Vinyl quality issues Rant

[colin.hepburn]

Hi All
My Vinyl Rant now I’m sure all of us that play our records have been here before last night I was
Re-evaluating my old WAD phono 2 with a sovtec long plate 5751 and two new out of the box JJ 803s my normal valve setup and listing to my most go-to albums all good bar some vinyl production quality issues on one or two albums that I can’t fix
Changing the two JJ 803s for the JJ 5751 as expected a change in gain better matched to CD when switching between them but on sound a little brighter and some female vocals parts sounding sibilant to be expected

I guess as the phono 2 is not 318uS time constants modded. so swapping back to the sovtec 5751 with the two JJ 803s took things back to normal
I then proceeded to play some of my records from the back of the pack that I hadn’t played in a long time and re-realized why there are at the back

classed as instant listening fatigue no dynamics that flat compressed toneless thin sound total **** and thinking to myself why do I bother with this hobby anymore ok Rant over
Colin

[bob orbell]

Colin, I wish you lived close to me and then you could come and listen to a phono set up that you would kill for, to be honest, I think, and mean no offence to you, but you are doing things your way and to be honest this phono stage was meant to have ECC83 valves and nothing ells, I have spent a lot of years with this Phono and the small changes I have made, including the regulated PSU and attention to component detail and also removing the unnecessary 3.18 correction has bought my Phono into high end sound, all who hear my vinyl set up now are so impressed. Bob

[colin.hepburn]

Originally Posted by bob orbell

Colin, I wish you lived close to me and then you could come and listen to a phono set up that you would kill for, to be honest, I think, and mean no offence to you, but you are doing things your way and to be honest this phono stage was meant to have ECC83 valves and nothing ells, I have spent a lot of years with this Phono and the small changes I have made, including the regulated PSU and attention to component detail and also removing the unnecessary 3.18 correction has bought my Phono into high end sound, all who hear my vinyl set up now are so impressed. Bob

No offense taken bob this is not a new issue with the phono 2 this same issue has followed me with any system I have had its a production i.e. the recording quality or rather lack of it on so many recordings but not all it’s also true of CD /DVD nothing new there it’s a problem across all formats’ my phono stage is just fine with the good recording

I am starting to get tired o chasing it now Most of my good-sounding vinyl is based from around the late 80s to late 90s in general.
PS what are the types of music that are you are listing to bob?
Colin

[bob orbell]

Colin, I too almost gave up on vinyl about three years ago, let me try and run through the issues, around 1995 I built a WAD PSU and Phono two, all was very good using just the components suppled with the kit, I then found and joined this Forum some years latter and moved onto a Phono IIIs, at first it sounded more up front but as time went by the high frequencies became annoying and sibilance reared its head, I suspected worn stylus and replaced cartridge ( Ortofon MC ) the sibilance was still present, but not on all my records. We now move on to today where I have rebuilt the Phono with great care, no fancy expensive capacitors ( in my opinion they push the SQ over the top ) and the removal of the 3.18 time constant resistor, plus the crowning glory of the regulated PSU, this, stopped all sibilance, of course you will find some records sounding different to others, but this is down to the recording engineer. My music spans Mike Oldfield, modern jazz, Camel, Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson, Tim Bowness to name but a few. Of course my turntable arm and cartridge were much more expensive than yours but, I never had too bad a sound with MM many years ago your, 2M red is not the best and the 1042 mostly gets a good shout, but have you loaded these cartridges with the correct capacitance ? some MM cartridges are very fussy about loading, let us know. Bob

[colin.hepburn]

Hi All
As you know I had a recent rant about my vinyl replay so I stepped back from it over the last couple of days left it well alone until today

so I was just going to change the 2mm blue cart over on the rega to the Golding G1042 going into the cubed to get the Golding there’s my old AR EB101 turntable sitting there so thought what the hell lets go back to basics got nothing to lose right so a cleanup and re-oil the bearing the AR EB 101 was my first owned turntable pre-1990 apart from my brothers Technics SL110/SME/3009 fixed headshell V15 back in 1970 I think
https://www.retrotronics.co.nz/detail&id=641

Anyway, After fitting the Golding G1042 and giving it a basic setup on with a first test album I can’t believe this turntable it can’t do this more to come I am playing my vinyl again

[bob orbell]

Colin, I have been looking at loading values for your two cartridges, the 2M red needs 47K ohms and between 150 and 300 pF, the Goldring also needs 47K ohms but < 100pF, maybe this is why this cartridge sounds better to you, I doubt it is the turntable or arm, do you have any loading capacitance fitted in your Phono ? Bob

[colin.hepburn]

Originally Posted by bob orbell

Colin, I have been looking at loading values for your two cartridges, the 2M red needs 47K ohms and between 150 and 300 pF, the Goldring also needs 47K ohms but < 100pF, maybe this is why this cartridge sounds better to you, I doubt it is the turntable or arm, do you have any loading capacitance fitted in your Phono ? Bob

No loading capacitance just the circuit 47k R3/4 maybe I should look into this more


Hi Bob/All
A little history on my AR EB101 UK Version.
Well this AR EB101 turntable should have no right to sound the way It does with the Golding 1042 in it but upon saying that it is not as standard I foam-filled and rewired the with lize wire and a late friend hand made a larger mass counterweight.
The arm is made by Jelco and looks to be a budget copy of the JELCO SA-250ST linked below similar spec but I liken it on a par to the Linn basic. But maybe a little better with the rewire and other tweaks I did to it

http://www.acrylteller.com/epages/es...ts/85400925081
The EB101 was stored correctly with the belt off and transit screw fitted so the springs were not stressed after long storage time plus the bearing is good for the age of this table it did not get a lot of hours put on it

And the good thing with the Goldring G1042 is it sat in the drawer all his time and only has about 12 hours on it two of them added last night and it cost me £120.00 new back somewhere around 1996/7 with a trade-in of an Audio-Technica AT-F2 Moving Coil Cartridge.

See link AT-F2 Moving Coil Cartridge
https://www.hifi-phono-house.de/en/c...coil-cartridge

EB101 Spec pdf

[bob orbell]

Thanks for the info Colin, now, it would be interesting to put the 2M Red in place of the Goldring, if the sibilance returns you will know the problem . Bob

[colin.hepburn]

Originally Posted by bob orbell

Thanks for the info Colin, now, it would be interesting to put the 2M Red in place of the Goldring, if the sibilance returns you will know the problem . Bob

2M blue. Bob yes the Goldring is a trucking and no sibilance just rock-solid imaging but I have not yet tried playing the badly engineered records the one thing I overlooked is what state the 2M blue stylus is in but can’t see it these days need to get a USB scope but I do have a spare unused stylus
|but Think I will stay with this AR EB101 for a while
Colin

[colin.hepburn]

Hi all
Just an update on my Vinyl quality issues Rant
A suspected worn stylus was ruled out as being the problem after checking the Ortofon 2M blue the stylus is still good and very clean too as far as I could determine with the magnification I have so on both the 2m blue and the Goldring G1042 the compressed flat and dead sounding Albums were just that on both turntables

So I can confirm my issue is just that the lack of quality in production resulting in most cases of a compressed flat and dead sound on some of the albums I have I guess that’s why I stacked them in the back of my collection in the first place

But I do seem to still have an issue with my fullrage Fostex 126En horns in the upper frequencies range in what I believe to be in the 5K range as this has been discussed by others that this 126En Driver has frequency issues in the 5k range I did build a 3db baffle step which helps to pool it down to where it is more balanced out
but maybe I should build a stepper baffle step cut off which I can do but I know very litter about speaker Xover so any thought and advice on this would be very helpful
Link to 126En spec jpg below

Colin