Haden Boardman uncovers a surprisingly common but forgotten about homemade valve amplifier from the 1950s. Soldering iron at the ready

Tony Bolton is visiting Pro-Ject factory in Chech Republic.
"Having reviewed a great many Pro-Ject turntables over the years I was pleased to be invited by UK distributor, Henley Designs, to visit the factory in the Czech Republic.The factory is in Litovel, a pleasant little city with a population of 10,000 in the Upper Moravian Vale. It straddles the River Moravia which is bridged by the 1692 Bridge of St. John, the third oldest bridge in the Czech Republic."

Building blocks in many a budding hi-fi buff's first separates system, Dual's series of CS505 turntables is regarded with great affection to this day. We test the CS505-2 Review: Tim Jarman Lab: Paul Miller

A couple of years ago I devised a very simple circuit that people could use to build a headphone amplifier/DAC. I named it the HeadDAC. The aim was to come up with a unit so easy to put together that someone with no previous experience of practical electronics would feel able to make one if they fancied. I 'unveiled' the design in the December 2010 issue of Hi-Fi News along with a link to details of the circuit in case any reader wanted to give it a try

Tubes glow in orange colour and produce nice "warm" atmosphere. Almost as if you were sitting in your parents house by the fire place. Music is magnificent. On every record I found new sounds, like another dimension. Feels as if tubes have extra power and can reach deeper on every record than solid state amps. It does not matter that it has more than 30 years on the clock. It can outperform most of modern amps. With Fisher I discovered that Hip hop music can be pleasant. Musical stage is wide and deep.