Vinyl Boost?

Gulfstrings

While still in the decision-making throws regarding the addition of a power amp one pain in the ear keeps popping up. My vinyl sounds like @#$%^&*!

Apparently the phono section of my receiver's engine is mouse-powered. I've heard there are things like phono preamps (?) that may fix the situation. Never heard of these before ...

Any info would be helpful.

Thanks,

Dave

TroyD

It could be, perhaps, that you have a low output cartridge and your phono stage doesn't have enough gain. That's fairly common. I'm assuming that your receiver does in fact have a phono stage and you aren't just plugging into a line level input.

If that's the case, yup, look for a phono stage that can accomodate your cartridge.

BDT

Gulfstrings

TroyD -

I've installed a new cartridge (Shure M97xE High Performance Magnetic) on my 1978 Technics SL-1301. The TX-SR707 Onkyo receiver has a 'phono in' and that's where I am now. The two components had never been hooked up before, so no history there.

Guess I'll do more searching to determine if that is the best cartridge for the player, but if an amp is required a whole new world opens.

I've seen these things on line at prices ranging from twenty buck to thousands!

Thanks,

Dave

treitz3

Hello, let's start with the basics. Is your cartridge an MM or MC and is what kind of cartridge you are running compatible with your phono inputs?

Gulfstrings

All -

Just spent the last two hours tinkering around with this and believe I've found success. The Shure M97eX cartridge is equipped with a 'Dynamic Stabilizer' brush. It is recommended by Shure that track weighting with the brush is the 'up' position be 1.25 to 1.5 gms. With the brush employed in the 'down' position, an additional 0.5 gms is to be added.

I chose not to use the brush and had my weighting set at 1.25 gms. What I didn't do correctly is lock the brush in to its 'up' position. It was drifting down and making (apparently) enough contact with the record's surface to create some stylus lift from the grooves.

After reading - and rereading the Audiogon review of this cartridge it finally dawned on me that there should be no brush contact with the record surface at all at this setting. After pulling the assembly (again) I found that if you pushed the brush assembly high enough it would snap into the proper 'up' position.

A bit embarrassing ... but that's what happened.

After some trial and error I settled on 1.35 gms and slightly tweaked its mounting set to the tone arm and am really happy with the results.

Still interested in the idea of a phono amp, but it will be an option not a necessity.

Appreciate the responses and hope others can learn from my ... uh, learning.

Dave

Polkersince85

Proper setup goes a long ways. Get a test tone record and make sure the cart is aligned properly.


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Gulfstrings

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/frr.pl?ranlg&1092402094&read&3&4

Note: Here's the Audiogon article referenced in my post above.

Dave

hearingimpared

It's a MM cartridge and should have a high enough mv output to be used in your phono stage of your preamp. It may be that the phono stage is just not good. I've had this occur on quite a few preamp where they just added a phono stage to the unit as a "convenience for the customer." That being said, you could get a Bellari tube or sand phono pre for MM cartridges pretty cheap.

http://shop.ebay.com/items/bellari%20phono%20preamp?_dmd=1&_sop=12

They've received some pretty good reviews over the years.

inspiredsports

Gulfstrings wrote: »

All -

Just spent the last two hours tinkering around with this and believe I've found success. The Shure M97eX cartridge is equipped with a 'Dynamic Stabilizer' brush. It is recommended by Shure that track weighting with the brush is the 'up' position be 1.25 to 1.5 gms. With the brush employed in the 'down' position, an additional 0.5 gms is to be added.

I chose not to use the brush and had my weighting set at 1.25 gms. What I didn't do correctly is lock the brush in to its 'up' position. It was drifting down and making (apparently) enough contact with the record's surface to create some stylus lift from the grooves.

After reading - and rereading the Audiogon review of this cartridge it finally dawned on me that there should be no brush contact with the record surface at all at this setting. After pulling the assembly (again) I found that if you pushed the brush assembly high enough it would snap into the proper 'up' position.

A bit embarrassing ... but that's what happened.

After some trial and error I settled on 1.35 gms and slightly tweaked its mounting set to the tone arm and am really happy with the results.

Still interested in the idea of a phono amp, but it will be an option not a necessity.

Appreciate the responses and hope others can learn from my ... uh, learning.

Dave

Good work Dave. Reading, thinking and tinkering to get everything set up just right is a constant challenge with vinyl, and it sounds like you have the persistence to keep at it until you get it right.

I buy and sell a lot of vintage Thorens turntables and have installed the Shure M97eX a few times. I've generally found them to sound best between 1.0 and 1.25 grams and most often run them at 1.5 grams with the brush down netting 1.0 grams. Last, I've found the sound after about 200 hours of use becomes stellar.

I've also found the Bellari VP130 to be a great low cost RIAA Phono Preamp after upgrading the stock tube (which is actually quite good). There are much costlier units out there that don't provide much more in terms of sound quality.

Timothy Smith

I just started getting back into vinyl after several friends recommended it.

I still have a Thorens TD-160 turntable that I bought over 30 years ago and about 300 LP's.

I found that the built-in preamps that I had available sounded lousy too ("like ****" to use a technical term).

My curent Forte preamp does not have a phono preamp (since LP's were going to be adead format) so I bought a little Audio Technica AT-PEQ3 outboard phone preamp that can step up a MM cartridge to be compatible with a line level input. This unit was highly recommended in Stereophile magazine. WOW...amazing difference, I don't remember vinyl sounding this good.

It took a little while to adust to click and pops (which I forgot about with CD's), and I still keep reaching for a remote control to skip songs (which doesn't work).

The AT-PEQ3 lists for about $120, can be found easily at $70, and if you dig around you might find one for as low as $50 like I did.

It's a good way to get back into vinyl. Maybe upgrade later.

ViperZ

I like it with the brush down to be honest. It removes some leftover dust particles, so helps with the sound.

You should really get a dedicated phono. Something like Cambridge Audio 640P does not break the bank, but sounds damn nice. My CA 640P phono sounds much better than the phono stage in my Carver C-1.

hearingimpared

I had a Shure V15 Type V cartridge and found that with the brush down it stabilized the tonearm and cartridge and allowed the tracking force to be set to a lighter setting.

inspiredsports

hearingimpared wrote: »

I had a Shure V15 Type V cartridge and found that with the brush down it stabilized the tonearm and cartridge and allowed the tracking force to be set to a lighter setting.

I've owned about a dozen various Shure's that use the brush as well as several Stanton's and my experience has been that brush down sounds better and allows for tracking weights around .75 (net) which is better for the longevity of both the vinyl and the stylus.

If you have a few more dollars to spend, there is a nice Musical Fidelity phono preamp that has just been listed in the for sale forum.