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Thread: Nice Surprises. Equipment that sounded way better than expected!

  1. #31
    Join Date: Aug 2011

    Location: Nottingham

    Posts: 575
    I'm Ian.

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    Rogers JR149. Blimey !

  2. #32
    Join Date: Oct 2014

    Location: Leicestershire

    Posts: 468
    I'm Michael.

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    Quote Originally Posted by walpurgis View Post
    How could I forget? The Denon PMA-350SE integrated amp of course.

    A decent one can be bought for less than £100 and will not disgrace itself in just about any system. Every time I try one, I'm amazed at how good they sound, plenty of power for most situations too. I've had these driving my big Tannoys beautifully.

    l love mine Geoff

  3. #33
    Join Date: Jul 2016

    Location: Welsh Borders

    Posts: 283
    I'm Gary.

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    A pair of mint Mordaunt Short Festival 2 loudspeakers (for 100 pounds) has way outperformed expectations for me.
    It's a daily pleasure listening to them in the kitchen, driven from a Tandberg receiver. In fact that's what I'm doing right now.
    IB.
    p.s. Actually the Tandberg receiver is a terrific find too - 145 squid - but maybe that was less of a surprise.

  4. #34
    Join Date: Apr 2008

    Location: Warrington

    Posts: 3,451
    I'm Neil.

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    Royd Sorcerers, which I picked up for £350 - the ones with the Revelation drivers before the "SE" version came out (in my avatar pic).

    They were intended for a 2nd system, yes you can get a more refined or detailed top end, but it's difficult to find speakers that 'time' so well or have the right sort of 'snap' with transients. Indeed I've preferred these to £1.9k Amphion Argon3s. In the end I finished up with RR3s, which still have the Royd house sound albeit with more refinement on the top end, more bass, and a bit more warmth.

    So, discovering Royd speakers was a nice surprise.
    Mana Acoustics Racks / Bright Star IsoNodes Decoupling >> Allo DigiOne Player >> Pedja Rogic's Audial Model S DAC + Pioneer PL-71 turntable / Vista Audio phono-1 mk II / Denon PCL-5 headshell / Reson Reca >> LFD DLS >> LFD PA2M (SE) >> Royd RR3s.

  5. #35
    Join Date: Oct 2017

    Location: Fenland

    Posts: 125
    I'm Bob.

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    Back in 1976 I purchased my Tannoy Cheviots from a small shop in Brixton having heard them in the big Laskies in Tottenham Court Road, I got them in a half price 50th anniversary and pre Tannoy move to Scotland sale. They still cost me £350, about half the price of a Mini at the time.

    Every time I play music on them they surprise and delight me, a bit like swimming in melted chocolate with a massive firework display going off at the same time.


    And no Oliver, you cant have mine, buy your own.

  6. #36
    Join Date: Nov 2008

    Location: North Down /Northern Ireland/ UK

    Posts: 19,484
    I'm Neil.

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    Biggest surprise in the past for me was the Pathos classic One mk2 making the Pathos Logos mk1 sound bloated, slow and less transparent than its cheaper brother. I sold the Logos and bought a Classic One.
    Regards Neil

  7. #37
    Join Date: Aug 2008

    Location: Suffolk, UK

    Posts: 1,473
    I'm Paul.

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    Quite a few years ago I bought some Mordaunt Short MS10s for the princely sum of £5.85 on ebay. With a beefy amp behind them they actually sounded really good, especially in the small spare room where I had them set up.
    ~Paul~

  8. #38
    montesquieu Guest

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    A couple of cartridges. You need a heavy arm but I've been frankly astonished at the capability of the Shure SC35C - it's not the best for subtle chamber music but I was playing some Dylan last night and some Ry Cooder today and it was just perfect - there's still a lot of detail but what's apparent is the sheer force of the delivery, combined with a good idler I can't imagine a better cartridge for music with a beat, electric bass and guitars. Fantastically enjoyable and it actually seemed to lose something going over to fancy MCs when I did a comparison. VTF is 5g and I have in a headshell assembly totalling SPU-level 32g on an arm of 20g+ mass and tracks like a proverbial train (top torture track). Best of all these are available for £45 on ebay. I'm told by the new ones from Mexico are inferior to the older US ones but I'm pretty impressed with this one nonetheless. Shown on a Jico stylus I got for it out of curiosity but there's nothing in it (for once) compared to the original.

    Another candidate (very recently discovered) is the Tonar Diabolic E. There have been threads on this over on Lenco Heaven and Thomas Schick even took one and modified it (rebody mainly, plus he found a way to remove the luminous dot on the stylus tip). It's a DJ cartridge (as is the Shure) though with a massive 8mV output compared to the Shure's measly 5mV. This has been a revelation on the AT1503 (another heavy-ish arm) tracking at 4.5g in a similar 30g+ headshell combo. It's truly remarkable - the eliptical stylus is significantly more detailed than the spherical on the Shure and the refinement is remarkable for the money which is similar to the Shure, to which it gives away nothing at all in the boogie stakes. To my ears the performance comes close to a vintage SPU GE and my next task is to fit a wooden body (available off eBay) and cut the plastic back on the stylus assembly, as the Lenco geeks have concluded this gives a significant improvement. Certainly Thomas Schick was selling his modded ones at 400 Euros (in a graphite headshell).

    I've been having quite a bit of fun altogether lately with low compliance MMs, having also a Shure M3D with original stylus (I had a second one with Jico stylus and sold it - I think the Jico in this case was better though perhaps the original is just getting on a bit) and a B&O SP1. This pair are among the earliest stereo cartridges ever made and sound surprisingly good for the age of their designs. (Both spherical and well suited to the early stereo recordings of that era).




  9. #39
    Join Date: Sep 2010

    Location: West Midlands, UK

    Posts: 646
    I'm Lee.

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    Quote Originally Posted by montesquieu View Post
    A couple of cartridges. You need a heavy arm but I've been frankly astonished at the capability of the Shure SC35C - it's not the best for subtle chamber music but I was playing some Dylan last night and some Ry Cooder today and it was just perfect - there's still a lot of detail but what's apparent is the sheer force of the delivery, combined with a good idler I can't imagine a better cartridge for music with a beat, electric bass and guitars. Fantastically enjoyable and it actually seemed to lose something going over to fancy MCs when I did a comparison. VTF is 5g and I have in a headshell assembly totalling SPU-level 32g on an arm of 20g+ mass and tracks like a proverbial train (top torture track). Best of all these are available for £45 on ebay. I'm told by the new ones from Mexico are inferior to the older US ones but I'm pretty impressed with this one nonetheless. Shown on a Jico stylus I got for it out of curiosity but there's nothing in it (for once) compared to the original.

    Another candidate (very recently discovered) is the Tonar Diabolic E. There have been threads on this over on Lenco Heaven and Thomas Schick even took one and modified it (rebody mainly, plus he found a way to remove the luminous dot on the stylus tip). It's a DJ cartridge (as is the Shure) though with a massive 8mV output compared to the Shure's measly 5mV. This has been a revelation on the AT1503 (another heavy-ish arm) tracking at 4.5g in a similar 30g+ headshell combo. It's truly remarkable - the eliptical stylus is significantly more detailed than the spherical on the Shure and the refinement is remarkable for the money which is similar to the Shure, to which it gives away nothing at all in the boogie stakes. To my ears the performance comes close to a vintage SPU GE and my next task is to fit a wooden body (available off eBay) and cut the plastic back on the stylus assembly, as the Lenco geeks have concluded this gives a significant improvement. Certainly Thomas Schick was selling his modded ones at 400 Euros (in a graphite headshell).

    I've been having quite a bit of fun altogether lately with low compliance MMs, having also a Shure M3D with original stylus (I had a second one with Jico stylus and sold it - I think the Jico in this case was better though perhaps the original is just getting on a bit) and a B&O SP1. This pair are among the earliest stereo cartridges ever made and sound surprisingly good for the age of their designs. (Both spherical and well suited to the early stereo recordings of that era).



    When I went to Munich in 2016 I got talking to Thomas Schick and the chap who was doing the demo in the Western Electric room, we were having a chat about the Ortofon SPU at the time and and they both recommended the Tonar Diabolic E as a cartridge that had similar sound characteristics to the SPU. Thomas showed us one of his modded versions but didn't mention it was 400 euros. The Tonar is still on my list of cartridges to try especially as I've now joined the Lenco GL75 idler club.

    For the money it looks like the Tonar is a bit of a bargain.
    Vinyl rig 1 - NAS Spacedeck / FR64s / Lab 12 Melto / Denon SUT / Ortofon GM SPU. Vinyl rig 2 Mono Set Up - Lenco GL75 c/w Jelco 750D / AT33 Mono / EAR 834P Modded. Amplifiers - Audio Note Empress Silver / Hattor Passive Pre. Digital - Fanless Mini PC / Lampizator TRP / Linear PSU / Hummingboard Network audio adaptor. Speakers - Horns.pl Mummy's. Cables are Audio Note / Albedo / Furutech Speaker wire. Power conditioner is a Gigawatt PC2 EVO

  10. #40
    Join Date: Aug 2010

    Location: Torquay, Devon.

    Posts: 5,684
    I'm Shane.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Primalsea View Post
    Quite a few years ago I bought some Mordaunt Short MS10s for the princely sum of £5.85 on ebay. With a beefy amp behind them they actually sounded really good, especially in the small spare room where I had them set up.
    Are your ones from the 90's era?

    S.

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