Old Style Vinyl Gear Can be Surprisingly Fab!

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SteveTheShadow
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Old Style Vinyl Gear Can be Surprisingly Fab!

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

I’ve been laid up for the past week with a nasty dose of uvulitis. I thought tonsillitis was bad enough, but believe me, you don’t want uvulitis! especially not if you are over 60. I’m on 2g of phenoxymethylpeniccillin potassium tablets per day for 10 days and have just started to get clear of the brain fog, the pain and the almost constant urge to gag, that I’ve had to either get under control or not eat or drink; not much of a choice.

Anyway, enough griping; I present yet another epic Steve The Shadow revelation for your delectation and delight. It’ll leave you shaking your heads with pity, rolling your eyes skywards and sniggering in small groups, if our collective paths cross at a bake-off. Yep! I have finally lost it.

Remember sometime around late 1979, when the mags were urging everyone to dash out and buy LAM, ADC, or if you were dead flush, Nagaoka headshells for your S shaped tonearms on your Pioneer PL12 turntables? Remember how we were all urged to ditch those perforated, floppy, long-haired, limp wristed, poncy, poofy, arty farty, low mass headshells for something much more manly and in keeping with the emerging Thatcherite culture.

Bolting your AT120E into one of these new wave butch headshells, with their hi-tensile Allen bolts and twisty litz wires, you, like me, marvelled at the thunderous bass that was released, the slam, the wham, the dynamics.

The fact that you now had to add a big blob of Blu-Tak onto the rear of the arm’s counterweight, or have the counterweight hanging on for dear life the back as you ran out of arm tube to balance with, was not allowed to intrude upon your delight at the fabulous sounds now being unleashed by the fitting of this new, must have accessory. Also the fact that your woofers were now flapping in the breeze on warped records was overwhelming evidence that your bass went much deeper; I mean it stood to reason didn’t it! You could now actually see the bass power of your system; what more could you want eh?

Well I’m here to tell you that you been had, fed a line, sold a pup! Do you like vintage vinyl replay equipment? Have you got a 70s/80s S shaped arm with a thick, heavy rigid headshell on it and you still have the original perforated lightweight jobbie? Then put the perforated one back on and revel in the music! Also your arm will thank you because it will once more look like a proper tone arm, you know, like a tone arm should look if you’re of a certain generation.

Also you need to align your cartridge with one of these:
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A single point protractor aligned on the DIN standard 60.5mm minimum inner groove radius. This alignment has long since been mostly dismissed by those vinylistas, who claim to be in the know, and I’m telling you in true Richard Dunn style, that they are talking complete fecking bollocks! On an arm the age of my Rega R200, FFS use the vintage alignment. You know it makes sense!

So in my perforated, lightweight headshell, my AT VM540ML cartridge is mounted to the above alignment, with a thin strip of Blu-Tak to take up the space underneath caused by the punched in mounting slots standing about half a millimetre proud on the underside of the headshell. This use of the Blu Tak is in lieu of the old fashioned SME cartridge mounting paste they used to supply with the SME 3009 series II arms way back in the dim and distant.

And it sounds great; with a modern, high quality moving magnet cartridge, the sound is well balanced across the frequency range, and the presentation is smooth, detailed and musical, like vinyl used to be before the Flat Earth came along and fecked everything up for twenty years.
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There is of course a caveat: don’t try something as daft as this with your modern S shaped arm, expensive moving coil cartridge and then tell me it sounds like crap. Context is everything in this vintage hi fi game. :)
Somebody’s telling me the latest scandals.
Somebody’s stepping on my plastic sandals. Joe Jackson (1979)

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Latteman
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Re: Old Style Vinyl Gear is Nice

Unread post by Latteman »

I see from your sig u are using P20/A20- we must talk one day as I too have an older A60 and read your 2020 plans
Analogue Source -
Denon DP47f- Ortofon mc20 supreme
Ifi Zen Phono
Doug Self balanced Pre amp
Akai 4000DS mk2 R2R
Digital Sources- IfI stream, Ifi Neo idsd Dac; Tidal / Radio Paradise
Amplification Nva 30vdc mono blocks
Speakers Lii Audio F-15 in Open Baffle; Ls6
Weiduka AC8.8- for digital sources
Mini BMU for analog sources

Geoff.R.G
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Re: Old Style Vinyl Gear Can be Surprisingly Fab!

Unread post by Geoff.R.G »

I found a PL12D headshell in the garage recently, no connecting wires but in good condition. I suspect the PL12D in the loft has an SME head shell.

Hannes-Gregor
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Re: Old Style Vinyl Gear Can be Surprisingly Fab!

Unread post by Hannes-Gregor »

SteveTheShadow wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2020 7:51 pm
There is of course a caveat: don’t try something as daft as this with your modern S shaped arm, expensive moving coil cartridge and then tell me it sounds like crap. Context is everything in this vintage hi fi game. :)
It look's like a Pioneer headshell. This one is great with a Yamaha MC-9. (I'm switching between this combination and a heayy JVC one with a Denon 103 all the time).

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SteveTheShadow
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Re: Old Style Vinyl Gear Can be Surprisingly Fab!

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

Hannes-Gregor wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2020 12:20 am
SteveTheShadow wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2020 7:51 pm
There is of course a caveat: don’t try something as daft as this with your modern S shaped arm, expensive moving coil cartridge and then tell me it sounds like crap. Context is everything in this vintage hi fi game. :)
It look's like a Pioneer headshell. This one is great with a Yamaha MC-9. (I'm switching between this combination and a heayy JVC one with a Denon 103 all the time).
Yes, it’s not the original Rega headshell, they were black I believe. The arm was second hand and came with the silver headshell. Thanks for the info about it being a Pioneer.
Somebody’s telling me the latest scandals.
Somebody’s stepping on my plastic sandals. Joe Jackson (1979)

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