The HiFi chat, build and modification thread!

Thank you both for the advice and indeed the offer of the 752's LGF - unfortunately they are going to be too big.
 
Bullpup":1ufpr84c said:
Thank you both for the advice and indeed the offer of the 752's LGF - unfortunately they are going to be too big.
How small do you need?

Bookshelf?
 
Well Tannoy Berkeleys would be too big...and there isn't really floor space for a floor stander. So very flexible but in sensible terms say approx the size of a large desktop pc
 
Just been gifted a barn find Pioneer PL-514X needs a belt stylus and mains lead. Filthy but undadmged/abused

Cheap upgrade for the boy i rreckon.
 
Having a little explore I've just found this thread and thought I'd say hello.

I'm a life long hifi user, collector, builder, modifier and general fettler so I couldn't not.

I'm mostly an analogue fan but am quite happy with digital, if it's well written, played, recorded and mastered I don't really care what format its on. Although as someone who was already heavily invested into vinyl records and their means of playback when CD came along I wasn't particularly sold on the sound so never really stopped buying records and turntables (especially when no one else wanted them), so now have a collection which is just over 9500 vinyl albums and can't think of many turntables of any quality (apart from the obvious very low production very high price ones) available in the UK that I haven't owned or don't own now.

My main system is pretty much all valve (tubes to those in the US) and very turntable heavy, valve phono stage, valve, pre amp, valve active crossover (although that's out being modified currently), valve monblocks, valve output CD player and valve output tuner. The only things in my system that don't have valves in somewhere are my cassette deck, CD recorder and open reel tape recorder.

I can't turn away a decent turntable or open reel machine and have to try stuff before I'll offer an opinion on it, and with my aversion to letting go of stuff is why I've got so much of it.
 
Re:

I am having some turntable woes at the moment and thought I would share it on here and pick some brains, I am just a poor boy so not mega kit here but basic good stuff. So I have a Sony PS-11 turntable and initially had it run through a JVC AS-5 amp, unfortunately this ha developed some problems on the left channel (DAHDAHDAH) when turned on. So I bought a Cambridge Audio A1 MK3 amp this is all good. But! When I put the turntable on originally I thought nothing was coming through, (Yes I had attached the Earth wire), the volume was on a comfortable level for the MD and CD player, so I started to increase the volume and by the time I got to top volume 11, I could hear the music at a slightly below acceptable level. I had noticed the RCA plugs on the cable were a bit loose, so I have replaced these but no noticeable difference to the volume.

So am I missing something ?

Cheers

Mark
 
Re:

Forgot to mention I had the stylus replaced with a Ortofon magnetic pickup some years ago, just in case that makes a difference :facepalm:
 
Re: Re:

kermitgreenkona88":14jrnuw3 said:
I am having some turntable woes at the moment and thought I would share it on here and pick some brains, I am just a poor boy so not mega kit here but basic good stuff. So I have a Sony PS-11 turntable and initially had it run through a JVC AS-5 amp, unfortunately this ha developed some problems on the left channel (DAHDAHDAH) when turned on. So I bought a Cambridge Audio A1 MK3 amp this is all good. But! When I put the turntable on originally I thought nothing was coming through, (Yes I had attached the Earth wire), the volume was on a comfortable level for the MD and CD player, so I started to increase the volume and by the time I got to top volume 11, I could hear the music at a slightly below acceptable level. I had noticed the RCA plugs on the cable were a bit loose, so I have replaced these but no noticeable difference to the volume.

So am I missing something ?

Cheers

Mark

Only the very first Cambridge A1 actually has a built in phono stage (needed to amplify a normal MM turntable signal up to normal line level) which your JVC also had built in. Every subsequent Cambridge amp has a phono/aux selection which is line level and if you open it up space to fit a phono module to add a turntable, so you either need the Cambridge phono module (not that easy to find), a separate phono stage (sometimes called a phono pre or phono amp) or a different amp.

It's not as daunting as it sounds as off board phono stages range in all sorts of prices from about £20 up to however much you fancy spending.

Basically your JVC was made during vinyls heyday and your Cambridge wasn't so they left it out as an optional extra that very few A1 buyers took up. It's not the only one, most hifi and pretty much all AV amps from around 1995 until about a year or so ago had little or no provision for a turntable at all.

And to add to the confusion a lot of vinyl resurgence turntables have the phono stage built in (although they're generally rubbish) so you have four options of getting it wrong.
 
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