I found photos of the current headshell at Triplanar. The finger lift is set directly into the side of the cartridge mount, not on a separate piece that also receives the cartridge mount screws. I personally wouldn’t worry about that resonating except as part of the whole, but diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks. Seems the OEM construction is already damped with some sort of black sleeve, heat shrink or other.
Does a record player make that much of a difference??
Question for all you Audionerds - in your experience, how much of a difference does one record player make over the next compared with the differences that a cartridge, phone pre-amp, and separate head amp make in the signal chain?
Reason I ask: I just upgraded from a MM cart to a MC cart (Dynavector 20x2-low output). Huge difference - the Dynavector sounds much more alive and detailed compared with the MM. I find my current record player (a Marantz TT16) to be a real pain to work with - I have to manually move the belt on the motor hub to change speeds, and the arm is not very adjustable or easy to do so. But, aside from that, it's not terrible. How much of a difference can I really expect if I upgrade to a better record spinner vs the change I heard from upgrading to a better cart?
My next acquisition is a separate head amp to feed the phono stage.
Thanks for all your insights!
Josh
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@ossicle2brain @joshindc Ossicle nailed it though I put phono-pre- first. The TT is the least important piece by far - it is simply a rotating platter and if it is isolated decently that is all you need. TTs with built in great isolation do tend to have all the check boxes (SME, Sota) and great arms. I always recommend to focus on the phono pre-amp first - aside from speakers. When both the phono-pre and speakers of excellent quality that match your acoustic preferences give you a foundation to build upon. System pre-amp with a great volume control system is next. On the phono pre-amp the must have feature IMO is recording industry based equalization selection (RIAA, Columbia, Decca) - otherwise the record and the analog output stage aren’t using the same expected equalization and you can’t correct for it without an equalizer. |
acmaier, Unless you are listening to LPs from the early to mid 50s, most of which will be mono recordings, the importance of having all those equalization curves built into the phono stage has been regarded as overrated by most. Testimony from recording engineers who were active in that early LP era suggests that most companies adopted the RIAA standard early on. Thus, you could say it is nice to have that flexibility, but it adds a costly feature to the phono stage that may be superfluous, unless, again, your collection is heavily biased to the early days of LPs. Also, you can put the phono stage first if you want; my only point was and is that the tonearm and cartridge form a unit that together determine the ultimate sound quality that we usually perceive as due to the cartridge alone. |
Dear @dogberry : " Well I'm pretty sure some of these replies will have dissuaded the OP..."
I know that as always you are " behind " me to post that statement, no problem about and fine with me but as always too I post to help any one. Look:
my first post in the thread was asking for the OP listing system units to give him an advise but due that before he posted the thread ha already had his answer then he not only ignore my post but ignored all the other posts by audiophiles that as me were trying to give some advise/help. Yes, latter on I posted to him that his answer was and is wrong and at the end he said that he post just for " fun ".
Please read the OP posts and mines and come back and tell us what your common sense says Again, he ignored all the gentlemans posts here, he was not looking for advise or a kind of help.
What do you think? R.
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