Hi-Fi systems


My old Townshend rock turntable got a bit of love recently. Actually a LOT of love. I'd neglected vinyl a bit in recent years having got into expensive dacs and streamers. Then a mate asked me to fit a new arm to his roksan xerxes turntable. Shortly after a new cartridge. Shortly after that a better cartridge! All done, I listenex to what we had created and was impressed. Then I listened to my turntable, which I had forever thought was better, and was disappointed.

A month later I'd bought the same arm (700 notes 2nd hand ffs!) and a new MC cartridge - after 25 years mine was probably a bit tired. Wow what a difference!

Then I noticed the motor was noisy and started looking into why. Long story short - research was done into motor control units ... at one point I was looking at one costing over £1200!

Then I got lucky and found a small business who made replacement ones for the Linn Sondek, but vastly superior to the Linn ones, and capable of doing the same stuff aa the £1200 bit if kit ... for "only" £300. All I had to do was make a small mod to my turntable and find a case for the circuitry (below).

Motor now silent .. and running at exactly 33.333333333333333 rpm

20250302_144319.webp20250302_145201.webp
 
neil999 said:
How much difference does a better stylus make? Paticularly if you have a budgety turntable?(300 ish)
Click to expand...
It's as much to do with the rest of your system, I think. Probably depends on your cartridge and tone arm a bit too. Some things work better together than others. I went from an OM S to an OM10 and it was noticeably better on my Technics 1210 mk3, and I've got an OK amp and speakers, not high end or anything but better than entry level. I keep a pair of OM S's for mixing though.

I would've thought you'd notice a difference, but if I was starting at entry level, the first thing I'd put my money towards upgrading is my speakers. If your speakers are already decent then do some researching and see.
 
Blue 1 said:
It's as much to do with the rest of your system, I think. Probably depends on your cartridge and tone arm a bit too. Some things work better together than others. I went from an OM S to an OM10 and it was noticeably better on my Technics 1210 mk3, and I've got an OK amp and speakers, not high end or anything but better than entry level. I keep a pair of OM S's for mixing though.

I would've thought you'd notice a difference, but if I was starting at entry level, the first thing I'd put my money towards upgrading is my speakers. If your speakers are already decent then do some researching and see.
Click to expand...
What do you mix?
 

Blue 1 said:
Acid techno mainly, a bit of deep house, a bit of acid/hard trance. I've not been serious about it for years now though and I don't really buy records for DJing anymore. I just do it at home for my own entertainment.
Click to expand...
Are you any good and do you have a means of recording? I only ask because niche bits of the music scene from way back when are finding new lives and new audiences fan produced on youtube and similar.
 
Looked back at some of the posts towards the end of the year on this thread. I have a 100k+ system now and quite honestly it sounds like a dream to me. Yes, I have mains cables that cost 2.5k each, speaker cable worth 5k and a network switch worth 3.5k, but each time I made an upgrade I thought surely, this wont improve things, but each and every time I heard improvements.
 
Kev The Rat said:
Looked back at some of the posts towards the end of the year on this thread. I have a 100k+ system now and quite honestly it sounds like a dream to me. Yes, I have mains cables that cost 2.5k each, speaker cable worth 5k and a network switch worth 3.5k, but each time I made an upgrade I thought surely, this wont improve things, but each and every time I heard improvements.
Click to expand...
£5k speaker cable and £3.5k network switches are audiophoolery. I would be surprised if your brain isn't playing tricks on you.

If you can afford it and you're enjoying it though then who am I to judge? 🤷‍♂️
 

Kev The Rat said:
Presumably you’ve heard 100k+ system and judged it as sounding no different to a 5k-10k one?
Click to expand...
I don't need to to know that the components you mentioned will make absolutely no difference to it.

Science.

I've no doubt it sounds wonderful, but not because of those bits.
 

Welcome

Join Grand Old Team to get involved in the Everton discussion. Signing up is quick, easy, and completely free.

Register

Shop

Back
Top