I eventually got together for a session with Martin( Macca) after a number of aborted attempts and I would like to than Martin for being a generous host and allowing me to hear his kit.
I took the Lenco GL75 I had refurbished / serviced earlier in the year as Martin was keen to hear it. The session was not a bake off as such but a nice casual get together, I must admit I ended up with a dry throat after chatting so much
I think we both have common roots in seventies stuff, both music and equipment and on more than one occasion we pondered just how far Hifi had really come and the fact you could furnish yourself with an excellent system based around ancient and modern equipment at a very reasonable outlay.
It was good to hear Martins Technics SL1200 as I had not heard one in completely stock form and it acquitted itself very well indeed, it certainly did the job especially with a Nagaoka MP50 stylus. Really nice smooth full sound that was fairly laid back but allowed enough information to satisfy, indeed this could certainly be used for long listening sessions without fatigue. Hopefully Martin will fill the post with details of his other equipment we used but a do remember the Firebottle phono stage was used into a passive and we listened to Akai speakers for the whole evening.
These speakers as Martin will agree are not the last word in resolution but they satisfy the listener in an earthy organic kind of way. Surprisingly even though they have an abundant of tweeters, four I think! they are certainly not bright sounding but do give a nice weighty sound.
Second half of the session was with the Lenco M55/ Jico SAS set up. This brought about a lift in the overall immediacy of the sound with probably more detail and a much livelier sound. We played jazz, rock and MOR throughout the evening and I think the Lenco brought about a powerful metronomic quality to the sound. The drive and constancy of reproduction is very apparent and makes for compelling listening especially to rock driven music? They definitely got some things right in the 70's!
I shall probably bring this Turntable to MIBO In November.
Once again thanks for a great evening Martin and a very nice curry!