    Dynaco's last HQ was in Blackwood, NJ, just over the Delaware River in a single-story factory building - now a Tire Warehouse. About 55,000 square feet.

    Only Jefferson Street in Philly and Blackwood in NJ had actual on-site manufacturing capacity. It is unlikely that Jefferson Street did anything other than (perhaps) assemble boards and do service. Blackwood did it all.

    Aside: The Hafler HQ in Pennsauken, NJ was a multi-bay service garage building with small offices attached, all-in about 15,000 square feet. Back to his roots.

    Google Earth will show you all four locations - Look up Coles Road in Blackwood, where it crosses the Atlantic City Expressway, the factory was on the north east corner of that intersection, one building in. - now a tire warehouse.

    Quantities: I have no back-up for any of these figures - just anecdotal information from local pundits, including one (1) meeting with David Hafler that was purely accidental arising from my visit to Pennsauken to pick up some parts.

    ST70 - About 350,000 units
    MK-II - about 5,000 units
    MK-III - about 50,000 units
    MK-IV - about 500 units - if even that.
    ST35 - about 10,000 units
    SCA35 - about 20,000 units
    PAS2/3/3X - about 100,000 units
    FM1/3 - about 100,000 units

    Repeat: all of this is 100% anecdotal.

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    Post by Roy Mottram Mon Jan 21, 2019 7:24 pm

    sounds about right to me, and no wonder I only get about one inquiry a year about MK4 mods
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    Post by WLT Tue Jan 22, 2019 12:19 pm

    The MK VIs were not listed but I have seen a few places that estimate about 2000 units. I have no real backup verification for that info.

    I do wonder about the listed MK IV numbers though. If you look on Ebay or other for sale sites you do find Mk IV pretty regular. If so I would expect the numbers to be much higher than 500. The number of MK VIs being maybe 4 times higher than Mk IV. It just does not seem right.
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    Post by Dogstar Wed Jan 23, 2019 1:50 pm

    I should have asked how many of YOUR kits have been purchased since you started selling VTA kits?
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    Post by Roy Mottram Wed Jan 23, 2019 7:29 pm

    hopefully Bob will have the definitive answer to that, but I can make a rough estimate off the top of head without going thru 15 years of records.
    About 120-150 per year x 15 years is about 1800-2250 ST70s & ST120s. Plus the M125 amps . . .
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    Post by Bob Latino Wed Jan 23, 2019 8:17 pm

    Dogstar wrote:I should have asked how many of YOUR kits have been purchased since you started selling VTA kits?

    I am not sure of the exact number but Roy's estimate is probably in the ball park. Roy said 15 years but it has been about 13 years (2007 - 2019) that we have been selling the VTA amp kits ..

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    Post by Dogstar Wed Jan 23, 2019 10:34 pm

    Not going to disclose a quantity of kits sold?

    I’m just curious of how many people are enjoying music through your amps.
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    Post by bbqjoe Thu Jan 24, 2019 12:32 am

    Dogstar wrote:

    I’m just curious of how many people are enjoying music through your amps.

    I'm betting all of them are. Smile
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    Post by Peter W. Thu Jan 24, 2019 8:50 am

    Now, let's look at a few other conditions, just for giggles:

    The ST70 was in production for 30 years. At 350,000 units in all, that would be 11,667 per year, averaged. Let's be arbitrary. Lump all the VTA options together at 3,000, comes to 231 per year.

    When introduced, the ST70 kit was $100 ($99.95). That would be $847.45 today. A new VTA 70, with tubes is $879.

    This suggests that the VTA options occupies the same niche in the market today as the 70 did back in its day.

    The US population in 1960 was 186,654,905. The US population today is 329,093,110. That is 76.3% higher than in 1960.

    What this shows is the decline to near-extinction of 2-channel audio. At one level, it is similar to the decline of "Hot-Rodding" as a hobby. Costs, relative to a high-school kid's income have skyrocketed, and it is simply no longer feasible for that kid to tie up a bay in the family garage in these sanitized times. Nor can that kid walk down to the nearest machine-shop and get 'one of the guys' to weld something for him over lunch. The machine shop no longer exists, or has paperwork and costs that reach out of sight. Same with 2-channel audio. Unless one is Cary, McIntosh or Audio Research, desperately holding on to what remains of the high-end market, there is just not enough support out there for a vibrant community with a Tech HiFi on every other corner.

    Just some interesting thoughts.
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    Post by deepee99 Thu Jan 24, 2019 1:26 pm

    Apples and oranges, perhaps, but let's not forget Heathkit and Allied Radio (Knight-Kit), too. Wonder what their kit numbers were. Both were heavily into ham gear, Heathkit's SB line being the "poor man's Collins" but Heath's AR-15 was the cat's meow for audio in its heyday ("69 transistors and two ICs," most with sockets). I don't recall Lafayette making any kits but they had a pretty eclectic catalog as well for DIYers, a lot of it Japanese or Taiwanese in origin. IIRC it was Allied and Lafayette's merger that was the genesis of Radium Shack. Who am I missing?
    Reading Peter W's post, I guess you could say we all have worshiped at the "Church of Dynaco."
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    Post by Peter W. Thu Jan 24, 2019 2:16 pm

    Serious Kit Suppliers in Audio included:

    HH Scott (tube)
    Fisher (tube)
    Sherwood very briefly
    Pederson (anyone ever heard of them? PDQ, anyone?)
    Dynaco (tube & SS)
    Eico (tube)
    Harman-Kardon (tube)
    Heath (everything but tube)

    Of the bunch, Dynaco was by far the mass-market leader given the fact that for the first many years of their existence, they had no factory of any kind, being more aggregating parts supplied by others.

    Today, we have Audio Note, VTA, Vellman, Transcendent Sound, Bottlehead, Tube Depot, Oddwatt and any of several others in the business, all (excepting VTA) up there at the nosebleed level and focused on exotics.

    I think it is much like when Sylvania was in full production, they scrapped more tubes in a week than every present audio tube manufacturer on earth produce in a year.
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    Post by deepee99 Thu Jan 24, 2019 2:45 pm

    Peter W., respectfully beg to differ on Heath. They had a line of tube audio gear. The AA-32 comes to mind. A whopping 8 WPC, choice of ceramic or magnetic phono inputs, original Mullard input tubes (6GW8s for outputs). The AA-100 was very popular and (IIRC) came with a matching tuner. (See http://www.heathkit-museum.com/hifi/hvmaa-100.shtml)
    (One the ham side, did anyone here ever tackle a Heathkit Marauder? That was one bad-a$$ed SSB xmitter, pre-dated the SB lines.
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    Post by Peter W. Thu Jan 24, 2019 2:53 pm

    You are right.... Forgot about those beasts! (and they were beasts)
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    Post by deepee99 Thu Jan 24, 2019 2:59 pm

    Peter W. wrote:You are right.... Forgot about those beasts! (and they were beasts)
    PCBs? We don't need no stinking printed circuits! Smile
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    Post by WLT Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:10 pm

    I had a nice collection of Heath kit Williamson tube amps. The W-1s thru the W-5s. They also made the W6 and W7. Not a good reputation due to power transformer failures but they were nice amps and sounded pretty good. I had to much stuff and my Dynaco's were better so I sold them all.

    Heathkit made a number of tube amps and were pretty popular. Cheaper than the Dynas
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    Post by bbqjoe Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:24 pm

    We've come a long ways from the days of spinning a flat rock on our finger, sticking our tongue in a groove, and singing.

    (ok, maybe we never did that!) Statistics KNvr6Vh

    But being as we're not far from having chips, phones and 7.5 audio installed directly in our skulls, hopefully this group of audio freaks will continue to survive.

    As long as we teach and demonstrate the virtues of where we came, keep our gear running, and pass it down to those who we've taught to appreciate a few of the finer, purer things in life, this ever shrinking niche may continue to breathe.

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