Nick G modified Lentek Head Amp

[Marco]

PLANAR 2/R200 Marco, not the replacements

Lol - one 'Toytown turntable' to me is the same as any other. Only kidding!

Regas have their place and aren't bad little T/Ts. I'm glad you weren't offended by my remarks about cartridges, as it's simply how I see it.

I agree with what you've written, particularly this bit:

I just wish to repeat again and you lot are welcome to pick me up on it - anything I say on these forums is from experience and possibly "fact" as I see it at the time. HOWEVER, I do try hard not to be blinkered and am always open to be proved wrong, with gushing apologies as necessary. I very much appreciate the positive aspects of the "training" I had from Linn in the early days, but also realise how limiting that darned turntable was, both in its abilities pre Cirkus and also in the blinkered attitude I and many others had towards other decks at the time. You can thank my mastering engineer friend, my Revox B77 and hifi Dave for opening my eyes....

I'm very glad that Linn chip so firmly embedded in your bonce has now duly been dissolved! Fancy spreading the cure?? There are sadly still many lost souls inflicted by Linnomania and flatearthism, although happily not on here.

We're all here to learn from each other's experiences on AoS. The good thing is that the knowledge and experience of many of our contributors is exceptional and there are no bullshitters with petty agendas to exploit who simply enjoy scoring points and ramming home their supposed 'intellectual superiority' at any given opportunity, as happens so often elsewhere in forum-land...

Now, get that bloody Lentek of yours modified the same as mine, as you'll be amazed at just how good it can sound!

Marco.

[DSJR]

Cool, glad it works.

The bits I used were:

From www.rapidonline.com

47uF 6.3V OSCON SA Electrolytic Capacitor 4 off Part # 11-2508
47u 10V OSCON SC Electrolytic Capacitors 2 off Part # 11-2522

From www.rswww.co.uk

Radial polyprop cap,2.2nF 100V 2.5mm 2 off Part # 247-0271
Radial polyprop cap,10nF 100V 2.5mm 3 off Part # 247-0300

I don't have enough left to make up a set of all the bits, but if you can't get any of them, let me know and I will add them to the next order I send to them both for you.

The connectors used were from HiFi Collective

CMC gold plated RCA sockets one pair
CMC-1036-WF RCA plug one pair

AT LAST - I've got my brain in gear and ordered some bits to complete the job!!! What's broght this to a head has been the excellent sonics of the Stilton OC9 in the second SL1500 I've had in a year. The rather dark tones of this model being amply balanced by the light-n-bright OC9.

All great fun and I'll try my best to do a neat job and keep the bits I remove, just in case

[Marco]

Excellent stuff, Dave. I'm looking forward to reading your findings - certainly the improvement in my unit was quite substantial

Marco.

[Rare Bird]

don't forget pickies for mr perfect to look at

[DSJR]

Ok, but I only have 6.3Mp to use - not hi-res enough for the anti-digital types around and about

[zanash]

I do like the Shark wires though (their silver plated cable made excellent interconnects without sounding "silvery" to me, but that's another story).

thats a very interesting comment .....and at total variance to my experience ...which suggests a couple of things ...you've tried some new shark cable ..that I have not or

you have not heard good silver cable ....

all the shark cables are coaxial ... and tend to sound the same ...infact all coaxials tend to sound similar ....which is why many people can't hear any differences between cables imo

a few observations on cables ....compared to a simple silver twisted pair ...no shielding

copper tends to sound big warm round ...tends to have a hump in the upper bass often enough to blot out the low bass ....especial common on multi strand cables. or I could say limited in solid single core cables.

silver plated copper similar to above but add in a bright metalic top end...imo the worst of both worlds

if this is sounding good then its possible you have issues elsewhere!

silver [thats at least 4n] should sound smooth buttery neutral and natural ....with dynamics to die for .

if your not hearing this ..and you have silver cable ...then its either not silver or theres a lot of stuff mixed in with it like copper or iron ...or even the ground side is copper.

silver gold [not gold plated] rich warm fast dynamic deeper bass than silver on its own.

gold rich warm deep bass

silver gold plated ...again worst of both worlds theres a patern developing here !

platinum ....makes everything else sound metalic and unmusical ....but totally unafordable [ie cost price of plus £1k for 0.5m pair]


And yes I've made most configurations of these ...

if you can live with a simple twisted pair of any metal thats a single solid core ...your going to have a cable thats going to be hard to beat ...

though you will probabley need shielded cables to run from tone arm to head amp as the signals are so small ..



back to thread subject .....

why not try stargets ...I've found these much more musical than oscons .....I limit oscon to power supplie duties which there very goood at ..black gates are ok if you can everget them burned in [if thats the right term] ...once left off I've found they revert back .....so though stargets aren't as good ....they sound pretty good straight out the box and require little running in therefore on the whole they may sound better than none run in blackgates .

did you consider silver mica for the ceramics ?

wimas are pretty decent though .


and finally .....rca plugs with low metal mass will sound better than big chunky ones ...even expensive ones ...

[Gerry]

Hmmm....I have one of these lurking in my parts bin....maybe I'll give it ago.

[DSJR]

The silver-plated Shark cable is too big to fit into the Lentek sadly. I'll stay with the Neutrik plugged original wires for now I think..

Well, I've been running this thing rebuilt all evening into the "office" lo-fi setup and frankly, I'm stunned. The system up here doesn't "do" fine details, so only the obvious bits are reproduced. The Shadows first album (1980 stereo version) has air and space that isn't quite as clear using the AVI on its MC setting. Less bass though, but that doesn't bother me, as the "quality" of the bass seems superior.

Setup used - Technics SL1500/ADC shell with Sumiko wires/Stilton OC9 into the Lentek/AVI S2000MP+P/Belkin Silver Audio series IC's to M-Audio 24/96/Labtec Spin 70 powered speakers.

The really telling thing though is the improved diction of John Martyn's slurring singing style on side 2 of his "One World" album. The famous "Small Hours" track is just sublime.

Thanks again Marco - and Nick for sharing the upgrade details with us. Pics tomorrow..

[Marco]

Nice one, dude - glad it worked out well! Nick's the talented one, though, not me. Look forward to reading more

Marco.

[DSJR]

Apologies to Nick if I appeared to leave him out. Without his help I wouldn't have known what components to purchase - I am grateful Nick - honestly

A few pics - first the board before -



And now, with eleven caps replaced -





Sonically, I can confirm the "grain" has gone, but doubts currently remain concerning the perceived bass weight. Now, this could be because of the Stilton OC9 not having much to start with and I can see how the modded Lentek would be perfect with a Denon 103 (would the SPU push it too hard?).

I haven't changed the existing external wires, as the cable seems to be a good quality screened cable with still clean copper, but as the suspect plugs weren't there to start with on mine, I'd already fitted a pair of Neutrik pro plugs....



Next project - to upgrade the bits on my 1.1M J-FET line buffer and compare it to the modded X10-D...