Turntable upgrades - improvements or snake oil?

[Radio Wrangler]

Professional music is a commercial venture, and the aim is to create the right sound in the area of the most expensive seats. Sitting in an orchestra gives a rather unbalanced sound. The consoles of pipe organs are usually in lousy places for listening to the things. Perhaps conductors have a better viewpoint?

Being rescued from the rubbish makes it even sweeter. There weren't any matching speakers with it?

Is dseymo alluding to marking rituals? Dogs mark out their territory with dog wotsit, Stallions mark out their territory with horse stuff, and humans sometimes stake out their territory with bull****

David

[Edward Huggins]

This thread has morphed into one more about vinyl cleaning as distinct from turntable upgrades. As previously suggested, leave the "Sonab" as is and enjoy....

[Ted Kendall]

Many musicians, I think, use recordings to trigger their own, internal performance of the music, so need no more than an effective reminder. Others, of course, are very quality-conscious.

The most effective turntable accessores are those which actually help to prevent dust and grit making the disc noisier with repeated playing, Relaxing static and effective brushing are well worth doing. A variant of the Pixall idea was a soft rubber roller made by Nagaoka. This worked well, and was simply cleaned by washing in water. Like all such, it caused problems with charge separation, but a Zerostat sorts those out. I have a carbon fibre Dust Bug clone somewhere - very effective, but I tend to rely on the built in brush on the Shure V15V I generally use.

Customising, to my mind, is another aspect of the basic human desire to have a little bit of the world which is yours to control and in which you feel valued, like a pigeon loft or stamp album. The Americans probably do it to cars more than we do, but hi fi tweakery is hardly unknown there, either.

Craig's use of a Denon 103 is sensible - the original design was in response to a commission in the early 60s from NHK for a stereo broadcast cartridge, with all that implies in terms of robustness, quality and stability, and like the Ortofon SPU, the basic design has been slowly refined without losing its essential character. Mark you, a basic 103 costs a helluva lot less than an SPU these days...

As for the snake oil, the whole business of getting top-quality sound from vinyl relies on so many parameters that it is simple enough to make a difference to the sound, but an incontrovertible improvement is much harder to pin down. Conceptually, no two passes of a given pickup over a disc are absolutely identical anyway...and magnetic fields in vinyl? I must confess that was a new one on me - utterly risible. Anybody read about Blondlot and N-rays?

[Martin Bush]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback - I know when I ask a question like this I will get a well rounded response.

I will hopefully tomorrow be making the biggest improvement to the sound of the deck... I will be finding a location for it and trying it out!

I will leave the deck as it is save for perhaps making sure it is as clean as it can be and setting up the arm balance (a scale for this is on its way)). Butyond that I get the impression that zerostat may be a wise investment. Either that or the lighter idea mentioned earlier that I am intrigued by.

[D_S_J_R]

If it's a Sonab turntable, I'd respectfully suggest to leave well alone. On the Vinyl Engine site, I go on and on about cork mats on the Dual forum because cork mats are dirt cheap, work well placed on top of the existing mat on some old idler drive Duals (and my Garrard Lab 80mk2 as well) as they offer better record support sometimes and they also get the tonearm more level when playing a single LP which is important with an elliptical stylus - some of these decks tilt the arm down as a throwback to their auto-changer roots.

Record clamps and weights can have an effect, but I don't always like it. The extra weight may well offer increased wear on turntable main bearings not designed for such add-ons. The Sonab/Yamaha had a pretty decent mat I seem to remember, the arm was level when playing and for myself, I'd just enjoy the music off the records you play on it

Hope the above helps a bit.

[DonaldStott]

Just a few comments: -

1. Any Sonab is a keeper so take care of it.

2. Felt Mat - YES.

3. Record Clamp - NO.

4. Record Cleaning Machine - YES

And at the end of the day "Just Listen"!

I will be finding a location for it and trying it out!

11/10 it's only a means to an end after all.

To quote Flanders and Swann "It's not the music so much it's the High Fidelity!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fJmmDkvQyc

[D_S_J_R]

All I can remember from this deck operationally was the rather high tonearm friction laterally due to the auto linkage. Even so, this won't preclude 2g trackers as many cartridges are now, especially the latest Audio Technicas and some new sub-£100 Goldrings based on AT innards, but with beefy retro bodies and hand tuned styli - I have high hopes for the E3 model at £99, which may be an answer to a prayer for a good cartridge at this price point that's not 'just' a Shure 97XE, which is currently something of a bargain as its competition of a few years ago has drastically increased in price over and above the exchange rate issues we have right now.