What New (or New to you) HiFi Stuff have you just acquired...

RustySpoons

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Not quite a purchase.
3D printed this today, it's a spacer to adjust the tonearm height as I've just ordered a 15mm acrylic platter.
Rega sell plastic ones but why buy one when you can just print one :)

20180320_222747.jpg
20180320_222758.jpg
 

RustySpoons

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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
My Location
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Wanted to upgrade the platter so nearly ordered an acrylic one.
However I was looking on YouTube and there is a guy called Ben on there who hand makes a lot of HiFi parts, I ordered a "Delrin" 26mm platter from him in white, his company is called Fidelity Audio, very nice guy and helpful.
Ordered it yesterday and turned up today!!

Very impressed, its so precise you can't even see it turning. An absolute work of art.

20180322_135510.jpg
 

Lazarus

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Can I order a couple of mugs from you?
 

RustySpoons

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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
My Location
South Wales

Lazarus

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Much else.
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Looks like a Potter's wheel ..... :D
 

RustySpoons

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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
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sonnetpete

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Seperate 80 cm dish on 28E with a Humax Freesat for SWMBO.
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RustySpoons

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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
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An Update on the turntable...

I decided to treat it to a nice Delrin platter as mentioned and thought i'd treat it to some other bits and overhauled the tonearm.

The original wire in the tonearm was looking a bit sorry for itself so I decided to replace it with some copper litz wire and fit some gold plated connections, I won't start a discussion about cables on here, I do not subscribe to "Audiophile" nonsense personally, I look at things with my engineers head on so fit what I feel is suitable.

I also checked the bearings and felt I could do better, so ordered up some NMB ABEC 5 bearings, while the tonearm was off I decided to clean it up, remove any casting marks and paint it. I used Lidl "Rim Paint" for this.

The Rega method of grounding isn't great, they just connect the cartridge grounds to the tonearm and not bother running a separate ground wire, the phono/rca cables it came with were pretty poor and were loose in the phono pre-amp I have so decided to replace them. And add a separate ground wire.

I found a lead off an old turntable here which I removed, Rega in their wisdom don't allow you to easily swap the phono leads, they terminate them in a molded plastic and then just solder the tonearm wire to it.

I removed the small PCB from that molded plastic, discarded the old leads and drilled a oval hole in the middle to pass the new leads through and re-used that small PCB.

Pics:
Fresh "Litz" wire that I terminated with gold connectors, a tip if anyone solders these, put a toothpick in a vice and push them on to solder
or snap a wooden cotton bud in half and cut in to a triangle with a knife.

Wires terminated with gold connectors.
29750826_1049863121838566_1997442848_n.png
Colour coded with heatshrink
29666444_1049877595170452_1683031241_n.png
20180328_134924.jpg

Original phono leads terminated in "molded plastic", you can see how Rega "Ground" it...
Also I think somebody at Rega was having a bad day soldering :(
20180323_140745.jpg

Modified plastic and PCB with better wires and separate ground:

20180323_161031.jpg
20180323_160950.jpg


Arm prepped and painted and ready for new wire and bearings, I twisted each channel in to a pair, no idea if it will help with interference etc (technically should do as they are crossing over out of phase with each other), but nothing to lose and makes terminating it to the phono lead pcb easier.
4fe63ab1-5628-4a46-bebb-76fbd653f32d.jpg

Arm assembled, bearings fitted with a tiny bit of "Loctite Blue", not adjusted yet as I will do that on the turntable.
20180328_151006.jpg

Tonearm Litz wire terminated to new Phono leads on modified PCB/Plastic.
20180328_153839.jpg

Arm assembled:

20180328_154045.jpg
 
Last edited:

RustySpoons

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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
My Location
South Wales
Part 2

Can only attach 10 pictures.

Bearings adjusted, cartridge aligned, tracking force adjusted along with anti-skate
b879ca44-4d10-4301-b7c9-2a06ef80fd46.jpg

20180328_162933.jpg

Next I will decide on a new cartridge/stylus, this is a Ortofon OM series, never really liked them personally.
I have a Goldring cartridge here which I have just ordered a replacement stylus so will test that and then decide what to get.
 
A

Archive-8

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Part 2

Can only attach 10 pictures.

Bearings adjusted, cartridge aligned, tracking force adjusted along with anti-skate
View attachment 115892

View attachment 115891

Next I will decide on a new cartridge/stylus, this is a Ortofon OM series, never really liked them personally.
I have a Goldring cartridge here which I have just ordered a replacement stylus so will test that and then decide what to get.
Nice rebuild.

I have never got on with Ortofon either, I don’t regret for a minute my Shure M-97 and tube box s.
 

RustySpoons

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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
My Location
South Wales
Nice rebuild.

I have never got on with Ortofon either, I don’t regret for a minute my Shure M-97 and tube box s.
Thank you Chris :)

My friend has a Nagaoka MP-500 in to a Tube Box S, sounds lovely.
My Phono stage is a Rega Fono, I'm going to build one at some point :)
 
A

Archive-8

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Thank you Chris :)

My friend has a Nagaoka MP-500 in to a Tube Box S, sounds lovely.
My Phono stage is a Rega Fono, I'm going to build one at some point :)
In the tube box s they are modern made tubes, would you know if they can be “rolled”
 

RustySpoons

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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
My Location
South Wales
In the tube box s they are modern made tubes, would you know if they can be “rolled”
If the pinout is the same then yes, just check voltages for heater etc.
Try NOS rather than repros...

Yours are based on the 12AX7, so start looking at alternatives or originals :)
 

RustySpoons

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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
My Location
South Wales
Love how this looks now :)
20180331_144440.jpg
 

Captain Jack

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See signature
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Far from the last word in high fidelity but something semi retro and good visual addition to my Technics family.

20180421_072820.jpg
 

RustySpoons

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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
My Location
South Wales
Far from the last word in high fidelity but something semi retro and good visual addition to my Technics family.

View attachment 116739
Nothing wrong with that at all CJ! A 3 head deck can sound amazing with a decent quality cassette.

Nice bit of kit, and the amp remote will control it too :)
 

Channel Hopper

Suffering fools, so you don't have to.
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From memory (and this is going back years), Ortofon cartridges were notorious for pickling up stray RF unless the top shelf with the deck was shielded - mechanically - from the main amplifier.

There were some details posted on the usenet forums of success with twisting the cables inside the tone arm in a specific fashion, or introducing micro ferrite beads at the pivot end without loss of treble, but it was all to be taken in the context of medium wave tuners being a natural part of the set up at the time.
 

4wd

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Just got a cheap bluetooth box to use with my cottage 'mid-fi'.

But didn't think of youtube \ any pc video becoming unwatchable due to audiodelay, so back to cable for that, and using toothache box for music only. Not that practical after all. But sounds fine and works stable (except when trying to switch between phones and pc, were it continues to search for available devices making regular loud 'bip' in the speakers, at the price got what I paid for I guess :0) ...and cables are not that bad after all.
 

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RustySpoons

Sleepy Hollow
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My Satellite Setup
50E - 30W
2x CM 1.2m Polar Mount/Jack
65E- 65W
Gibertini 1m OP100 - STAB HH100 - Inverto Black Ultra 0.2 Twin
Mutant HD51
Edision Primo IP S2
Dreambox DM800HD
Venton Unibox HD2
Sony Bravia 55" 4K
My Location
South Wales
Just got a cheap bluetooth box to use with my cottage 'mid-fi'.

But didn't think of youtube \ any pc video becoming unwatchable due to audiodelay, so back to cable for that, and using toothache box for music only. Not that practical after all. But sounds fine and works stable (except when trying to switch between phones and pc, were it continues to search for available devices making regular loud 'bip' in the speakers, at the price got what I paid for I guess :0) ...and cables are not that bad after all.
Is that a NAD 3020e I spot there?
 

4wd

Getting the picture
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^^^ yes, must have owned it for 30 years+, working fine with no repairs, only some potentiometer clean now and then, and re-tightenend somewhat loose power transistors screws to ensure heat transfer.
 
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