Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

No hole on my 15-year-old RPM5. IIRC you could buy a separate switch system for changing speed, but I play CDs now mostly and, when vinyl, 33 1/3 the vast majority of the time and don't mind switching manually.

I had never heard of this ridiculous method of changing speeds until looking at modern turntable options. Going to keep my garage sale Realistic working as long as possible!

My Debut II does have the platter holes but I don't have a doohickey to adjust the belt. I figured out how to do it with my fingers but it's a tight fit. Irrelevant if I get an acrylic platter, which I'm planning to do.

Iirc the point of manual switching is to reduce the number of moving parts, thus increasing reliability and reducing speed variance, wow and flutter etc. Worth the hassle in my book for a better sounding turntable that won't break the bank and is easy to service.

correct, I willingly made the tradeoff

and I def play more 45 rpm things than the average listener

I just use a technics 1200ish and rely on magic quartz crystals

xps I loved the sound of my TD160, but eventually found it unusably fussy. It was horribly susceptible to footfall (mounting it to the wall was the only way to kill that) and it was frustratingly creaky to start up — the table itself may have been a bit of a lemon rather than the model; the people I sold it to sold it on themselves after a short time. Then I ran Duals for a while, and I loved the automatic functions, but every one of them developed a quirk of some kind or other that rendered them each in turn unusable. I eventually settled on a Technics 1500c, brand new, in defiance of 30+ years of being a “vintage equipment guy.” It’s ok, although I think I’m going to have to get someone to beef up the lift mechanism which is unforgivably limp for a $1000 turntable.

I did get all the Duals fixed and I’m running the 701 as a secondary table.

For $10 you got an insane steal by any measure, though!

Ended up on the 1500c too when I returned to my vinyl last year - more than I hoped to spend but I love it. ikwym about the lift but for the most part it just feels so solid - I look at it and think 'I trust you'. Sounds good to me but I've been away from turntables for a while. May change the cartridge soon-ish, see how that changes the sound, and then demagnetise a few records after that.

This speed-change talk reminded me of my old 1970s Crown music-centre - my first "hi-fi", a hand-me-down from my sister-in-law.
I was convinced that it was playing vinyl too fast, so I spent an afternoon sometime in summer '90 adding layers of self-adhesive tennis racket towelling grip to the sub-platter to change the ratio and slow it down. Obviously it wasn't audiophile-grade tennis racket towelling grip but it did the job.

Recently I found some old tapes I made on that system, likely pre-tennis tweak. They were hilariously fast. I played my C90 of Faith by The Cure on my gf's Technics tape deck; Primary runs about six seconds shorter than on Spotify :) No wonder everything was so exciting back then. Even The Cure.

I have an older direct drive automatic turntable and it is wonky, the manual change thing is much more solid

I don't personally find it onerous

I personally feel like people like having 45s way more than they listen to them

The speed on my low-end Technics DD table had recently started acting really wonky with random slide-whistle changes during play. I opened it up to try and clean the guts of the switch (one of those metal slider toggle things), but while following the advice to click it back and forth a bunch of times, the plastic bit connecting the metal switch to the inner workings snapped in half. D'oh! I Krazy Glued it back into place, but some glue got somewhere it shouldn't have and now it's just fused in the 33 position. I never actually listen to 45s on it, so, hey.

Similar thing happened to my Rotel turntable (which is close to 30 years old at this point). The speed would fluctuate in a wacky manner. Took it to get fixed, and the guy said, "How often do you play 45s?" Almost never. "The switch became oxidized from never being used, which is causing the speed issues -- you should click it a bunch of times every time you use the turntable." That was 10 years ago and I haven't had that issue since.

Well that's why I like manual belt drive turntable like a Pro-Ject. These kind of issues could never happen. Speed issues? Buy a new belt for under $20, problem solved.

Plus these decks really punch above their weight with the right cartridge. Recently upgraded to an Ortofon 2M Red and the difference is night and day. I'm tempted to check out the Blue but I'm also not a millionaire and I've read it can be fussier. I'm pretty happy where I've landed tbh.

7”s should only be listened to in marathon sets one after the other on those portable 7” players while lying on living room carpet

This is correct. Also, 7" records should never be stored in any kind of order. They must be be in random piles that sprawl over the floor as you try to find that one banger you haven't heard in years, but you swear you have a copy of somewhere...

You must also never clean a 7" record. The sibilance and inner groove distortion are simply part of the charm.

brimstead otm

https://frinkiac.com/img/S05E06/554002.jpg

Here's a new one: email from mail order customer who bought vinyl 3 years ago. The complaint, the record's actual weight is 173g, not the advertised 180g. He literally weighed the record on a digital scale. Only response I could come up with is that we have a 30 day return policy

— undertow (@UndertowMusic) October 19, 2022

Those last 7 grams is where all the best sound is.

It loses a half a gram every time you play it. You really got to get it down to 165g before it's broken in. And then never play it again.

“You weighed it on a digital scale? There’s your problem right there: you need the warmth and accuracy of an analog scale.”

lol

lol that's the perfect response

lol, i agree

listen what i want to know is, how does it do with detail retrieval

specifically on natalie merchant's 'tigerlily'

tigerlily deserves only the best detail retrieval

i once bought a linear power supply for my turntable from a local maker, and on his request posted a (positive) online review

i could definitely feel myself reaching for the shopworn phrases - bass was better-defined, midrange gained an extra level of expression, less constrained higher frequencies, an overall increase in what you might call "musicality"

like, while i was writing i could feel a demon sitting on my shoulder trying to convince me that it was legit to have dropped a few hundred bucks on a PSU

(i did have an actual technical reason for buying it, but i was absolutely also straining to perceive the sonic improvements that i secretly hoped for)

lol i've literally never heard of linear power supplies before. thank you. it's just incredible what exists out there

god help me I got lost in the world of record cleaning.
I basically learned a) for my needs hand-cleaning with brush, cloth and a homemade solution would give adequate results and b) no force on earth was going to stop me buying the cheapest ultrasonic record cleaner I could find on aliexpress because why wouldn't I want an ultrasonic cleaner around the place?

Some good discussion of various methods can be found itt: Cleaning Records

If anyone's thinking of ditching vinyl, now's definitely a great time to cash out. I just sold my turntable, which hadn't been used in a while but was in much worse condition than when I bought it, and I actually made a pretty good profit. Glad to be rid of it, space has become a premium so even clearing that made a significant difference. (I can now stack a bunch of stuff in that spot, freeing up quite a bit of floor space in the process,)

xp thanks for that link! I never even thought to look on ilx for some reason & instead spent my time digging around audiosciencereview and stevehoffman

xp not ditching, but definitely culling

xxp I think I missed the boat for peak resale but the two technics 1200 mk5's in the house may yet be my retirement fund

I had both of my 1200s (a mk2 and a mk3) serviced at the beginning of the pandemic - just in case they moved, got sick, or otherwise went out of business - but they should be good to go until I finally give up.

lovely, lovely piece by sasha frere-jones

https://harpers.org/archive/2022/12/corner-club-cathedral-cocoon-audiophilia-and-its-discontents/

Great article. I've heard the Fleetwood Sound speakers mentioned in the article at a shop. I was curious since I went to hs where they are made. Sounded phenomenal, but they had some pricey tube amps driving them.

that was great, thanks

haha i totally recognize this impulse:

I find myself defending whoever is on the other end of the spectrum from the person I am talking to. When audiophiles start babbling on about old blues records or some dishwater new classical, I make it clear that I love Doja Cat. When someone tells me they are perfectly happy with Spotify and earbuds, I plead with them to listen to a live recording played through a decent setup.

The issue is people who insist there’s only one way to enjoy stuff.

Enjoyed that a lot. Cheers.

(My uncle bequeathed me a Garrard deck. It's huge and wooden and gorgeous - as much table as deck. I *must* get the thing fixed up and ready to use.)

You should! I would love to get one and have it refurbished.

Seconding that! It's a shame that the industry decided black metal was the standard for audio equipment; I have an old Sherwood receiver that's dying and not worth the cost of repair, but am loathe to give it up because I love the wood and chrome. (Well, that I get a lot of use out of the "mono" switch.)

In general that gear is worth fixing, it's usually the capacitors and a complete replacement set would cost under $40 in most cases. The time and ability to fix is a greater barrier, but if you have a soldering-iron savvy friend it could be doable.
I've probably already mentioned it but I got my amp, a 1979 Marantz 2285B receiver, for $150 from a local repair shop about 17 years ago. I've spent maybe $80 in replacement components and lamps, and probably 15 hours of pulling it apart and replacing stuff, but it's worth ten times that now.
https://i.imgur.com/v5YGxUt.jpg

Love that era of Marantz! And the Nak at the bottom.

Did enjoy the SFJ article. I should experience the SET-horn thing once in my life, just to see what it's all about.

You've inspired me: I've just found a local(ish) guy who repairs old decks and valve amps etc. Have emailed to see if he's interested in fixing her up. Fingers crossed. (I mean, I'd basically have to remodel my lounge to mount the bloody thing but I'll worry about that if I get it sorted!)

remember wandering around ginza late at night and randomly popping into a record bar (i think it was called something generic, like "ginza record bar"). dimly lit, smokey. we ordered a cocktail, the proprietor put on the first record for the night. it blew me away - the vocalist on the song sounded like she was next to my ear. didn't get a chance to shazam the song. he put on 'eye in the sky' by alan parsons project next, first time i ever heard the song (by this time i had gotten my shazam out). i suspect people on this board will regard it as bland MOR, but i'll forever remember/associate it with that sound system. i made a note of the speakers, tannoy westminsters, and i looked them up later - $30k MSRP, each. run on mcintosh equipment, naturally. the bar itself couldn't have been more than 3-400 square feet, railroad style. one wonders how those speakers would sound in a properly large room, but maybe that was part of the magic - $30k speakers vibrating a shoebox.

i have this documentary in my queue on youtube, been meaning to watch. my sense is that even if you are skeptical of the money that was spent on this, it is a beautiful gesture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2IOOhJmxw