Calling all SL-1200/1210 owners!

[thrunobulaxx]

Thats better, good to hear it sounds right, i feel that cart may be a "prestige" they did them in various colours from black/blue/red/gold/silver.if it is its VTF is 1.5g so you are about right.

[Peter Stockwell]

Thats better, good to hear it sounds right, i feel that cart may be a "prestige" they did them in various colours from black/blue/red/gold/silver.if it is its VTF is 1.5g so you are about right.

John,

I don't think its a prestige, although visually it really doesn't look a lot different. The "prestige" has an all black cartridge body, my "prestige gold" on the other tt has a goldy covered "can" to it. But in general the colour, blue/green/gold etc, referes to a couple of tiny dots on the stylus assembly.

cheers

[thrunobulaxx]

John,

I don't think its a prestige, although visually it really doesn't look a lot different. The "prestige" has an all black cartridge body, my "prestige gold" on the other tt has a goldy covered "can" to it. But in general the colour, blue/green/gold etc, referes to a couple of tiny dots on the stylus assembly.

cheers

I looked in the cart database for it and wondered if they were showing only B/W images for that cart.
Still a mystery then, have you asked grado ?
Have a nice holiday and dont get carried away with those wimmin in short skirts at the tournement

[vicdiaz]

Lucky me I was given one for free!!!!!

Replaced the tonearm cable (damaged), sanded it (had seen better times...), painted it silver of course), and voilá!, fully working SL1200-MkII!

[Gromit]

If anbody recognizes this :



please let me know

Thanks for the hints

Hi Peter - I'm 99% sure the Grado you have there isn't a Prestige. They're all black (apart from the chrome/ali 'can' at the rear) for starters and have a slightly 'moulded/textured' side on the plastic front section of the cartridge body. Yours is an earlier one - I think it could be a G1 or G1+. A very good cartridge in its day - the range went from the cheap, and very lively FTE+ through the FCE+1, F3E+, F2+ F1+ to the G series. The FT & FC had grey bodies, the F3 and F1 had black.

I still have n FCE+1 and F2 sat in the drawer at home. My first ever 'proper' cartridge was an F3E+

I'll take a quick pic of the FCE to see how similar it is to yours - the later Grados have a slightly different mounting lug arrangement too which allowed very slight de-coupling from the headshell (they even come/came with a small plastic shim to allow this).

[Yomanze]

Finally got round to printing off the Vinyl Engine Baerwald protractor: http://www.vinylengine.com/cartridge...tractors.shtml as I noticed a bit of distortion on the inner tracks. Much better sound! Definitely a cleaner sound & the distortion has gone. Makes me feel a bit silly for not thinking about alignment sooner. On the other hand, I wouldn't get to enjoy the 'upgrade' otherwise

[scoobs]

I printed and laminated this in work the other day whilst the boss wasn't watching.
I notice a marked difference between what the Technics plastic overhang widget suggests, and what the protractor suggests...about 3mm all said. I've gone with the protractor! Can't say I notice much difference in end of side, but that may be to do with the conical stylus profile.

[Yomanze]

I printed and laminated this in work the other day whilst the boss wasn't watching.
I notice a marked difference between what the Technics plastic overhang widget suggests, and what the protractor suggests...about 3mm all said. I've gone with the protractor! Can't say I notice much difference in end of side, but that may be to do with the conical stylus profile.

I didn't have the Technics overhang widget :P My cartridge was flush at the end of the headshell, now it's 4mm forward. I notice a lot of difference during the end of the record, so must have not had it aligned correctly before. Oh, saw your advice RE the Heed Questar & will probably go for this myself with the Denon AU-300LC, so cheers, looks great & I do have to buy blind on this one!

[scoobs]

Yes, the Heed is a cracking value for money unit, also have a butchers at this Denon head amp on ebay. Alternatively look into some valve phono amplification, I understand that the 103 loves toobs!

[Marco]

The sonic cocktail of the 103's mellifluous midrange and organic sounding bass, and toobs, is a heady one!

No-one knows just how good this cartridge can sound until it's fitted to an appropriate (high mass) arm & headshell, on a high quality direct-drive T/T, loaded correctly including the optimum gain structure applied via a matched MC step-up tranny or head amp, and into the glowing bottles of an all-valve MM phono stage... Bliss! The sound is a million miles away from the thin sounding, sterile, overly analytical crap masquerading these days as 'hi-end' moving coil cartridges!

What on earth has happened to the tonality of modern moving coils?

Marco.