Turntables and Other Stereo Equipment!

In the garage I have my old Harmon Kardon head/amp with a Garrard turntable and a Teac dual cassette player and a CD player. I listen through 4 Cerwin Vegas. Can shake the windows.

Hey! Which Garrard turntable are you using?

???

The very first turntable I bought in 1974 was a Garrard SL95B equipped with a Shure M91ED cartridge. I still have it in storage:

It was a lovely turntable and more than adequate for my purposes for many years. I replaced it in 2008 or so with a Thorens TD 240 turntable:

I equipped it with a top of the line Ortofon 2m Black cartridge with a Shibata line stylus which ostensibly reaches deeper into the grooves thus bypassing the wear imparted by any previous stylii.

The improvement I got in fidelity was dramatic! I still aspire to acquire a Thorens TD 350 at some point though:

I was also lucky enough to acquire a brand spanking new Garrard GT55 with no base off Ebay a few years ago:

My plan is/was to get a thick custom base consisting of alternating layers of acoustically dead baltic birch with some sort of dark oak or walnut veneer custom built for it by a local felow. I’m going to try to keep the same basic shape as the stock GT55 base had though. The end product should therefore look a lot like this only at least twice as thick/tall:

I thought I’d then mate it up to an Ortofon 2m Bronze cartridge and set it up in the master bedroom with my vintage Sansui amplifier and my BIC floorstanders. What threw a wrench into the works though is it turned out that the tonearm was missing the C6 slider. (I guess that’s why the turntable was still available and for sale.) Since the C6 was only used on this very end-of-the-line Garrard model, it was really difficult to find. It took me several years to track down a C6 but I now have two!

:wink:

I’m an analog purist myself. Some twelve years ago I did a listening comparison of the same tracks from my vinyl records, some of which I’d bought as far back as the 1960’s, with the identical tracks from CDs. The records I played on the Thorens TD240 turntable pictured above and the CDs I played on my very decent Marantz CC4001 CD player:

In most cases the vinyl delivered a far richer, warmer sound. On some tracks the difference was so striking that I was left wondering what happened to the music on the CD. No way it was all there despite what the audio engineers keep saying about what our ears are capable of detecting. In fact the difference was so apparent that The WOMAN actually came down from the floor above while I was playing Days by the Kinks to enquire whether I was now playing the vinyl record!

Admittedly in a very few cases the bass presence was better on the CD which had me wondering whether I should get a separate free standing phono pre-amp to bypass the phono line stage circuitry of my Marantz PM7001 70 watt per channel amplifier.

Nonetheless the vinyl won the listening test hands down!

I don’t have a turntable at the moment although I want to get one. I have no idea where to get one or what is a good one. I don’t shop online.

In the meantime, back in the 80’sl, we recorded all of our fav records onto quality cassettes and I still enjoy listening to them often.

Back in 78 I went to a mini church concert in a small town hall. I had a cheap hand held recorder using a medium quality cassette. I am amazed that the quality of the recording was not bad and that it is still as good as ever till this day.

Vinyl has always been best IMO… As recent as 15 years ago Andy frost on Q107 Spsychedelic Sunday had a feature called the vinyl hour. I loved it. As far as I know it was the only time you could hear vinyl still being played on the radio.

In the 90’s I started buying CD duplicates for some of my favourite albums that I had on vinyl. The sound on the CD was disappointing in comparison to the vinyl. I find the digital CD to be somewhat shrill and fatiguing to listen too. The vinyl seems to have a warmer sound and much wider soundstage.

Once I get the man cave in order I will be adding a Rega Planar 3 turntable. I’ve sampled that one a few times. It sounds great without having to break the bank. ;D

Just do a google search for audio shops in BC. There’s a place in Surrey called Innovative Audio that sells affordable turntables. Buying audio equipment at a brick & morter store is better than buying online because you can usually sample it in the store. That way you have an idea of what you are buying.

I am hoping to find a good quality one. Don’t mind paying more for it. Most of the ones I find seem cheap.

I actually did a rare purchase online about 5 yrs ago. I got the best/ most expensiveunit to record records and cassettes on to thumb drive or something. Then used the computer to copy onto CD. Some were OK. Some did not turn out listenable. None were great. Hard to find good quality combo units.

You could also check out Element Acoustics in BC. Johnny has ordered stuff from them and they are very helpful.

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In the garage I have my old Harmon Kardon head/amp with a Garrard turntable and a Teac dual cassette player and a CD player. I listen through 4 Cerwin Vegas. Can shake the windows.

Hmmmm, interesting. Four speakers! Have you ever considered getting a reconditioned quadraphonic 8-track player for your system?

The players wouldn’t be too tough to find at decent prices. But functional 8-track quad tapes would be more difficult to find since the 8-track format wasn’t known for reliability/durability.

Here’s an excellent info source on quadraphonic equipment:

QuadraphonicQuad

:slight_smile:

I had an early quadraphonic system by Panasonic… It’s all gone now but it did sound cool and I still have a couple of quad 8 track tapes kicking around in a box somewhere. I have several quad albums too. They were rare to find even when the idea was going full tilt. I had a quad sound effects record that was really something. I was playing it my friend’s basement and his little brother came down and thought he heard a horse clopping by on the road outside. He ran out to see the horse. That’s how real it sounded… We had a good laugh.

Is that why you still have four Cerwin-Vega speakers?

???

Nah, I bought them much later. I figured that most rooms have 4 corners why not fill them with music. I also had 4 of the same type in my cottage. We rocked pretty loud and blew one.