1210 - Journey to audionirvana @ PT

[Tiff_Needle]

Hi Jonathan

As already mentioned you are going to need to decide a budget. A couple of questions first.
1. Are you buying by via the internet or are there good dealers in Lisbon for you to visit?
2. Are you intending to buy each upgrade individually or do you want to pimp your Techie all in one go?
3. Are you handy or does DIY cause you issues?

It is a fact that on forums if you ask a question of 50 people you will get one way or the other 50 different opinions, as few of us will totally agree across all the options as we all have our personal tastes. Hence the questions, as it helps to narrow the options.

Sorry, forgot to answer to your questions.

1. Are you buying by via the internet or are there good dealers in Lisbon for you to visit?

Most of the gear might be available here, and there are some really fabulous, if not some of the best in Europe, hifi shops in Portugal and some of them specialized specifically on turntables. But to be honest, as I might get better pricing buying most of the parts outside Portugal, I believe that most of the upgrades will be bought outside via internet just as I did with 99% of my system. The only parts that I actually bought in Portugal were, the SCD-1 and some power cables

2. Are you intending to buy each upgrade individually or do you want to pimp your Techie all in one go?

As mentioned, I see this as a 2 year project, in a step by step fashion. The only reason behind it really is not spending all of it at once and live each upgrade at a time knowing exactly what is happening on each step. Otherwise I would go for a one shot only

3. Are you handy or does DIY cause you issues?

Not exactly. I know my way around tools and electronic/electrical-wise I'm comfortable. I'm an Electrical Engineer and have played around electronics for some years. Thhe downside of the DIY route for me is, for one having little time available for these sort of duties, two being a bit lazy and whenever I have spare time I like to spend it laying on the couch listening to music reading stuff on my iPad

[Clive197]

Jonathan, thank you for your detailed reply.

The arm seems from your posts to be one of the first buys. I spent a couple of months researching arms and finally coming to Origin Live Silver at £689 + £58 for an arm board. One of the reviews I read for this arm, was in the opinion of the writer sounding nicer than the SME V. I confess that I have not heard that SME so can add little to that. I am very pleased with the results I get with the Silver. Origin Live have been very helpful and one of there range would I suspect give you what you are looking for.
Next comes the mat. Funk's Achromat seems to be the favoured item for most people who don't want to spend a fortune.
The Isonoe's with boots are my favoured feet, love the sound they gave when I added them.
The Mike New bearing gets a lot of good comment on this forum but at £445 seems expensive to me for an item that seems to only give subtle gains IMHO.
For me power supplies also as yet leave me unconvinced but I'm still open on this. I'm going to a HiFi show tomorrow and plan to look into this for my Techie, watch this space.
Hope this has been helpful and I'm sure other people will also offer advice.

[Tarzan]

Jonathan, if you do not have a budget,the Inspire Monarch/SME V/with a cart of your choice, it looks good, sounds amazing, and is all you will ever need.

[Wakefield Turntables]

The Mike New bearing gets a lot of good comment on this forum but at £445 seems expensive to me for an item that seems to only give subtle gains IMHO.
.

Have you tried one? I find your comment very hard to believe.

[Marco]

Nope - I can say with some certainty that the sonic effect of the Mike New bearing is NOT subtle (providing that the rest of the turntable has been optimised to take full advantage of it)

In my experience, there are three fundamental items, which transform the SL-1200/1210 into a genuine high-end turntable, capable of competing with the best (as opposed to merely a very good one):

1) Mike New bearing.
2) Paul Hynes SR7 PSU (with internal regulator mods).
3) Funk Firm platter.

Without those three items (or others of comparable quality) the Technics will sound fab (if judiciously modified in other areas), but escape true greatness. However, it all depends on what your goals are in the first place!

Marco.

[Tiff_Needle]

Althoug I have no experience with the MN bearing, I don't have a hard time believing that it actually does big difference.

My first upgrade might be the tone arm as for a stock unit it seems to me as the weakest point of the 1210 stock.

These Origin Live tone arms seem promising...

I wouldn't say jumping to a conquer but maybe an illustration would be reasonable.

Has anyone have any experience with these tone arms and the 1210?

Would a OL illustration and a Denon DL-103R be a nice choice?

I imagine most of you would recommend that I first strip off the 1210 PSU and plug it outside, but before going into that I'd say it would only be logical doing that after buying a good external PSU, wouldn't you agree?

[Tarzan]

The obvious answers, YES!

My vinyl collection is nowhere near as big as my digital collection (CD,SACD,DVD-A,BD, PCM @ 16/44,1 till 24/384, DSD64 & DSD128) but fortunately have quite a few nicelly kept LP records waiting patiently to be played on the 1210.

I've always intended to go through the analog route therefore from time to time whenever some record caught my attention I would buy it.

I honestly don't believe that my vinyl collection will ever be as big the digital collection (~2500+ albums) as I do not intend to substitute all my music with vinyl. And to be honest I'm a bit tired of buying repeatably the same albums only because a new format is available or a new remaster is available. Complete waste of money if you ask me...

The main driver behind this vinyl venture is to have a special selected set of music in analog from masters also made in the analog domain.

It makes no sense to me buying (And I've bought quite few to be honest) digitally mixed, mastered music in vinyl as some folks do. You simply end-up introducing another (if not several) stages of entropy on the chain. Just as listening to digital transfers of music recorded, mixed and mastered on analog domain is just another way of loosing something on the way (an exception could me made to some direct DSD transfers that are simply stunning)



As I've not had the courage yet to plunge into the supra-sumo of analog and be as close to the source as possible (talking about R2R), vinyl might be as close as you get without spending loads of cash on a format that is both dead (ok so a few of them out there are still recording on IPS but that doesn't mean its a commercially viable medium, at least for the common mortal that likes do listen to more than a few hundreds of albums), highly priced with limited offer.

But heck, if I could afford it just for the sheer pleasure of using something exotic that actually might sound superior to anything else on earth, I know where I would put my money. I would certainly go for a United Home Audio, Phase 11, R2R!! (http://www.unitedhomeproducts.com/)

But, as I have no luck on lottery tickets and beside the fact that I live in a place where who (really) runs the country is completly obsessed on slaughtering the working class with high taxes.... I see no way of having the luxury of going to deep, or shall I say deeper, into really high-end toys for grownups.

Having said that, and coming back to your question, YES indeed, I do have a "smallish" collection of LP records that I'm very proud of and wainting anxiously to drop the needle on them!


Yes, I do not reside in the UK but no worries... there is a lot of vinyl for sale in Portugal. Not as much as in the UK and other countries, and not as cheap, but no worries we manage quite well!

The good thing is that I love to travel and whenever I go to places like UK (specially London), Netherlands(specially Amsterdam) - been on both just recently (the who concert in Amsterdam will be a memory that I'll cherish till the end of my days) and will be going back to both next month !! Can't wait to see Steven Wilson and Peter Gabriel in London, eheh - I always fly back to Portugal with quite a heavier load

Side Note: Oh by the way, Montreal is really a great place to buy record!!! Sweet... Just whish I could spend 4000€ each time I enter a record store that has really good stuff...


What I love about buying vinyl in certain places outside Portugal, is that you're able to get great recording, original pressings in mint conditions at good prices on the second hand market. There are also good offerings here in Lisbon or Porto but they're actually more expensive than the average price in certain cities, that is, price/shape wise.

Amsterdam as few stores but with really good quality second-hand records and the average price is nice. It should be kept that way for many many years to come...

I went a lot off-topic on my own thread here, but ok... Let's get back on track

So you've asked about budget!

To be honest, I have none!

I would say that it all depends on whether its justifiable or not. I'm aware that I'll have to spend quite a bit to get the 1210 on par with some other high-end TT but I also have no intention of spending 5k plus on a T/T... from there on I would prefer going for something more high-endish (badge-wise), like an SME.

For me this is a mid-term project so my scope is to have it complete within 1 & 1/2 to 2 years.

It looks to me that the component where I'll be spending most of the money will be on the tonearm.

I do love the SME V but does the 1210 (please, please don't shoot me) really cup up with an arm of this caliber?

It would be really nice if I could spend a few hours listening to a heavily modded 1210 with all the bells and wistles but I doubt anyone nearby as a 1210 modded let alone heavily modded.

So what to do?!

First of all I want to get the 1210 singing and for that I need a phono stage and a cartridge.

I do agree that I should first live with it and learn its ways on grooving the music (although I'm not a first timer on 1210's... Just never heard it on a system like mine).

As mentioned earlier, I'm completely aware that I'll be spending quite a few euros on the techie but want to be as rational as possible on it and avoid wasting money unnecessarily (troika eats up quite a big chunk of my earnings so, no fooling around is recommended).

So cartridge wise I wanted to go for something that would be on par with an arm that would be fitted somewhere in the future, such as an SME (309/V - Jelco 750).

For that I would really like to have your thoughts.

Between MM & MC, normally I more towards MC even on the budget segment (<1000€), so I would say that I would go for an MC. Aside from that, should I pull the trigger on the Cadence phono stage, I would need to stick no MC as the Cadende as no MM option,

My trouble is that it seems to me that normally MC coils under 1k have a light tendency to be over-shouty on the mid-range.

Whatever cartridge I go for now, will always be a compromise but taking into account that I will most certainly change the tonearm to something of higher caliber I would prefer buying something that would please me afterwards without the need of buying another Cart.

Qualities that I'm looking for, that in my opinion would be good taking into account my system's actual character.

Body;

Wieght;

Wood, wine, honey;

Stage;

Depth;

Velvet mids and highs (my speakers have ribbon tweeters and they are already so revealing);

I would say,a tad of color if you may...

My system is already very neutral as we speak... so adding a bit of color wound't hurt, specially for those nostalgic 60 & 70's recordings of prog.!

I'm very inclined towards the Denon DL-103R or BENZ-MICRO MC GOLD.

As I would be using them on the stock 1210 arm, what would you recommend for any of these to play its best on this arm?

I've read that, at least for the case of the DL103R, that I should get a Shumiko headshell and extra weight. Can any of you specify exactly what would be reccomended?



After having decided and fitted, both the cart. and phono stage, I was thinking on going for the Paul Hynes PSU or the Mike New bearing.


That is, putting apart new feet for the 1210 that might be bought anytime soon...

What are your opinions on using the Isonoe feet considering the fact that the 1210 is sited on a Spectral HE2002-BG-AL.


Tkx

Jonathan, l can tell you the SME V works well on the Techie, giving a feel of real authority and control with a very solid bass foundation( l know as l stuck my SME V on my Techie)and it looks super cool as well, and effect from going from standard arm to the SME was not subtle! Which brings us to the MN Bearing as an option which if you read the AOS forum is not subtle either.

[Wakefield Turntables]

You are going to need to some deep pockets if you want to get the best out of your 1210. My top tips would be

1. MN bearing
2. Paul Hynes PSU + Internal regs
3. MN platter
4. Tonearm

[RobbieGong]

Spot on Andrew, If one really wants to 'get there' without too much compromise

[Clive197]

Have you tried one? I find your comment very hard to believe.

Andrew, I did look at the MN Bearing today by coincidence. So as I understand your comment, you think the bearing will make a huge difference. So if I purchase said item and don't find the improvement to be be large, will you agree to buy it from me for what I paid for it?
Clive