Dyna Kit
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aliveatfive
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I've built a bunch of them. They were cheap (in their day) competitors for Marantz and McIntosh. The kits were easy to do and they worked. Anything that now carries a Dyna name is either very old, or a copy of their previous work. I now have in my collection: a Dyna Stereo 70 power amp (awaiting Wellbourne modifications,) 2 PAS preamps (both modified - one with AudioAmateur mods and the other with Van Alstine SuperPas mods,) and a Dyna FM3 tube tuner (stock.) Their tubed stuff was allegedly better than the solid-state stuff and it is still plentiful on the used market. BTW, I use most of this stuff in a secondary system that drives Paradigm speakers.
Tube60
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I built a Steele 70 Mk III, a hotrodded ST-70, done by my friend Dan Steele. I built it in trade for a pair of Mk III monoblocs. Much better sounding than stock. A stock '70 is a good sounding amp, but Dan's mod is really superb. I forget his website, but PM me if you'd like to look into the mod kit.
I've listened to Dyna solid-state gear, and IMO they sound nasty. I'm not even saying that with my own tube bias, but comparing to contemporary and more modern SS designs.
I've listened to Dyna solid-state gear, and IMO they sound nasty. I'm not even saying that with my own tube bias, but comparing to contemporary and more modern SS designs.
aliveatfive
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OK - under duress of sheer boredom, I broke down and bought one of those new Dynakits. (dynakitparts.com) It's an amazingly accurate copy of a 60's vintage Dyna ST35. I'll probably pair it with an old PAS 3 that I have lying around and put it into a bedroom system. No Logans for this baby - its limited power output will not drive them. I'll probably use an old pair of Rat Shack Optimus speakers with the Linaeum tweeter that were popular a few years back. Cost of the kit was 450 bucks less tubes. I'd have bought this used if I could, but it's a very rare component. Report later.
Tube60
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The ST-35 is a GREAT sounding amp! A friend of mine owns an original that he re-capped. Punchy, good bass response and really sweet sounding overall. Those old Rat Shack speakers should sound good with that amp. Speaking of the Linaeum drivers, I've never listened to those. How do they sound? As I recall, they got good reviews in the magazines.
aliveatfive
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Tube60 said:
Years ago, when I bought the speakers, they had gotten pretty good press for what was a very inexpensive speaker system. The bass region of the audio spectrum does not go very deep, but it's not bad considering the size of the box. The tweeter is where the magic is. There is a transparency to transients that I've not heard from cheap speakers. They sound almost electrostatic-like. That's what drew me to these in the first place. There were some informative articles on the 'net at the time with instructions for replacing the parts in the crossover. I used air-core inductors and good quality caps. These still won't touch anything over 6-700 bucks, but for cheap, they're quite good.
Dominick22
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How is the ST-35 coming along?
I am excited for a review!
Dominick
I am excited for a review!
Dominick
aliveatfive
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The amp is about 90% completed. Unfortunately, about a week ago, I tore up my knee and I'm having surgery to reattach a tendon on Tuesday. If the pain is endurable, I'll finish the amp up shortly after I get home.
The manual needs a bit more work because a few steps have been changed from the original manual. The output transformers are slightly diiferent from the originals. The new ones have 4 and 8 ohm outputs compared to 8 and 16 for the originals.
aliveatfive
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This ST 35 has been in a bedroom system for about 6 weeks now. It is very easy to put together and will probably take only a few days for most to complete. Dynakitparts.com provides parts that are almost identical to all the originals. The new amp is very good sounding for a little cheapie unit. Just don't expect to drive 'stats with this!
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Rockin_Two_Ranch
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DYNA KITS I GAVE 5 STARS most would now give 4
=====================================================
I built a couple of Dyna Kits back in the mid 60's -- a 10 year old could build one -- all transistors if I recall -- separate pre-amp, amp, and tuner. Was a 0-100K that exceeded that on the bench. Some people did not like it because the sound was 'too clean' or as they said 'sounded hollow'. That was through a very large set of AR speakers before they got tiny and small.
Back then there were two top level amps -- Scott (Kit), Marentz and MacIntosh (not kit) and a second tier of Scott (kit, maybe better than Dyna by a tad) -- and being a radio amateur and member of high school club, I can tell you that with access to their equiptment the Dyna met and exceeded every published benchmark -- in fact it exceeded my neighbors (who'd died and i 'inherited' his) Macks in most tests. if I rember marentz's were totally out of our league. Took me a weekend to build the amp and tuner from scratch, the next weekend was taken up with the amp alone (call it Saturday mess around and finish up on Sunday late morning to mid afternoon, though nothing LOOKED complicated, this was back when transistors were reasonably new on the 'hi-fi stereo' market and the circuits were amazing works of engineering. and they were built better than a tank -- the difference being the massive voltage spikes that would fry transistors, but rarely did -- the fuses on the transistors reacted too slow to stop damage, but the Marentz and Mac were nearly impervious and I can't remember that we ever caused a volt/amp spike (that was within reason) that damaged the units -- of course you had the tubes as did Scott to take up a lot of what passed through before the fuse knew what hit it -- that is MY memory. I vagely remember a bet I took that was the cost of the kit, no labor, but the cost of the amp kit if I'd do something stupid like double the amps in a spike, and it came out quicker than snot on wet soap, and still with a .01% distortion at 0-100k. There was SOME damage, and I can't recall it -- but I always rand a very large ground wire -- still do on all my vehicles -- and this was one reason, now I can look at the warranty of a battery, and double it and get about it's real life and real amp-hours plus a push in the voltage department --
For the time, the equiptment, and the engineering, I'd give Dyna the same today as I would have then: 5 stars full on and a '+' if they had one. Others at the time would have given it a 4 or 4+ because of the sound - MAYBE because of the damage that COULD happen with a near lightning hit.
While the Dykakit tuner was not as fancy as others (just a tuner, on-off switch and maybe a near-far knob, or a fine tuning knob -- it was about as simple as you could get, on-off switch, tuner, maybe volume (?) and a sensitivity switch with a tube to give you signal strength rather than a meter like the Scott ( I might have wired that in myself) -- but it was clean, and not the face of something that you would want to see in some Mercury space craft - most would say that the Scott had a better tuner and I'd have to agree, but for design, Dyna, and for price - Dyna, and ease of build, Dyna. And for no wiring of th tuner, a direct nob on the rheostat and a no heat sink (if I remember correctly) the Dyna was at $99 for the tunder and $120 each for the amp and pre-amp - you had a darned near perfect set -- And the 0-100K +/- something like .01% distortion, it beat a lot of our lab equiptment. I approached out lab O-scopes -- I think the one we used was a scope that was just a dumbed down model of a military scope built up by Linton Labs that did a lot of early LASER and glass and glass-lathe work for the military. And the Dyna picked up 0+ cycles, and the scope didn't move until it hit 5???? CPS ---
So, from what I know they were easy to build, had true lab-bench performance, so good that folks from Sierra College came up to look and said demeaing things about it since it was a 'hobby' amp for 'music' and only cost $120 and they'd spent $500+ for their 'real' amps that put out higher distortion at lower watts than the dyna.
So those would give it 3 stars, high-fiers would give it 4 and people who were not afraid to throw the 'bass' switch and HEAR the difference or run it up to it's full 100watts (????????) would give it the 5 stars. I know when I went to a college in Illinois, NIU, used it to boost the signals on their radio telescopes.
Not sure where they are today -- since most of what I do is far different than what I did then -- but I'd say go for it -- they always had exceptional engineering, build solid, quiet units, that were easy and fast to put together -- like in a weekend. I WOULD add a fan were I to do it today, and might even drive it from a second circuit if sound were critical -- esp if you were using an o-scope of today's models, you are more likely to see it than hear it, even at full volume and good speakers.
Has anyone ever built these? How do they sound? I am thinking of building one for fun. I don't think they can compete with my Pass Labs but it should be fun.
=====================================================
I built a couple of Dyna Kits back in the mid 60's -- a 10 year old could build one -- all transistors if I recall -- separate pre-amp, amp, and tuner. Was a 0-100K that exceeded that on the bench. Some people did not like it because the sound was 'too clean' or as they said 'sounded hollow'. That was through a very large set of AR speakers before they got tiny and small.
Back then there were two top level amps -- Scott (Kit), Marentz and MacIntosh (not kit) and a second tier of Scott (kit, maybe better than Dyna by a tad) -- and being a radio amateur and member of high school club, I can tell you that with access to their equiptment the Dyna met and exceeded every published benchmark -- in fact it exceeded my neighbors (who'd died and i 'inherited' his) Macks in most tests. if I rember marentz's were totally out of our league. Took me a weekend to build the amp and tuner from scratch, the next weekend was taken up with the amp alone (call it Saturday mess around and finish up on Sunday late morning to mid afternoon, though nothing LOOKED complicated, this was back when transistors were reasonably new on the 'hi-fi stereo' market and the circuits were amazing works of engineering. and they were built better than a tank -- the difference being the massive voltage spikes that would fry transistors, but rarely did -- the fuses on the transistors reacted too slow to stop damage, but the Marentz and Mac were nearly impervious and I can't remember that we ever caused a volt/amp spike (that was within reason) that damaged the units -- of course you had the tubes as did Scott to take up a lot of what passed through before the fuse knew what hit it -- that is MY memory. I vagely remember a bet I took that was the cost of the kit, no labor, but the cost of the amp kit if I'd do something stupid like double the amps in a spike, and it came out quicker than snot on wet soap, and still with a .01% distortion at 0-100k. There was SOME damage, and I can't recall it -- but I always rand a very large ground wire -- still do on all my vehicles -- and this was one reason, now I can look at the warranty of a battery, and double it and get about it's real life and real amp-hours plus a push in the voltage department --
For the time, the equiptment, and the engineering, I'd give Dyna the same today as I would have then: 5 stars full on and a '+' if they had one. Others at the time would have given it a 4 or 4+ because of the sound - MAYBE because of the damage that COULD happen with a near lightning hit.
While the Dykakit tuner was not as fancy as others (just a tuner, on-off switch and maybe a near-far knob, or a fine tuning knob -- it was about as simple as you could get, on-off switch, tuner, maybe volume (?) and a sensitivity switch with a tube to give you signal strength rather than a meter like the Scott ( I might have wired that in myself) -- but it was clean, and not the face of something that you would want to see in some Mercury space craft - most would say that the Scott had a better tuner and I'd have to agree, but for design, Dyna, and for price - Dyna, and ease of build, Dyna. And for no wiring of th tuner, a direct nob on the rheostat and a no heat sink (if I remember correctly) the Dyna was at $99 for the tunder and $120 each for the amp and pre-amp - you had a darned near perfect set -- And the 0-100K +/- something like .01% distortion, it beat a lot of our lab equiptment. I approached out lab O-scopes -- I think the one we used was a scope that was just a dumbed down model of a military scope built up by Linton Labs that did a lot of early LASER and glass and glass-lathe work for the military. And the Dyna picked up 0+ cycles, and the scope didn't move until it hit 5???? CPS ---
So, from what I know they were easy to build, had true lab-bench performance, so good that folks from Sierra College came up to look and said demeaing things about it since it was a 'hobby' amp for 'music' and only cost $120 and they'd spent $500+ for their 'real' amps that put out higher distortion at lower watts than the dyna.
So those would give it 3 stars, high-fiers would give it 4 and people who were not afraid to throw the 'bass' switch and HEAR the difference or run it up to it's full 100watts (????????) would give it the 5 stars. I know when I went to a college in Illinois, NIU, used it to boost the signals on their radio telescopes.
Not sure where they are today -- since most of what I do is far different than what I did then -- but I'd say go for it -- they always had exceptional engineering, build solid, quiet units, that were easy and fast to put together -- like in a weekend. I WOULD add a fan were I to do it today, and might even drive it from a second circuit if sound were critical -- esp if you were using an o-scope of today's models, you are more likely to see it than hear it, even at full volume and good speakers.
