Vintage HiFi. Sounds great, looks cool, costs peanuts
Vinyl records and the equipment used to play them
Calling to me from the shelves of my local Cash Converters was this solid state phono pre amplifier.
Bubbling paint work and a missing power supply explain the reasonable £25 paid. Continue reading “Pro-ject Phono box II. A look inside.”
My obsession for monitoring the life of my turntable stylus was satisfied when I built my “Play Mate” monitor. It did the job but boy it was ugly.
Only now have I got around to making an aesthetically pleasing version. Continue reading “Digital record play counter gets a facelift”
These cartridges recently came into my posession very cheaply. A couple of old school classics for sure, so well in keeping with my vintage gear.
They both came attached to 2nd hand turntables Were they worth it? Continue reading “Perils of 2nd hand Cartridges. Nagaoka mp-10. Shure M75ED.”
Back in 2018 I built my own record cleaning machine. It did the job, but wasn’t pretty.
I recently acquired a better donor turntable and have built a new machine, addressing some of the annoying quirks of my original. Continue reading “PlecRec RCM II. Updated Record Cleaning Machine”
I often use a fully automatic turntable for causal listening. For a small drop in fidelity I get the convenience of just flicking a lever and the record plays.
This worked great for LP’s and 7″ singles. Problem came with 12″ singles. Continue reading “Manual only for 12 inch singles on Garrard zero 100.”
Figuring out when a stylus or cartridge needs changing depends on many things. Condition of record, how well your system is set up and how may hours use it has had.
Recording needle time is a useful thing to do then, but precision of 10th of a second isn’t really necessary. So why did I create this fancy automatic digital play counter called the “Play Mate”? Continue reading “Play Mate digital record play counter and timer”
Everything should have its shape. This is my own capture of the vinyl recording of the KT Tunstall track of the same name.
If only the same was true of the digital download version of the same track.
I recently opened up a couple of dusty cases of 45 rpm 7″ singles which I had acquired over several years of car boot sale digging.
With over 340 hours on the clock of my cartridge and stylus it was time to change.
Here we have a moving magnet from Japan which reviews well. Lets see. Continue reading “Nagaoka MP110 Cartridge. First impressions.”
I’m somewhat paranoid about using my record stylus for longer than I should and causing damage.
I use tally counters and keep comprehensive records. This tells me it’s time for a change. Now that I have some data, It’s interesting to see how my listening habits stand up to scrutiny. Continue reading “Keeping track of my stylus use”