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New cables for Thorens TD 160

Hi All,

First post, long time fan. Anyone replaced the
RCA leads for a Thorens TD 160?

I picked up a Thorens TD 160 recently. Literally-
someone was carrying it out to throw away. It had a
Grado XF 1 cartridge and broken RCA jacks. Okay, I had
the needle scoped and it still had 1/3 of its life left,
but I got a replacement anyway. Had a local shop replace
the leads with shielded cables they swore by. So I hooked
it up. The thing put out maybe half the volume of my CD
player. I had to turn it up very high to get decent gain,
and the midrange was pretty sad.

I replaced the Grado with a Pickering XSV 3000 I happened
to have around (!) and got pretty much the same thing
(with more detail and soundstage of course). Not good.

I am thinking the cable replacement is the culprit. The TT
is clean and works in all other respects. Does anyone have
a recommended cable for this purpose? I appear to need one
with low capacitance. TIA!
crema
crema OP
10 posts
 
According to Vinylengine.com, the Pickering VSX/3000
has an output of 4.7 mV. Is that too low?

I do have another preamp around (an Adcom) but it
sure doesn't sound as nice as the Dynaco PAS-3 series ii.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
4.7 should be OK. The only other thing you can try is to mount that cart on your other TT. If it works OK on that arm, that will confirm something is wrong with the wiring on the Thorens.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
I should have said in my last post that, at this point, I think its going to be the cable issue. No gaurantee's, of course, but if its a lot of work for you to try mounting the cart on the other TT just to test it, I don't think you'll be taking too big a chance. But don't let me talk you out of it if you want to try the other TT first.
crema OP
10 posts
 
I find mounting cartridges difficult- I have big fingers
and those are some very small screws.

The odds are slim that both cartridges are bad in
the same way, right?

There are two possible culprits if it's not the cartridge: the new RCA output cables the shop installed
and the cables in the tone arm (the ones that attach to
the cartridge).

My shop is open a big 3 hours a week. I think I might
skip this week, order new cables, and see what happens
when they install them next week. One could argue that I
should find a new shop, but they are hard to come by
these days.

Thoughts?
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"The odds are slim that both cartridges are bad in
the same way, right?"

Just to be clear, I didn't think the cartridges are bad, but just didn't have enough gain to work well with your pre. It is possible that they both put out about the same amount of voltage. If that's the case then you would have the same problem with either one. That said, I think its more likely to be a cable problem at this point. I would check that first.
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