From 1976 to present- Technics SL-1700 with Stanton 681EEE. Yes I still have this and yes it still works. This was back when records were treasured as by far the best you could get, and this was by far the best turntable I heard or could afford back then. Loved the sound through my Kenwood integrated and JBL L25 connected with speaker wire and patch cords. Well we thought wire was wire back then! Ha! From about 1985 to 1991 the Technics sat in a box. Somewhere in there I fell prey to mass delusion and bought a CD player. Until around '92 when Robert Harley et al got me curious enough to dig it out and discover lo and behold that bent cantilevered relic sounds way better than my much newer and more expensive CD player! So around '93 I got a Basis 2001 with Graham 2.0 arm and Benz Micro-Glider and used that until about '04. The last year or so I started paying attention to how the Basis was made. Turntables by and large are hyped up over-blown crap. The Basis 2001 motor is cheap, the plinth nothing more than a piece of acrylic, the impressive footers ordinary springs. Honestly almost all the money with turntables goes into making them look good. So first the Basis was modified with a new power cord hardwired to the motor. Improvement! Then the belt, experimented with different materials. Everything I tried worked better than the Basis belt! When freaking dental floss outperforms your expensive rubber belt, well it just shatters whatever exalted status you might have for turntable makers, let me tell you! So next mod was to buy the Teres Audio motor. Huge improvement over the Basis motor! So probably the Teres bearing and platter are good too. Back then a bunch of guys were building their own using this modular approach. For much less than the $2500 the Basis cost I could build my own much better table. So I did. Using a BDR Source Shelf for the plinth I built the Miller Carbon. https://www.theanalogdept.com/c_miller.htm This worked so well that after a few years I upgraded to the Teres Verus Motor http://www.teresaudio.com/verus-motor.html Most recently, just a few weeks ago, I modified this with a DIY carbon fiber base. More massive, more rigid, and more highly damped this significantly improved resolution of inner detail letting me hear even more deeply into the recording. About 10 years ago the Graham arm was replaced with the Origin Live Conqueror. The Graham was good but between the arm wand and interconnect all those connections really degrade the delicate signal. The Conqueror is in a whole other realm. Also about 10 years ago the Micro Glider was upgraded to a Benz Ruby H. Then last winter the Ruby H was upgraded to Koetsu Black Goldline. All up until then had been running through the Audio Research PH3-SE. Beautiful phono stage, very happy with it for some 20 years. Last winter it was replaced with the Herron VTPH-2A. As good as the PH3SE was, the improvement going to the Herron can only be described as staggering. Going from the Technics to the Basis everything changed. This is what a lot of guys do and as such sorry to say but you learn nothing. Nothing. Not one GD thing! Buying a new turntable/arm/cartridge is like buying a whole new stereo. You learn NOTHING about what the speakers contribute, what the amp, cables, etc are doing. Immediately when I started modding then it became clear what each part of the turntable is doing and how it affects the result. Because of the way I did it there was continuity. With the Basis nothing changed but the power cord. Then nothing changed but the motor. Who would ever tell you to change the speakers/cables/amp all at once? Nobody. Yet that is what almost everyone does with turntables- they buy these all in one deals. At most they do the arm and cartridge separately. In this way they remain almost totally in the dark as to what is doing what. This plays right into the hands of the turntable makers, who get to sell one package after another, to customers who never figure out they could do so much better for so little money so easily. Anyway that's my story. The Miller Carbon is still after 15 years performing beautifully. Better than ever. And along with the Herron and maybe even the Koetsu probably will be with me forever. |
1. A denon dp37f direct drive 2. Music hall mmf7 3. Thorens td240-2 4. Pro-ject the classic sb superpack walnut 5. Pro-ject the classic eucalyptus 6. Technics (unknown model) dd **The only one's I do not own currently are the denon & technics. wish I never got rid of it of the denon, beautiful table aesthetically... Sound character? I guess the pro-jects sound a bit warm, the mmf7 a bit dry yet detailed, the thorens excellent bass, the denon I forget...of course the sound character would mainly be derived from the cartridge you are running. |
