Me and the 1210 are gunna have us some me time....

New toy for the 1210 when it arrives tomorrow. If things goto plan the system should be back up and running either tomorrow or wednesday. Plenty of pics to follow. :cool:

Just a few pics of the 1210 now as it stands. I managed to get a decent shot of the Cadenza black. A new mod is installed on the PCB, its recapped. You can also see the pitch control has been removed and a small jumpre installed. The power button has been rewired and of course those fantasic tripple regs from PH. The Mike New bearing is also sticking out:eyebrows: Finally a larger shot of the 1210 with a strengthened and modified plinth, its in full flow playing some Iron Maiden :rock:

Nice Work Andrew, Btw, Whenever you get bored with da Black, send it my way - Pretty Please ! :D
Oh! And hows it all sounding now ??

things are beginning to settle down now and I can hear definite changes. I'm not going to write too much just yet as I want the components to calm doing before I make any judgements. ;)

All this talk of new platters has made me wonder if my deck might need something new to cheer it up for Xmas :scratch: I'm thinking either a nice new phonostage or a platter (but which one)? I heard an extremely nice 3 boxed phonostage a few days back. My old sugden has fended off many phonostages over the years including Whest, Lehmann, Trichord, Naim, some costing considerably more than what I paid for the sugden. I may relegate the Sugden into the Valve system. Hopefully there should be something new in the mix by the end of the year. :eyebrows:

Which Whest did you trial, Andy? If you didn't listen to a PS.30R (or even a PS.30RDT), I would recommend a listen.

It was the PS.30RDT SE http://www.whestaudio.co.uk/phono-stage/ps30rdt-se.php and to be honest I hated it, it sounded only very fractionally better than the Sugden. I honestly could not justify the extra cost of this phonostage for the small amount of performance that it gave me over the Sugden phonostage. TBH the Sugden is extremely good value for money and I can't believe that it's never recieved a formal review (well I can't seem to find one). Simon fetched over his 3 box version of the Paradise phonostage for a listening session and it instantly outperformed the Sugden. I have gone for the 4 box version :eyebrows: with very closely matched tolerances to caps and resistors etc ok maybe not the same as a Whest but I'm getting far better (in my eyes) performance for considerably less than the Whest. It's still being made for me so I have to put up with the Sugden (lives hard!!).

Ok, well I don't think the PS.30RDT is much better, if any, than the PS.30R that I have. However, I cannot reconcile your description of 'hated' with the fabulous sound that I get from mine, so it's probably not worth continuing this discussion!

Your Whest phono stage undoubtedly sounds superb - or rather, let's qualify that: your Whest sounds superb when used in MM mode, in conjunction with your Hashimoto SUTs. That combination is stunning, and without doubt, one of the finest I've heard.

The Whest on its own, however, is good but nothing spectacular, IMO. I simply think you've hit upon an excellent combination, Martin, which compliments your Shelter 5000 and the Technics T/T connected to it really well :)

However, a bespoke built, 'no-compromise' judiciously assembled DIY design, such as Simon's Paradise (if it's anything like other such designs I've heard) could be another thing entirely....

I'll be bringing a couple of interesting toys with me to your place, namely the Arkless MC head amp and a (fully fine-silver wired) MC head amp Paul Hynes has designed, powered by an SR5 PSU. It'll be interesting hearing how those boys compete in your system with our resident SUTs!

:exactly:

Marco.

That'll be interesting. I've heard the PH before, but not powered by an SR-5. Yes, the Whest works superbly in MM mode with a SUT, but then I haven't heard an MC active stage ever that matches a good SUT and I've heard a good few now.