My Niece's First Vinyl System

[Ray P]

A wise decision, I think. I believe that it’s possible to re-inflate the tweeters but it sounds like a rather hit-and-miss process and I doubt that they’d last long.

If you like the idea of the Sextets, there are three pairs on eBay at the moment, all with ribbons. One pair is pretty close to you in Wells and only £100. They’re a bit cosmetically challenged, but if they’re in working order they’re a bit of a bargain.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/146059221095 ... media=COPY

Yeah, I've seen the ones in Wells, Shane, just a shame they're not n great shape cosmetically. The pair in Spalding look good, but too far to go.

I have wondered about getting the wells ones and and re-veneering them, hmmmm....

I've also seen a pair of Ruark Preludes that are very close to my brother.

[Ant]

Those ones in wells look like you could get away with a rattlecan to clean up the black, i got a factory finish in the xerxes psu just using a rattle can and then a matt clearcoat. The joints look ok so the cabinets look pretty sound. Reveneering the burl veneer bit would probably cost a few quid for the veneer in long lengths, but theres nothing to say you need to go for another burl veneer.

Id be tempted to go stand infront of them ray if its not too far

[Morgan Jones]

It would be interesting to try the Thorens with a good quality power supply for it's motor, but I'm not about to invest in one.

I did and it didn't help. I expected to be able to reduce vibration by pushing the rotor up, but there was no change. I didn't try the phase tweak. I was surprised, hence opening the motor up (once I was certain the shaft really was bent). That's how I discovered the rectangular pole pieces. Accept the TD150 for what it is. But if you have a Philips/Premotec/Mclennan motor, and can adjust rotor height, then a fancy supply (that can adjust phase between the windings) can reduce vibration to zero.

[Morgan Jones]

I always assumed that it was down to simply better preserving the very low level signal by shortening the route from the MC cartridge and eliminating several physical connectors along the way, but perhaps that is just my naivety.

No, not naive. You reduced hum. Coaxial cable is the worst thing for MC cartridges because the conductor resistances (inner vs screen) are unmatched, so a magnetic field that induces equal currents in both conductors develops a differential voltage at the input of the pre-amplifier. Balanced wiring from the arm (twisted pair in overall screen) solves that problem, as does putting the pre-amplifier in the plinth.

[shane]

Also, if you took the arm leads directly to the preamp in the plinth that will have improved the isolation of the chassis. I did the same on my TT2 when I reworked the Mission 774. I took the internal arm leads right out to a terminal block on the plinth wired fully balanced with a separate earth, then to the M/C step-up transformers using twin screened cable on each channel from the terminal block to the SUTs. Not a hint of a hum.

[Ray P]

My memory is playing tricks regarding the Systemdek experiments - I now remember that I bought a Rega RB200 when they were first released and had the internal wring replaced and I specified leaving a good length of it emerging from the arm base, it was those wires I hooked up to the Ben Duncan phono stage that was installed in the replacement plinth. I think I might have had a Koetsu Black in the arm at the time.

On the Thorens TD150 refurb. I did something similar - the Pro-ject Carbon tonearm had about 15cm of the fine internal arm wires hanging out of the base of the arm so I soldered them directly to a pair of phono sockets I installed on the back of the plinth, I reasoned it would be good for the suspension and with the good length of the wire loops and small amount of suspension movement fracturing of the wires or joints is unlikely..

[Ant]

I did the same with a project arm installed on an lp12, bare wires to a tag strip then straight to a pair of sockets. was much better than the awful linn setup with its uber stiff arm cable.

Roksan also did the phono stage in the plinth thing from the factory with the artaxerxes phono stage. that has a twisted pair of leads coming out of it about 4" long terminated in a din plug to plug into the bottom of your artemiz or tabriz.

The top whack one was xerxes, artemiz, artexerxes. Shame about the inevitable sag.

My impression of mine is a lot of good ideas paired with slightly half arsed manufacturing

[Morgan Jones]

My impression of mine is a lot of good ideas paired with slightly half arsed manufacturing

I'm afraid it is extremely difficult to get stuff manufactured to the quality of your prototype. The people on the shop floor do not understand the reasoning behind your design decisions and will always try to take short-cuts. Worse, they are encouraged to do so by their management. If you make stuff in-house, you can inculcate the right attitudes in your own staff, but that means you need the money to invest in all the tooling etc. A start-up can't do that and has to farm work out to existing engineering firms.

[shane]

This is where we were so lucky with the TT2. The first people we went to to produce the bearing cam back with something awful and made all sorts of simplifications, about a month later than we wanted it. The next was a two-man band working out of an old barn filled with lathes and milling machines and so on. They looked at our designs and listened carefully to what we were trying to achieve and came up with lots of ideas to try to get the best possible results. Once we’d finalised the design they never let us down on deliveries and maintained the quality throughout.

That was all in 1982, but a couple of years ago I needed a little machining job done for my boat and found they were still going. Johnny and Dave are long gone but the business is being run now by Johnny’s son.

I took some not very good photos while I was there:







The website:

https://manufacturingprocesses.co.uk/co ... eering-ltd.

[Morgan Jones]

Does he wear a brown dustcoat with a pair of callipers sticking out of the top pocket? I went to a machine shop about twenty years ago and it was full of old blokes like that. Their machine tools were equally old (and solid) and had been fitted with DRO (digital read-out). They did nice work. But it really is about the quality of the person in front of the machine...

[Ray P]

I delivered the Thorens TD150 to upgrade my niece's system yesterday, with very agreeable results compared with the Dual.



You might also spot the Cambridge Audio Azur 540P phono stage. The Azur has been upgraded, all the PS electrolytics have been replaced, ceramic and polyester phono-stage caps are now polystyrene/polypropylene and better op-amps are now installed in sockets. Another positive step up compared with the Arcam phono stage.

[Ray P]

The journey continues, I've just taken delivery of a PCB and transformer to build an EAR834 phono stage clone, basically the same as this information and build video series.

https://www.skunkiedesigns.com/phono-stage

[Greg]

The journey continues, I've just taken delivery of a PCB and transformer to build an EAR834 phono stage clone, basically the same as this information and build video series.

https://www.skunkiedesigns.com/phono-stage

I’d think hard about doing an EAR834 copy. It wasn’t the best by a long way. Thorsten radically modified it. I think you’d get a better result from something like a WAD Phono II, especially if you follow Nick’s mods. The WD Phono continues to use the same or similar PCB available from https://www.world-designs.co.uk/v11%20u ... 0final.htm The WD forum appears to be finally dead, but if you contact Matthew Snell through the WD website, he should be willing to supply the PCB only.

[Ray P]

Thanks for the suggestion Greg, but it's going to be the EAR834, primarily because I have just about everything I need to build it in my spares 'box', so it'll be relatively cheap to put together. I'll be building it with the Thorsten Loesch mods.