Darkroom soundsystem

[ic-racer]

I have been doing some minor construction in my darkroom and have not been developing or printing. I had a little water problem when the 3 year old put the whole roll of toilet paper in the toilet right above the darkroom. Wow, an overflowing toilet is really a mess. A LOT of water comes up and over! Luckily I keep trash bags over the 4x5 enlargers to keep the dust off. This also kept the water off! I cleaned it all up quickly and fired up the de-humidifier, blow dryer and a space heater. Things dried up very quickly and there was no damage.

Because I had everything moved out of the way I decided to paint some of the walls and install a sound system.

I have been restoring my vintage audio gear (and hanging out at AudioKarma.org). Just like you can't have too many cameras, you also can't have too many HiFi amplifiers. I decided to put one of them to work in the darkroom.

[Eric Woodbury]

Looks good. If you do film in there, you need a black curtain in front or black tape over all the lights.

[ic-racer]

That amp, BTW, is a Pioneer SA-800. The 1973 SA-800 price was $240 USD ( this translates to $1,177 today). I found a place that had NOS output transistors and replaced those and replaced some noisy preamp transistors. I did a few other component replacements and set the DC offset and bias and is sounds pretty good.

[ic-racer]

Looks good. If you do film in there, you need a black curtain in front or black tape over all the lights.

Good point. I also had a Pioneer SA-6700 to use, but it has two meters that are green. I actually replaced the burned out bulbs and made new green filters for the bulbs out of rosco filter (the same green I use for split grade printing). This was to match the original exactly. I should have used some rosco RED!! (its kind of a pain; I'm not going to take it apart and re-do it)

Anyway I choose the SA-800 because its only light is the power indicator which is orange. Not sure if I'll keep that CD changer, but if I do, it gets a little mask over that display.

[Bruce Barlow]

Looks really nice!

I bought a sweet little compact system for my new darkroom years ago. Then my pre-teenage son saw it.

Now I have an OK boom box. Does the job, but not luxurious.

Feel my envy! What do you listen to while dunking negatives?

[fuegocito]

I have always had some sort of sound "system" in my various experiences with darkroom. When i was using a communal darkroom, I had Grundig portable radio. Eventually I had my own darkroom and I went through several incarnations of boom box to bookshelf setups...and now I have this big-ish bookshelf system that rattles everything if I crank it up too high.

The one bonus thing about plying music, specially with tape or CD's, was it sort of keeps track of time...but now I plug in my old ipod and let it "randomly" go though it many gigs of music.

[mikebarger]

I'm using a marantz 2285 with a pair of marantz 7 speakers

mike

[Kevin M Bourque]

I like to keep music in the darkroom, but I also find it distracting at times. My favorite is when there's a Braves game on the radio. Baseball on the radio can be better than baseball on TV.

I've got a pair of hand-me-down Infinities on the wall. The room is too small to place them properly.

I solved the "lights on the amplifier" problem by putting the stuff in a cabinet with doors. Works well. Rock on!

[jeroldharter]

That looks great. the darkroom is a great place for vintage components.

I wonder if some red acetate filters would fit over the lights on the stereo by static?

I put my stereo in the adjacent workroom and have just the speakers in my darkroom. I was tempted to get nice big speakers, but I worried that the base might cause subtle, random vibration in my enlarger so I bought smaller speakers that still sound OK and I avoid the temptation to crank it up. I agree that sports on the radio is a good darkroom pastime. Breaks up the monotony of music and sometimes music is hypnotizing while rocking a tray in the dark.

[neil poulsen]

. . . I put my stereo in the adjacent workroom and have just the speakers in my darkroom. I was tempted to get nice big speakers, but I worried that the base might cause subtle, random vibration in my enlarger . . .

That's a good point. Maybe I need to curb my base desires.

Halfway kidding, you could plug your stereo into your enlarging timer's safelight plug, so that the stereo turns off when you start the timer.