[Ile_D_ARZ]

I took the liberty of quoting Schmitz below for his comments on the RA-1857 and the list of vintage Shindo items. It found it comprehensive.

Later today I can post and repost photos of some of the vintage Shindo I have had and have seen around and about. I also have the original basic circuit plans for the Model 77 preamp that came with the kit. Personally I prefer even the Model 77 to the more recent Leben RS-28CX. What the Leben gained in transparency it lost in musicality.

For the moment we are apple picking and pressing...cider season has begun

Originally Posted by Schmitz

Hi Ile_D_Arz,
many thanks for sharing those pics, always interesting.
I do know Shindo for 20 years and have always been in love with his gear, preferably the older models like yours. If you have ever trouble with them I can repair it with original parts, no problem for me as I know many of his gear.

Interesting tube combination, so it is 12AX7 phono stage, 6072 and EL84 line stage tubes, WE 412A rectifier tube (he has changed this later to 6X4, wow, really rare today). Intersting too, that EL84 has many applications and was excessivly used in the golden tube days as radio power tubes, so many of the "experts" would not give a high rating on this tube as preamp output tube. Shindo uses it and for sure he knows how it has to be used to sound very good in this application.

Nowadays original WE 185A sells for high$$$ so that shows the rarety of the parts inside and its quality. He surely hasnt unlimited stock on those parts but it was a surprise already that he has been able to build a (limited?) series of preamps with it, so that tells something about his massive stock of parts those days. With later Petrus he changed output trans to different types.
I know two versions of 300B power amp, the earlier one with four oil caps instead of three and without a cover above them. Wow, what an amplifier and what a nice tone this was being able to reproduce with such intimacy and power.
Here is a little list of Shindos early works, found in japanese.

Shindo Laboratory Co., Ltd. was established in 1977.
1978: development of RA124D vacuum tube mono amplifier Offering RA1474 before class.
1980: Offering A124B mono amplifier output 28W, output cattle out of the U.S. TRIAD products.
1981: the launch of RA186 amplifier for a mono output 25W, Western Electric 300B vacuum tube, TRIAD transformer.
1982: RA324 and RA252 mono after the offering of MA288S Cantabile amplifier also debut. 1983: launch of four models of mono grade: RA42 output of 10W with Western Electric Double pole 42; 6B4G of output 10W, 6.3V tube with 2A3 6B4G; RA342II output 20W, with EL34 tubes; the RA349-type output 10W, Western Electric 349A tube.
1983: Offer 300B single-ended output 8W Western Electric 300B tube; launched RA1561 equipped with built-in MC phono amplifier stage.
1984: 101 and 77 MC phono boost the market.
1985: year one breath launched multiple new machine are level before ALLEGRO 604S, the level before RA1474II, after GRAZIOSO EL34, output 10W, CONCERTO mono output 8W with Siemens Ed triode The push-pull Class A operation, the 77-type, 25 type the mono level output 25W Finally, there CANTABILE mono-level output 22W with EL34 vacuum tube.
1986: Offering F2A SINHONIA mono amplifier output 40W Siemens F2A vacuum tube.