The Past and pleasant surprises

[Black Stuart]

I emptied boxes of gear some time ago and it's a double edged sword having a dedicated room all to myself. The floor is littered with so much gear I can hardly move.

I can't believe how much I bought years ago and forgotten about.

Someone years ago raved about a cartridge the Acutex 312 111 STR that was available from a seller in Italy - so I bought one and then forgot all about trying it. I simply can't remember who it was, apologies. I found a brand new boxed stylus for the Shure V 15, a Pickering V 15

It now seems that it and the 315 & 320 are highly sought after with the revival in vinyl. I havn't got a clue what I paid for it but I know it was cheap and now if you want a new 312 it's going to be over £200. The secret of the 300 series was that it used 3 magnets - L&R and a centre one. It seems that a few rate the 300 series as their best ever cartridges. To give of it's best it needs lots of experimenting to give of it's best.

In trying to find who it was that gave the rec. for the Acutex I came across a thread I started on recapping my Kenwood KD990 deck, again apologies to Richard Higgins who supplied me with a zenner parts list for the KD990. This is truly fantastic as i can order the particular zenner and change that as well as all the caps.

This triggered off googling DDs and an important thread on Audiogon which cheered me up no end. I had assumed that the i/cs in the DDs would be very unlikely to fail and this thread confirmed that they would only fail if taken out by faulty caps. As I have 2 x KD series decks - no worries.

I've noted over the years those who slagged off DDs now use them. I have said before that if I had known that Kenwood were going to literally get rid of the KD series production line as scrap I had the capital to buy it - as scrap. The price of the best of todays decks is ludicrous and they cannot match the best of the Jap superdecks nor have anything like the features.

I also found Black Gate caps some new and some which I removed from phono stages that were never used. Rakes of quality NOS caps, valves that I stockpiled when they were cheap, it will take a big box to hold them all to compile a list and get rid of.

[Black Stuart]

Found more goodies,
a Pickering XLZ 7500S and the UK made PLZ dedicated pre=preamp (thanks Ian). Never used the PLZ, I will replace the caps and resistors and see how it sounds.

An NOS Goldring 1006 stylus.A Rega 250 and 300 arms. quite a few Oyaide copy mains plugs, just as good as the real thing - all has to go except maybe the Pickering.