The Garrard 301 Restoration Project PT LXXXVIII -MONOLOG - A sub blog! Pt XII - Tweaking hell!

It's Sunday afternoon, it's dark and it's raining, so I guess another update is due. Things have moved on at quite a pace. My Croft phonostage has been returned, now fully repaired and upgraded. The Croft has had internal silver wiring installed to both input and output RCA's, several small repairs performed, several components replaced and more importantly a wee upgrade meaning I can now experiment with 6SN7 valves. I picked this lot up



For a very reasonable £100. I have no idea if any of you own 6sn7 valves? The prices charged by some websites is quite frankly eye watering , literally! I've seen places asking £450 for a single valve example. It took my ages to decide upon my favourite 6sl7 valve for my croft preamp, in the end I think I went through 13 or 14 valves and finished on the RCA 6391. I've now got 8 different 6sn7 valves to play around with over Xmas. My second big change in the MONO system has been the implementation of a pair of Mark Grant Cables between the SME 3009/Ortofon MONO spu combo and the Croft phonostage, they are expensive but have cured a hum problem that I had whilst playing MONO records.


Listening to MONO is now even more of a pleasure, I think my ears must be still quite sensitive as I can definitely pick out the difference between a small amount of low background hum and virtually none at all. Yes, things do seem a lot quiter whilst listening, no hum between the tracks of an LP is always a bonus. I can still hear a very small amount of hum, but, you literally have to be an inch or two from the speaker. So, MONO playback has really been improved, maybe things can be improved again when I start valve rolling in November and December. I've now gone through several cartridges Shure M55e MONO, Miyajima MONO Zero, Ortofon Cadenza MONO and the Ortofon SPU mono. To my ears the SPU is the winner (so far). I've been through four phonostages Paradise, EAR 834, Croft Music Maker. and internal phonostage of my preamp. Once again, to my ears, the Croft MusicMaker phonostage is the winner (so far). I'm always happy to try new stuff, so I guess stay tuned...