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Vintage Audio (record players, hi-fi etc) Amplifiers, speakers, gramophones and other audio equipment.

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Old 16th Jul 2016, 1:00 am   #41
Jimmyhaflinger
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: La Spezia, Italy
Posts: 834
Default Re: "UPGRADING" Bog Standard Portable Record Players

some better players just have too much potential for upgrade to leave them alone

i recently "hot rodded" my Lesa Altair record player, a large flip-down stereo portable with a transistor amplifier driving large oval centre-tapped speakers directly coupled to the output transistors

the real weak point in this player was the high-output (about 500mv) crystal cartridge which sounded dull even when new, with a sharp drop in its output over about 8 khz

the cartridge in my player was dead anyway and the low-output ceramic plug-in replacement is much easier to find as a NOS today, but its 150mv output meant that the player was rather quiet

i ended up replacing the preamp stage's germanium transistor with a silicon one, and lowered its emitter resistor to bring up the stage's gain enough for the low output cartridge

the player sounds better than ever this way, with a really powerful, clean, rich sound

i eventually found a working high output cartridge later and briefly plugged it in place of the ceramic replacement, it sounded like so i finally chose to keep the mods and enjoy the player to its full potential
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