and Hello from France

[steveinfrance]

Steve here from central France.
I caught the HiFi bug working for Arthur Radford on STA25s in the 60s and ended up with an LP12, 3009 and Decca London cartridge. It wasn't a good combination - I thought the LP12 poorly engineered and the dealer I bought it from referred to the Company as 'Linn Condek'! -Not a 'defamatory comment' as per the 'ethos' post, just an observation.
When CDs came out I gave it all awayand have been regretting and paying for it ever since.
I can't get digital to sound right and I don't understand why -particularly for large scale orchestral music-it isn't rejected out of hand. Lord knows I've tried to love it but only a handful of CDs I have can be listened to for the music.
Anyway I'm going back to vinyl. I've just bought two SL1210 mk2s on EBay UKand will sell one (they are expensive in France) to pay for the other and its mods.
This seems the best forum for this TT and I look forward to help and advice.

[Jonboy]

Hello steve and welcome to the "Art of Tinkering with your Technics"

I hope you enjoy it here

[Spectral Morn]

Welcome to AOS Steve.

Plenty of info here about all things vinyl and particularly how to get the best out of the Technics 1200/1210.

What kind of music do you like and system do you use? maybe you might like to post some photos in the Gallery section of the forum.

Enjoy yourself and have fun.


Regards D S D L

[steveinfrance]

Music - mainly classical and trad jazz but, having been young in the 60's I love the rock music of that time.
My system is a Quad 34 pre-amp feeding a modified Yaqin valve amp (shades of the Radford but give me KT88s instead of girly EL34s anytime) which drive a pair of Quad ESL 2805s.
The 34 also feeds a Quad 606 through low pass filter to drive a pair of big old bass units loosely derived from an 80's design called 'Basset'.
If I'm trying to listen to CD's I don't use the 34. Instead I send the R+L outputs of my Marantz 6003 (cheap but excellent value) to the low pass filter and the SPDIF to a Twisted Pair Buffalo DAC which drives the Yaqin directly via an I-V conveter.

[Reid Malenfant]

Hi Steve, welcome to AoS :) Nice to have what sounds like another tinkerer on board :eyebrows: The name Basset kind of rings a bell to me, must have been one of the early designs for a dedicated sub.

Like the 2805 speakers, would be nice to see some pics in the gallery if you have the time :cool:

All the best & i hope you enjoy your stay.

[Barry]

Welcome to AoS Steve.

You have certainly come to the right place for Technics 1200 mods and fettling.

What sort of music do you enjoy and intend to play on the Technics?

Enjoy the forum

Regards (from a fellow Quad user)

[MartinT]

Welcome, Steve. An interesting observation on classic music and CDs. Despite their compromises, I enjoy listening to classic on CD far more than rock music. For me, the 1210 is supreme for modern music but I have a love/hate relationship with classical LPs.

Choral changes that, though; CD is particularly poor at reproducing massed voices.

[steveinfrance]

Thanks to all for the kindo wishes.
I have just one CD in my collection that makes me feel the fault might lie in engineers with cloth ears rather than the medium.
It's an old 2-CD RCA recording of the Bach solo celo suites by Anner Bylsma
RD70950
It is absolutely perfect (and I don't say that lightly).
I don't think CD's are bad for chamber music but they just can't cope with lots of fiddles in a full orchestra. As soon as they come in up comes this odd harmonic distortion as if there's something loose in the speaker.
The Basset was a HiFi News project being two large upholstered boxes with the driver shining downwards. The idea was you could sit on them when not listening to the music thus mollifying (to a variable and ill defined extent) the missus. Hence Basset (Bass seat) Ugh!. The drivers were incredibly massive and I use them in an IB enclosure with a damping system I've never seen used in loudspeaker enclosures apart from the ones I make.

[Alex_UK]

Hi Steve, welcome from me too. Enjoy AoS. :)

[shane]

a damping system I've never seen used in loudspeaker enclosures apart from the ones I make.

Tell us more...

[steveinfrance]

Damping
Its something called a 'membrane absorber' and very effective at attenuating low frequencies.
Basically you have a light membrane (cling film is good) bearing on something that absorbs energy by deflection - converting it to heat. I use sheep's wool. If you give a sheep farmer £1 for an entire flleece he'll probably throw in his daughter as well. Don't wash it, the lanolin improves the efficiency. You line your enclosure with a couple of inches of this held in place with the plastic film and big headed felt nails like a mattress.
It doesn't do much at higher frequencies but goodness it works on the bass.
My HiFi hero, Arthur Radford, was impresssed by a demo we went to where a sergeant obligingly emptied a Sten gun into an Army blanket. None of the bullets went through (a. because a Sten is Cr*p but also b. because the blanket deflected and absorbed the bullet's KE). He went straight back to the factory and built an IB speaker whose only damping was a free hanging curtain of said blanket behind the driver. It sounded wonderful!

[The Grand Wazoo]

Hi Steve,
A slightly belated, but nonetheless warm welcome from me.
What a fantastic story and what a privilege it must have been to have worked with Arthur Radford - I've owned an STA15 for years and it remains one of my favourite amps.

It's nice to have you here!
Cheers

[steveinfrance]

Thanks again for all the kind wishes.
Arthur was a difficult man who didn't suffer fools (or most other people for that matter) gladly.
I've a story about the STA15. Arthur wound all his own transformers (or rather a French girl we all lusted after did, being the only person who could understand the transformer winding machine).
The transfos were packed into a wire crate on rails to be pushed into an oven to impregnate them (not, sadly the French girl).
One day the thermostat went squiffy while cooking a batch of STA15 mains transfos and it exploded. The door blew off and this cage of flaming transfos shot out and trundled the length of the workshop stopping, fortunately, before demolishing la demoiselle and her Magic Machine.
Arthur's language reached new peaks of obscenity. The only time I recall it being as bad was when he was soak testing a Leak amplifier. Leak then used Hunts capacitors and one of them gave up its little capacititive ghost in the middle of the night causing a meltdown of the Leak which burned a hole in AR's private workbench. Bearing in mind the make of capacitor you can probably imagine the general content of the invective.
After the Great Oven Explosion the wire crate was always known as Elijah's Fiery Chariot. Good old days.

[MartinT]

or rather a French girl we all lusted after did, being the only person who could understand the transformer winding machine

This must be the same rule that prevents all males from understanding a sewing machine :lol: