Post A Photograph Of Your Turntable - Page 4

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuralRelations 

Is that an Onzow Zerodust I spy? How do you like it? I was thinking of picking one up. Cheapest I've seen it for is $50 on eBay.

I would not buy another one.

I think it works great. I had another one from a different company for a while but it got hard and wouldn't collect anything. I e-mailed them and told them what happened and that I'd only had it about 3 months and they sent me some new goo but it did the same thing. I think the Onzow is ridiculously priced for what it is but so far it's done the job quite well. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuralRelations 

Is that an Onzow Zerodust I spy? How do you like it? I was thinking of picking one up. Cheapest I've seen it for is $50 on eBay.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod 

 

I would not buy another one.

What stylus cleaner would you recommend, nikongod?

My normal stylus cleaning routine is as follows:

A once over with a soft long-bristle brush between every side.

Doing the Mr. Clean's Magic eraser thing after every few records. 

And When it cant be avoided I use the "groovy" wet stylus cleaner on the short stiff brush they include. 

Something that I consider pretty important to SQ, and the life of my needles & records is that I am pretty OCD about cleaning records before I play them. Not every time, but before a record goes on my TT I wash it. OTOH, the vast majority of my records are garage sale/thrift store finds so grime is a fact of life. If you have a LOT of dirty records buying a cleaner is a GREAT idea. If you have only a few make friends with someone who has one. Im totally happy cleaning a record once, and then just spot-checking it with the carbon fiber brush before each side.

Thanks for the advice, nikongod. That's pretty close to what I'm doing. I have a crap stylus brush that came with my Shure M97xe. I dip my Grado Gold1 in a block of Magic Eraser every couple of records. Haven't used any wet or polymer based cleaners yet but it seems like I don't need to unless it's super dirty. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod 

My normal stylus cleaning routine is as follows:

 

A once over with a soft long-bristle brush between every side.

 

Doing the Mr. Clean's Magic eraser thing after every few records. 

 

And When it cant be avoided I use the "groovy" wet stylus cleaner on the short stiff brush they include. 

 

Something that I consider pretty important to SQ, and the life of my needles & records is that I am pretty OCD about cleaning records before I play them. Not every time, but before a record goes on my TT I wash it. OTOH, the vast majority of my records are garage sale/thrift store finds so grime is a fact of life. If you have a LOT of dirty records buying a cleaner is a GREAT idea. If you have only a few make friends with someone who has one. Im totally happy cleaning a record once, and then just spot-checking it with the carbon fiber brush before each side.

I agree 100% with what nikongod,
says about the zerodust glob cleaner,The magic eraser is the best. The Goop "thingie" can be dangerous to a cantilever..I pretty much use his steps in cleaning my LP's after they come off of my 16.5 VPI R.C. the best investment I made, yrs. ago......I also use the Allsop cleaner in between Vacum cleaning.....I've seen some nice Turntables posted...... Hey nikongod, what arm (SME??) was that again you are using with your T.T.....I thought for sure that was a 12"..... You say It's a little shorter... How or what protractor did you use, if I may ask......I bet it tracks SMOOTH!!!! 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by 9pintube 

I agree 100% with what nikongod,
says about the zerodust glob cleaner,The magic eraser is the best. The Goop "thingie" can be dangerous to a cantilever..I pretty much use his steps in cleaning my LP's after they come off of my 16.5 VPI R.C. the best investment I made, yrs. ago......I also use the Allsop cleaner in between Vacum cleaning.....I've seen some nice Turntables posted...... Hey nikongod, what arm (SME??) was that again you are using with your T.T.....I thought for sure that was a 12"..... You say It's a little shorter... How or what protractor did you use, if I may ask......I bet it tracks SMOOTH!!!! 
 

Its an SME3012s2, and yes its AWESOME. the Denon DL-103 gets a lot of (totally un-deserved) hate, but it is an outstanding match for this arm.

Its kind of a gripe of mine, but there are 2 ways of measuring the length of a tonearm. Some MFR's measure arm pivot to spindle, others measure pivot to stylus tip. SME, audioquest, Linn, and probably some others are in the "pivot to stylus" camp, which means that they are about 1/2" shorter than they claim to be. Try dropping a Linn arm on a rega TT (or vice versa) for a good laugh... both claim to be 9" arms, but they are totally different. As a tangent, its a shame that REGA didnt make a 10" arm instead of the 9" when they were starting their empire. it would still fit a vast majority of plinths, and longer is better.*

My preferred alignment method uses a unique set of null points. As far as I know there is nothing like this on any commercial protractor, but using cheap generic protractors isnt that much harder once you get the hang of it. I start by roughing in the alignment on a 2 point Stevenson protractor that I downloaded from vinylengine. Then I fine tune it to my own null points using the "Chpratz protractor" (also from vinylengine). My null points are: 64 & 117mm. They are a compromise between the more common compromises, with a slight emphasis on "inner grove" performance - not as much emphasis as "standard" stevenson, but then not as much distortion in the middle of the disc either. 

* Thats what she said.

Some drop dead gorgeous tables in this thread, maybe one day.... :) 

In the meantime here's mine. Cartridges include an AT440Mla and an AT95E mounted in individual headshells and aligned with the Technics arc protractor from Vinyl Engine. Tracking force is set to 1.4 grams on both using a Shure SFG-2 Stylus Force Gauge. My phono preamp is a DIY RJM Audio Very Simple Phono Stage, I've been using it for more than a year and I'm very happy with it so far.

After some months of suffering with bad cartridges and misalignment, I'm finally really happy with the sound produced by this setup.

Ok, time to go back to Joe Pass' Virtuoso. Cheers!

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_equalizer 

Some drop dead gorgeous tables in this thread, maybe one day.... :) 

 

In the meantime here's mine. Cartridges include an AT440Mla and an AT95E mounted in individual headshells and aligned with the Technics arc protractor from Vinyl Engine. Tracking force is set to 1.4 grams on both using a Shure SFG-2 Stylus Force Gauge. My phono preamp is a DIY RJM Audio Very Simple Phono Stage, I've been using it for more than a year and I'm very happy with it so far.

 

After some months of suffering with bad cartridges and misalignment, I'm finally really happy with the sound produced by this setup.

 

 

 

Ok, time to go back to Joe Pass' Virtuoso. Cheers!

I like the 1200 a lot :)

On that note, get a Stevinson protractor!!!111

The VAST majority of off the shelf protractors are baerwald, which is almost impossible to achieve on a Technics 1200 arm. I spent weeks fighting this when I had a 1200. Someone should just post this :p Technics kind of hints at it with their arm geometry specifications for the 1200, but never outright says it. grumbles. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod 

 

I like the 1200 a lot :)

 

On that note, get a Stevinson protractor!!!111

 

The VAST majority of off the shelf protractors are baerwald, which is almost impossible to achieve on a Technics 1200 arm. I spent weeks fighting this when I had a 1200. Someone should just post this :p Technics kind of hints at it with their arm geometry specifications for the 1200, but never outright says it. grumbles. 

Thanks! I'm enjoying it a lot now too! Specially during the last week, since I got the carts aligned (and got rid of the M97xe).

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the plastic overhang tool supplied with the SL-1200 is compliant with Stevenson alignment. Anyway, I did try for entire DAYS (and some nights) to align the cartridge using the cardboard protractor supplied with the Shure M97xe (a Baerwald, supposedly) to no avail.

Finally last week I managed to find a printer (HP LaserJet 1320) that printed *perfectly* the Vinyl Engine arc protractor specific to the Technics SL-1200 and that did it, I managed to align both cartridges in minutes.

Curiously enough, the arc protractor *is* a Baerwald :) . Turns out it requires pushing the cartridge all the way forward and twisting it slightly clockwise (when viewed from above), as mentioned here. That also makes sense with the alignment comparison data for the Technics arm.

Anyway, I'll print the Stevenson protractor from vinyl engine and give it a try with the AT95E.

cheers!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redcarmoose 

Many years ago I was a DJ and borrowed a friends Jeep to take rental Technics 1200 DJ equipment to this Christmas Party. After the party we loaded everything into the Jeep and I headed back to my house at 1:00am. While on the freeway with the music at 9, I all of a sudden felt this big breeze through the side window. I just thought it was the wind. I arrived at my house and moments later the owner of the Jeep arrived to take his Jeep home. He looked at the back of his Jeep and the whole rear window had been knocked out. I guess while on the freeway the DJ coffin had slid back in such a way as to knock the rear window out! He started yelling, got into the Jeep and proceeded to kick all the equipment {rental equipment} out onto the cement. The DJ coffin landed on one end {six feet long} and balanced for a second before falling upside down onto the ground. Upon opening the lid, the platters were out but to my amazement after putting it all back together the Technics 1200 turntables worked perfect!

I cringe when thinking of the turntables tumbling inside the DJ coffin! That's some hard core story on the rugedness of the 1200. I hope mine never has to go through such an ordeal, though!