I have recently got hold of another lot of vintage stuff and this one is a real cracker. Some people may have seen it but please dont shoot me!

Its a Grand Prix 608 Moderne Stereo. These early bits are not usually found in England but the original owner was Danish and moved over here. I bought it from his daughter after he passed away. It has been in regular use until recently which I suppose is better than having stood unused for years. Its not perfect, there are a couple of small bits of damage to the corners of some of the veneer but nothing serious at all. Also the AM tuning string is broken, not really a huge concern at the moment. There is also a small knob missing (Martin, any chance....?) but apart from that its all working. How does it sound? Well, Iphone plugged in to the back and the outputs connected to some BV Pentas and the sound is staggering. Truely wonderful. It just shows what 6 REAL watts can do!

Here are some pictures. I have done nothing to it yet so it will get a nice clean up when I can stop listening to it.

To make this even better it came as a full system with record deck and speakers. The deck is a bit odd in that it has two disks saying what type it is on it, is this normal? On the bottom corner it says type 42vf but under the tone arm it says type 608. Was the 608 purely if sold with a 608? This again works well but the stylus is, well, rubbish!

Luckily it still has the correct 3 pin plug to attach to the Grand Prix

To finish the system off, it came with a pair of S607 speakers in Rosewood to match the GP. Quite nice looking but not sure what I will do with these. It would be a shame to split the system up so I expect I will stick them in the loft!

There are a few chips in a couple of the corners but Im not too fussed about them.

I do have a couple of questions about the 608 GP. The knob thats missing is marked Balance 1,2,3,4 ecko. It seems to make it slightly more bassy. What is it supposed to do? When I plug something into the 5 pin din socket on the back you access it by pressing the button marked ecxtra but there is also an extra 2 button. Infact does anyone have a users manual as Im not sure what some of the inputs or rather odd banana plug outputs/inputs on the back are for!

Plus to complete my Scandanavin set up, I got a "new" car yesterday. Its my daily driver too so luckily the heater is great. The colour even matches the Grand Prix and its nearly the same age!

Oh, that is nice, glad you got it, and it was not turned out to some house clearance company.

Ooh, I'm envious - a wonderful set! I also tried connecting Pentas to my Dirigent and the result was astonishing!

beaker:

The knob thats missing is marked Balance 1,2,3,4 ecko. It seems to make it slightly more bassy. What is it supposed to do?

The "ecko" position is for, well, echo. You need the external spring echo unit for that. Perhaps the others are just for different amounts of effect. One of Martin's most recent resto threads featured one, wasn't it even the same receiver, or a year or two younger model?

Real Volvos (read: RWD) always had excellent heaters, only surpassed by Ladas

I like that Grand Prix! Congratulations with the set, the one I have tried sounded exellent

tournedos:

Real Volvos (read: RWD) always had excellent heaters, only surpassed by Ladas

My FWD Volvo 480 has a fine heater in my opinion, but it's more a renault/porsche blend and less Volvo