turntable madness

Hey man,

I side with the school that says that phono stage is more important than TT. If you start with a free Technics, fine. Get something like an Ortofon Concorde, change the interconnects, get a bottle of Pro Gold and follow DeKay's recipe of two Rat Shack battery phono preamps. Get the prtotractor from www.turntablebasics.com ($20). Make a good DIY base and record mat (www.tnt-audio.com) and you'll be set. Watch for VTA.

Regards,

The Psychic

Psychicanimal,

Good suggestions, I have actually been looking into the RAT Shack pre. It runs on a 9v battery? It must run deathly silent. Is there anyone out there who knows how long the battery lasts? I have also considered the phono pre by Parasound that sells for about $199, I have read good things about it as well.

No matter what I do, I'll be sure to post the results......

Kt, I helped pay for college working at audio stores--I know how to make things work right w/in a tight budget...run a search on Radio Shack, or email DeKay. He's got SET amps and is successfully using two Rats. People in the Asylum say it beats everything under $200. It will be good for you to play around with these things. You'll learn how to "mod and tweak" a TT. You'll learn a lot and save a lot, too....

I have a Monolithic phono stage. It's dual mono and has an optional dual mono power supply which I plan to get. My demo unit was $300. If I were you I would wait. Right now I'm using a little ONEAC 2 amp isolation transformer ($15 @ eBay) for my Monolithic. The transformer is plugged to my Tice A/V Solo conditioner, so the electricity being fed to the Monolithic is filtered twice *and* isolated via the ONEAC's virtual ground feature. Talk about good results on a budget...

KT 88: The batteries last 5 days (when using two of the preamps as dual monos). I have 4 batteries and recharge one pair while using the other pair.

There have recently been some people @ AA who have not had decent results with the preamps (though none of them have used the preamps in the dual/mono manner that I do, as far as I know, and one person did not even run the unit in for 50 hours - which is necessary with any new piece of gear). That said, a single unit (used in stereo) still sounded pretty good in my setup, but not in theirs. The 4 batteries and a charger were $46 @ Target (the cheapest price I could find) and I paid $32 for a pair of the preamps which retail for $50 ($25 each). Yes, they are dead quiet (I can turn the volume up all the way in my system with the tonearm raised and barely hear any sound @ the speakers). They should only be used with high output cartridges (due to the gain spec) which is most likely what you will be using.

A single unit, two batteries (to roll) and a charger should run approx. $50 (retail), plus any tax and shipping expense. I have only compared the Rat's (dual mono) to a NAD unit (no comparison) and the phono stage of an Audible Illusions Mod 3A (the 3A was better:-). I also wonder if the odd cabling that I use may be why I am getting such good results, but I do not have any traditional cables on hand to experiment with? If you end up going with the "Rat", send me an email, and I will make up a pair of IC's (based somewhat on the more expensive ones that I have), gratis, for you to use with it (this offer is only for KT 88).

What I should do is start a new thread @ AA in order to gather recent user feedback on the "Rat". Perhaps I can do this later today and/or tomorrow?

Did you get the Technics TT yet?

Dekay,

My buddy is going to drop ( I hope not literally )it off this Thursday or Friday, he lives a ways away. I am defintiely interested in the " Rat " I love DIY even though I have not done anything with audio equipment. But being a technician by trade I think it will be right up my alley.

I do have a Harmon Kardon ( yuck! ) pre that has a phono section that I might bandaid through my system until I get something more permanent. I will look further into the " Rat " and shoot you a e-mail if and when I land one.