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I went for the debut carbon too. For me it came down to the aesthetic as the debut is just cleaner looking to my eye. I liked the green but decided to play it safe and go blue instead. Pretty happy so far.  (please excuse lovely phone camera)
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Oct 29, 2015 16:50
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Pardon my ignorance, but what does the Carbon have over the U-Turn Orbit? Their aesthetics look almost the same and the U-Turn is way cheaper.
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Oct 29, 2015 18:05
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Quidnose posted:Pardon my ignorance, but what does the Carbon have over the U-Turn Orbit? Their aesthetics look almost the same and the U-Turn is way cheaper. It's available in the UK for one.
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Oct 29, 2015 18:08
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That's a good reason~
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Oct 29, 2015 21:00
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sacre posted:I went for the debut carbon too. For me it came down to the aesthetic as the debut is just cleaner looking to my eye. I thought the carbon shipped with an Ortofon 2M red?
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Oct 29, 2015 22:02
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ShotgunWillie posted:I thought the carbon shipped with an Ortofon 2M red? There are two options as I recall. This one shipped with the OM-10 so it was a bit cheaper. I also took advantage of some favourable exchange rates and bought it in europe and carried back to the UK on a recent trip. I saved about £60
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Oct 29, 2015 22:15
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So that plinth is metal is it? Looks nice. How come people spend another ton on a plastic one? What's the upside? I probably won't do that.
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Oct 29, 2015 22:17
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sacre posted:There are two options as I recall. This one shipped with the OM-10 so it was a bit cheaper. I think you mean the OM-5E, since the OM-10 isn't available as a complete pickup anymore, and would actually be an upgrade over a 2M Red.
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Oct 29, 2015 22:20
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Bape Culture posted:So that plinth is metal is it? Looks nice. How come people spend another ton on a plastic one? What's the upside? Nah man. Carbon and UTurn basic plinths are made of MDF.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:17
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KozmoNaut posted:I think you mean the OM-5E, since the OM-10 isn't available as a complete pickup anymore, and would actually be an upgrade over a 2M Red. It's definitely the om10. Pro-Jects website lists it as the cheaper option after the 2m red.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:20
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They probably take the OM body and stick the replacement Stylus 10 on it, then. It's odd that it's the cheaper option, since it should technically be better than the 2M.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:22
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Quidnose posted:Pardon my ignorance, but what does the Carbon have over the U-Turn Orbit? Their aesthetics look almost the same and the U-Turn is way cheaper. IIRC, the component, build, and fit/finish quality are all much better on the ProJect. Also, I've heard mixed reviews of the QA for the U-Turn. Within the sub-$400 price range there isn't much room for fluff. Bape Culture posted:So that plinth is metal is it? Looks nice. How come people spend another ton on a plastic one? What's the upside? You mean the platter? The plinth (rectangular base) is MDF. It's supposedly better at cutting down on static and vibrations but I'm positive that those effects aren't noticeable. I assume that people mostly get it because it looks snazzy and exotic. At least that would be my reason to do it if I ever did.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:56
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The base on my turntable is SIMULATED METAL. No, really. It's silver-painted MDF.
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Oct 30, 2015 00:36
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ColdPie posted:The base on my turntable is SIMULATED METAL. No, really. It another decal that reads "DOHC 16-VALVE TURBO-SUPERCHARGED INLINE FOUR" underneath it. I love/hate the circa-80s Japanese trend of putting florid script listing literally every single feature on the front of their products. And usually the features themselves had these ridiculously fancy semi-engrish names, too. "Hey, you wanna come listen to this new compact disc on my Legato Linear Link Pioneer CD player that I have hooked up to my Spontaneous Twin Drive Linear Sony amplifier and my Active Servo Technology Yamaha speakers?" E: The best one I've seen yet was a Sony amp that advertised "Advanced STD", which sounds kinda scary. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Oct 30, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 07:43
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Qwijib0 posted:I got the white one, looks really slick on the dark wood. can you take a picture of the whole setup? I'm looking at selling my TT-02 and upgrading to one of those Uturns, I love the minimalist design, but I want a table to match. My gf works with antiques, and she asked me to describe what I want, and the best I could do is 'I'll know it when I see it" e; Are any of the uturn accessories a must have, such as the acrylic platter? Dr.Caligari fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Oct 31, 2015 |
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Oct 31, 2015 02:12
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I facing a little bit of a choice, since I have three probably equally good options for my second stereo setup lined up, at roughly the same price. One is a Sharp Optonica setup, consisting of an SM-7100 60WPC amp, an ST-5100 tuner and an RT-5100 cassette deck. I love the slick looks with the satin aluminum finish and the black strip with all the indicator lights. However the tape deck needs new belts and I'm a little scared of the custom amplifier chip packages, which are probably unobtanium by now in case one of them should happen to blow. There are a couple of hits on google about how people have managed to replace the blown custom ICs with discrete components, but it's probably not an ideal solution. Dunno how often the ICs blow in these amps, though. I guess custom output ICs are pretty much unavoidable on anything from the late 70s onwards, and most of them seem to be working just fine still. The Blaupunkt amp I posted about earlier in the thread uses STK-0060 II modules, and those have survived just fine for 36 years and counting. Option two is a Sanyo Plus P20+C20 60WPC power amp and pre-amp set, which comes with an unspecified matching Sanyo tuner. Classic brushed aluminum looks and nifty LED-based power meter on the power amp, but probably a similar issue with custom ICs in the output stage. Can hardly find any information on Google, either good or bad. Option three is a Technics SU-7700. 50WPC, Brushed aluminum, toggle switches, analog VU meters, fully discrete output stage (easier to repair if needed). It's pretty sweet, but I've kinda decided I probably want something LED-based, since I have analog VU meters on the main stereo. It's also a little bit more expensive, and doesn't come with a tuner or anything. Decisions, decisions. E: I also have a defective Technics SU-V2A that I picked up a little while back for next to nothing since the left channel is dead. It's in absulytely 100% mint cosmetic condition, but unfortunately it probably needs an STK-8040 output IC. Apparently they are either hella expensive as NOS, or crap quality fakes that blow up instantly when you try to pull any power from them. But if I can get it fixed, that could be a good option, too. E2: I ended up buying the Optonica setup, because it's totally slick and I dig having a big gently caress-off stack of stereo separates. E3: I wonder if there is any way to have the peak meters on the tape deck stay always on, instead of only being activated when making a recording. More blinkenlights = more better. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Nov 1, 2015 |
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Oct 31, 2015 23:59
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(Please excuse the crappy phone picture quality.) So yeah, I ended up buying the Sharp Optonica setup. It's pretty sweet, the build quality is absolutely top notch and solid as hell. The amp weighs like 12kg, it's a total beast, with some seriously ginormously beefy heatsinks inside. Every knob and switch feels nice and solid, even if the push buttons have plastic covers. The tuner picks up a hell of a lot more stations with much higher signal strength than any of my other tuners, apparently it's a 4-gang FM tuner, which is kinda high-end. The tape deck is nice too, with auto program search and automatic playback/record on powerup (to use with an external timer). However, it needs new belts, which I am currently waiting for.  But I just couldn't help myself, I just had to go have a look at the Technics SU-7700, for curiosity if nothing else. When I stepped in the door, I saw a couple of reel-to-reel machines just standing around in the hallway, and as I got further in, there was just more and more gear everywhere. I'm talking like old-school metal-faced amps and receivers just stacked on their sides on top of each other, everywhere I looked. And then I got into his living room, which was also filled with old amps and receivers, including some really sweet rack-mounted Akai systems. The dude I was buying from had a home theater setup consisting of a bigass plasma TV (of course), Yamaha's TOTL receiver (Aventage CX-A5000) and six ginormous Cerwin Vega speakers, each the size of a small fridge, and each with a 15" woofer. I was honestly kinda wondering why he was even bothering with a little 12" Yamaha subwoofer as well, because holy poo poo. So he shows me the Technics amp, which he's selling because he's getting rid of some of his stuff, and because he wants to concentrate on vintage JVC, Akai and Cerwin-Vega. He used to work in a hifi store in the 70s and 80s, and those were the brands he specialized in. The amp is in great condition, a tiny little scuff here and there and one of the toggle switches is a little bit cracked and needs a dab of superglue, but for a nearly 40 year old amp, it was nothing major at all. A sure buy for anyone who's into VU meters, silver-faced components and vintage appeal.  So we started shooting the breeze about old hifi and stuff, and it turns out that he used to be a service tech at the telco/ISP where I work, but he left a couple of years ago because of management bullshit. So we ended up talking for like 4 hours about everything and nothing, he showed off the awesome home theater and some of the coolest pieces in his massive collection and we talked about hifi prices and rarity, that sort of thing. Eventually we got down to talking about how much I should pay for the amp, because I'm pretty sure we both knew at that point that I was taking it home. We end up settling on ~$130, but then we start talking about the speakers he was demoing it on, a set of JBL 4410 studio monitors, which is the little brother to the 4412, which in turn is the studio sibling of the legendary L100 Century AFAIK. If you don't know these speakers, trust me when I say they're absolutely awesome, some of the best JBL has ever made. Their only weakness is the foam surround on the woofer, but if I have to refoam them every 10-15 years, I'm OK with that.  He was basically only using them to demo gear so he wouldn't have to hook it up to his main setup, so they were kinda sorta only taking up space. We haggled a little bit and I ended up buying the Technics and the JBLs for ~$370 total, which is probably less than a good pair of those JBLs usually go for by themselves. And they're in great condition, the woofers were refoamed a couple of years ago and the veneer only has a couple of minor scuffs here and there. It's real wood veneer, so I'll probably recondition them sometime in the future. The only issue with them is that most of the studs on the front grills are broken, but I think I can do something creative with some small neodymium magnets to fix that. He threw in a couple of speaker stands that he had extra. So after we shook hands on the new amp+speaker deal, he pointed me to another set of speakers in the corner and said that I could have those as well if I wanted them, for free. They're Sony SS-G1 Mk2s and apart from the hideous 70s brown paint and speaker cloth, they're actually kinda nice. Apparently the paint hides some pretty nice veneer, so I'm thinking about carefully stripping off the paint to make them a little nicer. They were missing the tweeters, but he gave me two Vifa tweeters that aren't the original units, but they fit the cutouts and should work well enough.  And then he showed me his garage and the totally awesome Pontiac Trans-Am 6.6  that he was currently fixing up. I totally forgot to take a picture, it was hella sweet though.So I ended up spending 4 hours (plus 1.5 hours driving there and back) and a lot more money than I had expected, but it was so worth it. And you'd better believe I saved his contact details. Oh yeah, and here's the SU-V2A I picked up for $7 last week. It's in mint physical condition (seriously, there is a single scratch on top, otherwise you'd think it was straight out of the box), but the left channel is completely dead. It's probably a faulty amplifier module, they're prone to failure (all of Technics' "New Class A" amps suffer from this) and replacements are either expensive or low-grade Chinese copies. If all else fails, it would probably make a ridiculously awesome case for a custom amp project of some kind. 
KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Nov 3, 2015 |
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Nov 3, 2015 14:10
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That's some awesome stuff KozmoNaut. Sounds like you had a good day. I've been trying to find a headphone amp myself. Nothing I have works well with my headphones, either I get buzzing or the amp isn't powerful enough. Trying to find a good headphone amp is hard because it's prime audiophile territory and everything is covered in marketing bullshit.
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Nov 3, 2015 18:07
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I've been extremely satisfied with my O2 headphone amp, if you read through NwAvGuy's blog you'll see objective reasoning for every design choice. That also goes for the ODAC which can be bought separately or integrated into the O2 housing. There is plenty of power to drive my 250 ohm Beyerdynamic DT-880s and absolutely no noise at all even on high gain and 100% volume. Most sellers of the O2+ODAC will let you choose your own gain settings, I ordered the standard setup of 2.5x and 6.5x, and the higher setting is perfect for the DT-880s. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Nov 3, 2015 |
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Nov 3, 2015 18:23
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Right on. I actually have an ODAC I put into a stereo I used to use with my media PC. I have a pair of Sennheiser HD 580s, I think they are 300ohm so that's probably about the same. Canadian dollar is pretty crappy right now so everything out of the US is more expensive.
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Nov 3, 2015 19:04
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I'm using the Shiit Vali tube headphone amp paired with the Modi DAC. It makes a nice small stack on my desk and sounds great for a reasonable price. Build quality and performance are excellent and every pair of headphones I have connected to it have sounded great.
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Nov 4, 2015 01:47
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My SL-23 has a strobe light on it, and it's always had a small bit of pitch wobble with a regular period. It is audible, especially on long, sustained notes; Daft Punk's Veridis Quo sounds particularly sick. Pretty sure mine's running far out of spec. I don't have any maintenance history, but it is about 40 years old and I know it was unused for a long time before I bought it. Some googling suggests possibly the belt, so I've ordered one. The belt it came with is tight, stretchy and smooth, but it's $7, so whatever, I'll replace it. But I suspect the more likely candidate is the spindle oil. I found a nice description of how to change the oil, so I'll be doing that tomorrow. One thing that weirds me out is the set screw on my spindle seems to be coated in wax, or something similar. I'll be breaking that seal by turning the screw. No one online mentions any wax or sealant, so I wonder if this is from some aftermarket servicing. How much pitch wobble ("wow"?) is acceptable for a turntable in good condition? The ideal is obviously zero, I'm wondering if this is realistic. Will there always be some wobble detectable by the strobe, or should I expect a perfectly still strobe pattern when it's all tuned up?
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Nov 4, 2015 03:30
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I'm also an SL-23 spinner. There's a set screw on the spindle? I've never noticed, my platter just lifts straight off, though mine was refurbished before I got it.
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Nov 4, 2015 03:36
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The set screw is on the bottom of the spindle, inside the unit. You need to remove it to take the spindle off (not the platter). I found some other guy with the same problem, fixed by replacing capacitors http://www.artandtechnology.com.au/audio/technics-sl23.html
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Nov 4, 2015 03:37
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Yeah the capacitor thing is definitely a known issue, and a pretty easy one to correct. My main issue with mine is the speed selector is amazingly noisy and needs a lot of futzing before it will reliably spin at 33/45 if I change it. It's mostly a stable spinner once set, but the strobe shows it as far from exact. I'm not sure the servo-controlled Technics models can even get very exact.
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Nov 4, 2015 03:41
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I've worked on 3 SL-23 in the past 2 months, both required belt replacements and a good hard cleaning of the speed selector switch and POTs. After those, they've been rock solid. There are two sets of speed pots, one set next to the speed select, then another set next to the motor.
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Nov 4, 2015 03:50
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minivanmegafun posted:Yeah the capacitor thing is definitely a known issue, and a pretty easy one to correct. My main issue with mine is the speed selector is amazingly noisy and needs a lot of futzing before it will reliably spin at 33/45 if I change it. It's mostly a stable spinner once set, but the strobe shows it as far from exact. I'm not sure the servo-controlled Technics models can even get very exact. Huh, the 33/off/45 selector works perfectly on mine. When I first bought it, the platter would randomly start and stop spinning and turning the pitch pots would act randomly. After I cleaned the pots and speed selector out with electrical cleaner, all three work perfectly now. It's just got this pitch wobble. You said yours is "far from exact," is it noticeable on sustained notes? My wobble is clearly noticeable.
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Nov 4, 2015 03:52
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TooLShack posted:I've worked on 3 SL-23 in the past 2 months, both required belt replacements and a good hard cleaning of the speed selector switch and POTs. After those, they've been rock solid. There are two sets of speed pots, one set next to the speed select, then another set next to the motor. Do you mean these two tiny little potentiometers on the topside of this little circuit board in the inside? I haven't touched those. Edit: Yeah, found them in the circuit diagram. Guess I could spray those and wiggle them around. ColdPie fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Nov 4, 2015 |
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Nov 4, 2015 03:54
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Mine's mostly okay but I have a serious affinity for free jazz, bebop, and punk rock; I'm not sure I play any sustained notes on mine ever.
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Nov 4, 2015 03:55
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Thanks to this thread I decided I'm getting a U-turn, and I think the green on it looks awesome too. I just have to find an appropriate stand or table, as my repurposed computer desk looks horrible and takes up too much room
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Nov 4, 2015 04:10
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ColdPie posted:One thing that weirds me out is the set screw on my spindle seems to be coated in wax, or something similar. I'll be breaking that seal by turning the screw. No one online mentions any wax or sealant, so I wonder if this is from some aftermarket Thread lock on set screws is so common that I'm not surprised no one would mention it. It's just there to stop screws from rattling loose on their own, especially during shipping. Pick up a tube of blue Locktite at an auto parts store and put on a dab if you want to.
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Nov 4, 2015 04:57
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Be sure to get the correct color of Loctite, some of them are meant for forever and won't come apart again.
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Nov 4, 2015 12:44
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TomR posted:Be sure to get the correct color of Loctite, some of them are meant for forever and won't come apart again. That's why I said blue and not red.
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Nov 4, 2015 16:09
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I know that, but someone that doesn't know what Loctite is may not know that the color has to do with the purpose of the Loctite. I'd just hate to see someone gently caress up their stuff from a simple mistake.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:25
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Red Loctite also works as an emergency superglue alternative, it just takes a little longer to set. That should tell you something about how much of a bitch it is to remove.quote:CLEANUP E: And the Sony SS-G1 Mk2s are now fixed and tested, they sound great with the new tweeters. Now I just have to strip that hideous brown paint so the veneer can finally get a chance to shine. 
KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 10:23
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Kind of a long shot but does anyone have a p mount cartridge that's functional but worn and were going to toss? I've got a technics turn table I got for cheap and would like to know it works before I purchase a new cartridge for it.
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Nov 5, 2015 11:49
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Stopped in at Gravity Records in Wilmington NC the other day, found some nice records, good conversation, and discovered the Spin Clean. Decided to step up. Question, what formula does one use for the fluid for this? I use a mix of about 1/3 alc, 2/3 purified water and the teeniest, tiniest measure of dish detergent in my current method.
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Nov 5, 2015 16:46
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Well, I've re-lubed the spindle and cleaned the other pitch pots, but the wobble still happens. New belt is in the mail. If that doesn't fix it, I think my next option is to replace the capacitors.
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Nov 5, 2015 17:04
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i've got a marantz 2270. ok to turn the eq knobs past 12 o'clock or am i adding to/coloring the sound? i have to admit it sounds better with higher eq and lower volume than lower eq and higher volume.
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Nov 14, 2015 22:09
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Abel Wingnut posted:i've got a marantz 2270. ok to turn the eq knobs past 12 o'clock or am i adding to/coloring the sound? i have to admit it sounds better with higher eq and lower volume than lower eq and higher volume. I would, uh, do the thing that makes it sound better.
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Nov 14, 2015 22:16
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