Thorens TD150 and the Road to Vinyl Bliss

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Andrew
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#16

Post by Andrew »

You need a cart protractor and a test record to do a decent job. I use the ones that come with the HiFi News Test Record.

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#17

Post by Mike H »

SteveTheShadow wrote:tighten your cartridge to boilermaker's torque levels mantra,
By torque wrench set to 100lbs/ft :lol:
 
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colin.hepburn
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#18

Post by colin.hepburn »

Andrew wrote:You need a cart protractor and a test record to do a decent job. I use the ones that come with the HiFi News Test Record.

-- Andrew
Yep got all that and its setup with it also got the Seb protractor with arm so all seems fine on that front 1042 Cart tracking set to about 1.75g ant-state set to 1 on the rega as recommended by audioorigami who rewired the arm after Steve's post I have started hearing it more now :shock:
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#19

Post by Andrew »

Have you checked the overhang? And the antiskate?

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#20

Post by colin.hepburn »

Andrew wrote:Have you checked the overhang? And the anti-skate?

-- Andrew
Yep everything seems to be right
overhang @15mm anti-skate set to the center position 1
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#21

Post by Cressy Snr »

colin.hepburn wrote: after Steve's post I have started hearing it more now :shock:
Oh No!

I'm sorry Colin. I certainly did not mean to get anyone paranoid about
vinyl nasties. I was just giving my own experiences and pet hates about record reproduction.

IME sibilant distortion can be caused by one of two things. If your arm and cartridge are set up and aligned correctly and you are playing a new record that has not been played before, then the cartridge is mistracking; has to be... end of story! This is far more common than most people realise. Or it has been damaged, in the past by a mistracking cartridge.

A bit of history might explain things better. You see, when the "Brave New Word in Hi-Fi" came on the scene in the 80s, companies like Shure, Pickering, Stanton and Ortofon (who had been the big four manufacturers majoring on trackability and accuracy of reproduction) were deemed to be the "boring old farts" of the cartridge world. These companies, in the opinion of the new wave of hi-fi writers produced limp-wristed "boring" sounding, undynamic devices that had no place except in your Dad's Thorens/Quad/Spendor BC1 system playing Perry Como and Doris Day.

After the disappearance of the silky Linn/Grace/Supex combination and its replacement by the hard-hitting IttokLVII/Asak we had no end of manufacturers trying to take that sound downmarket. At the affordable end, where lets face it, most hi fi buyers were operating, manufactures must have taken the easy way forward by simply lowering the compliance of their cartridges without carrying out corresponding adjustments such as lowering stylus tip mass so that the equivalent system still tracked the mid/high frequencies properly( a stiffer bit of rubber in the suspension must have been far cheaper than a lighter cantilever/stylus) Now fit a metal or pocan body to this creation, tighten it with a three foot long allen key and you had the perfect recipe for shaking your low mass arm to bits.

While the arm was being shaken to pieces you got the added benefit of a superficially exciting and dynamic sound that was all leading edges, artificially emphasised "detail" and when the cartridge let go on loud vocals or gated reverbed drum kits you got a hefty whack around the head from the resulting burst of mistracking distortion. Larvely!

Fast forward to the present and play your Suzanne Vega, Phil Collins, Huey Lewis at al with a modern cartridge like the Goldring 1042 that has had 25 years of development and is well-sorted in the tracking department with low tip mass and a nice fine line stylus, it will show you the damage that has been done in the past by your K9 or Audio Technica.

Trouble is there is nothing you can do about it, the damage is done. The chances of finding any of these 80s productions second hand that have not suffered the same fate are pretty remote IMO.

So I wouldn't worry about it. The reason my Suzanne Vega sounds fine now as does my Jazz Street sounds stuff is that they only got one or two plays before I slung them to the back of the shelves in disgust, therefore they had a good chance of minimal damage.

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#22

Post by colin.hepburn »

SteveTheShadow wrote:
colin.hepburn wrote: after Steve's post I have started hearing it more now :shock:
Oh No!

I'm sorry Colin. I certainly did not mean to get anyone paranoid about
vinyl nasties. I was just giving my own experiences and pet hates about record reproduction.


Steve
Hi Steve
No its OK im not paranoid about it really honest :shock:
Thank you for your analogy of this problem you should consider righting for HiFi World or something :)
It was just after being away from vinyl for the last 12 years and with different equipment this time round I was listing to the sound of the equipment in stead of the music. So when I became aware of the sibilants at first it was the Suzanne Vega album which was the worst
I did try messing with the tracking a bit but to no avail most of my albums seem ok a bit here and there perhaps
Some also say that the Cart requires a burn-in period which seems plausible I only have about 15/20 hours on the 1042 so may not be helping the problem
I can remember at the time the HiFi press went on about removing the mould release agent on the LPs and banged on about the Keith monks cleaning machines at the time my local Hi Fi Dealer offered this service of which I took part in so my albums are clean but wonder if this cleaning process can contribute to this sibilants thing ???
AS for what I played them on back then
Well that was an AR, EB101/Arm audio-technica made by jelco Linn fitting cart audio-technical ATOC3-MC
Still got the turntable and Arm not the cart thou thinking about restoring it
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#23

Post by cressy »

when i was making the slate lenco, i had the sibilance problem, it turned out to be caused by the arm itsself and how it interacted with the plinth. it drove me up the wall until i made the perspex arm instead. if it starts to bother, it might be worth experimenting with different armboard materials. the resonances in the arm can set off resonances in other parts i.e plinth, platter ect. also vta can make a great difference. the dl 103 sounded best on my various decks with the back end slightly down. the benz micro is better with the back end slightly up and the coral again with the back end up. rule of thumb i use is to set it level the slightly alter it to get what i want from it. back end down seems to give a more bass oriented sound at the expense of the top sounding a bit dull, and back end up, the opposite, more treble oriented and lacking in bass extension. just my own findings tbh, but may be worth trying out if it becomes a bugbear
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#24

Post by Greg »

Wisdom from Anthony once again. I concur with his findings. Obviously there is bad and mismatched TT kit out there but my experience is that once you have mastered set up, there should be no reason why your discs should produce sibilance albeit there certainly are some bad recordings around. The 'Suzanne Vega, Solitude Standing' is not badly recorded and will play well on a good well set up TT. Certainly it is a challenging recording being close mic'd, up front and in your face and I use it to check my system after set up immediately after I've used the HFN test record which I swear by to get the best from and to guide tweaking during that set up procedure.

On cleaning new discs to remove release agents etc, I have found this also to be proved. New discs benefit from a clean and I now do this as a matter of course because when I tested and compared, new discs after cleaning sounded better and didn't have ancillary foreign sounds coming across on playback. Having said that, some so called audiophile pressings are nothing of the sort and are probably much worse than original pressings. Disappointingly I have a recording of Miles Davies, Kinda Blue which suffers from sounds such as scraping and fizz that should not be present.

For TT's, it is my view that item matching (Deck/arm/cartidge) are all important and thereafter, proper attention (almost to a pedantic level) to set up produces the results we desire. In saying that I do not believe it is necessary to vary VTA according to record thickness. Once this is set for satisfactory listening, in my view it is generally good for all weights and thicknesses of the discs.
Last edited by Greg on Tue May 26, 2009 9:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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#25

Post by Cressy Snr »

Hi Greg

Whilst I agree with you on most points in your reply and in the past paid forensic levels of attention to setup, tracking weight, bias and all the rest, the problem is or was in those days, trackability.

To me it does not matter how much attention one pays to setup, if the stylus won't track then the whole exercise is futile. To me the whole 80s vinyl doctrine was a major step backwards in standards of reproduction and the question has to be asked, was it this lousy vinyl experience that was ultimately responsible for the death of the record and the rapid ascendancy of the compact disc? I believe it was. Certainly for me and numerous friends and colleagues the CD was like being released from purgatory. All the problems of vinyl replay gone at a stroke.

I also believe that we are only now achieving better standards of record reproduction than that which was taken for granted by 70s hi-fi listeners.
Above all else you need a cartridge that tracks the grooves securely under all circumstances. We had that in the 70s, we sacrificed this essential quality for false, brash, excitement during the 80s.

Now we have the right balance of attributes again and someone like me can appreciate the LP once more.

Steve
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#26

Post by colin.hepburn »

Hi Cressy/Greg
Thanks for the tips /thoughts perhaps a bit more twiddling is required Greg I Do have the HFN test record which I have used for the first time but not really to clear on how-to interpret what the tones are telling me is there a best track to help try and tackle this sibilants
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#27

Post by Greg »

SteveTheShadow wrote:To me it does not matter how much attention one pays to setup, if the stylus won't track then the whole exercise is futile. To me the whole 80s vinyl doctrine was a major step backwards in standards of reproduction and the question has to be asked, was it this lousy vinyl experience that was ultimately responsible for the death of the record and the rapid ascendancy of the compact disc? I believe it was. Certainly for me and numerous friends and colleagues the CD was like being released from purgatory. All the problems of vinyl replay gone at a stroke.Steve
Hi Steve,

You might well be right but this was never my personal experience. I found bad sound reproduction was simply down to either bad set up of the kit, poor synergy of component TT parts or basically crap original equipment. Poor recordings were honestly few and far. I moved away from this problem many years ago. I didn't get hung up on the cartridge fixing torque thing etc and settled when I bought quality components designed to work together. Rega arms are significant here. At a very basic level and at a very reasonable price they do what you want and expect as printed on the tin. They are the most cheaply and effective vinyl replay component in the system and I retain a significant regard for them. Furthermore they are open to extreme levels of tweaking, hense all the derivative options and my recent purchase of an Audiomods arm

I'm very glad you have arrived. I'm not sure how that has happened or the path that led you there, but that's not important. What is, is that you've arrived and are now satisfied. Furthermore, if you are willing to invest a little, you could improve your sound even further.

Best wishes,

Greg
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#28

Post by Mike H »

SteveTheShadow wrote:Trouble is there is nothing you can do about it, the damage is done. The chances of finding any of these 80s productions second hand that have not suffered the same fate are pretty remote IMO.
I'll second all that, in fact I proved to myself the difference between the "artificially induced more interestingness" by mistracking and getting it set up properly, sounds totally different but is actually a more accurate reproduction.

Also got records worn by the bad set ups as well so what sibilances now exist aren't going to go away. The hitherto rarely played ones are marvellous.

@ Colin I also have to set my Rega anti-skate about half as well, at the mo about 0.75, despite 2 grams tracking weight. Much higher than that it wants to jump back on the bigger scratches. I.e. A/S is too powerful
 
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#29

Post by Mike H »

colin.hepburn wrote:Hi Cressy/Greg
Thanks for the tips /thoughts perhaps a bit more twiddling is required Greg I Do have the HFN test record which I have used for the first time but not really to clear on how-to interpret what the tones are telling me is there a best track to help try and tackle this sibilants
Where's that web link for those protractors? That's what I used. Can't find it now.
 
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#30

Post by Mike H »

OK found them.

http://www.vinylengine.com/cartridge-al ... tors.shtml


I ended up making my own drawings in Corel Draw, as it's mostly just the distances for the two grids that are different. I'm using the Stevenson which curiously is what the previous TP16 arm set up was, only I didn't know it was that!

You need your Adobe Acrobat to be able to print true 1:1 ratio on paper.
 
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