Torpedo

Thanks, still hadn't heard of him. Interesting stuff for the DIYers.

Thanks for the update. Probably S&B decided to earn the big bucks selling their trannies through their doughter company Music First and to selected companies like EAR. I hate when companies get that greedy. Good news abut Bent Audio. I have no references of Slagel. Any experience?

Do you have an approximate idea on what's the current eff. weight your tonearm has now? If you're already on the 25 grs range then you're done and probably listening the DL-103 at its best -tonearm wise-. Were you under that weight, just try a bit more

Especially if you load those detachable shells with some lead and silicon to increase tonearm's effective mass over the 20grs range J shaped arms also work incredibly well, and were it a 12" arm... Most of the B&W sound becomes quite colorist, which is not the same as colored

Yep, the DL-103 is a very good cartridge for the price. Kind of "black & white" sounding, and a bitch to match with tonearms. That very low compliance, while on numbers can be handled... you'd be surprised how much better it sounds on a heavy tonearm. If properly set-up, I wouldn't spend more money for many many of those "high-end" carts in the kilobuck range.

You're welcome mate. This vinyl thing has too many variables to tweak and can become a nightmare hehehe. For an affordable DIY project the Lundhals can be just OK, however getting that Denon on Ebay -or any other when it came out- could be interesting, quite affordable and "good enough". Not sure how much would cost you building a SUT using some Lundahls, but probably not much cheaper. Rgrds

I would advise the Music First unit, it uses the S&B trannies and it's very configurable for load and gain, but it's rather expensive. S&B trannies are among the most transparent, no identifiable character nor frequency rolloffs IMHO. As Aerious said, Bent Audio used the S&B TX-103 trannies in their Mu step-ups for a way more affordable price, but they had to stop using them for distributor policies -nobody was purchasing the Music First units when they could buy the same trannies at half the price from Bent-. I don't know if BA still produce some SUT, but if they did, they'd be a very interesting product to try, John Chapman at Bent Audio knows a few things about "good sound". I don't care very much for Tamuras nor Lundahls, I find them more compromised soundwise than S&B, but heck, many people prefers some flavour on their sound. The Ortofon Vento SUT uses the Lundahls and sells for 550 euros. Not a bad option nonetheless If you're good at DIY, you may get the TX-103 directly from S&B and build your own SUT. This is their information e-mail, I contacted directly Jonathan Billington using it: [email protected] About three years ago they asked 200 euros for each trannie. Adding shipping and eventually VAT were you in the EU, the total cost could be something around 550 euros, depending on how much has the price increased in these years. For an affordable option the own Denon produced a quite fine unit years ago which can be found on Ebay. Now there's one on auction. Never tried it, but I have been told it's quite OK for the price with Denon carts. Rgrds

LOL not really, I just got home from the hospital after a 24 hours on-call shift. I'm in that state of mind which I call "Illuminated hating the World", coming from an excess of work and little sleep. Fortunately I managed to sleep about 4 hours, but not in a row. It feels like a hangover but without the headache, dizziness and upset stomach, with a high degree of intolerance to human moronity. It's not that I'm very tolerant to that on my "normal" state, but I have a harder time to bite my tongue. Not that I found your misspell moronic hehehe, I just found funny that it meant right a very different word in Spanish

Nice piece and nice playing. Thanks for sharing

Congratulations man, for both, the girl and the breastfeeding

New SACD player from Sony? They said they'd be stopping SACD hardware production

LOL I know... these things happen when you can't get scientific evidence, nor being sure you're measuring right the right things. Fortunately for some of my gear, the speakers amp, I know that it doesn't measure the same right powered on than after 10 minutes or other 10 minutes later. But that's the only device I know really changes during warm-up. However my subjective perception of needed warm up is longer than the time it needs to measure steady. We humans are strange creatures

hehehehe, who knows, I wish I were able to measure some things. The fact is that I have some components, even tube ones, that I don't find significant changes and sound good right switched on. Others take a lot to sound right, and I mean more than 1 hour from a cold state... If it's my subconsciousness, she's really creative

Same here, but if it were just my head, why do I feel different components have different warm-up times to reach their nice working point? My subconsciousness can't be that smart

Just in case he didn't find:

Oh yeah, happy birthday. But don't listen to Deepak's wishes, just start having sex right now and don't stop until you're knockout. Nontheless you can do that while spinning vinyl and eating, drinking... cooking seems more complicated though.

Thanks for sharing. When purchasing gear that I don't know at all just for the sake of learning about its sound, especially if it's expensive, I try to buy used or ex-demo. In the Balanced Max's case I don't think it's easy finding one used. I'll keep in mind the diamond buffer thing. Hehehe, I leave my transport and DAC on 24/7. They only get rest when I travel away for more than a couple of days. Despite that, the damn DAC always needs about 20-30 minutes of music playing to sound as it should. On my secondary speakers rig I leave the YBA integrated on all the time, it needs more than an hour of warm up to get "texture". I received a reply from the current GR's owner. I think we could work out a deal. He confirmed the unit is factory set for 230VAC. We'll see. My "almost-friend" who was the former owner didn't reply, he's most likely is away on holidays. Rgrds

Oh I thought your comment was directed at this other post: I found Aerius' funny in a cynic way Rgrds

oops I didn't know. Not much of a DIYer myself. Thanks for telling me, I could have tried to get one hehehehe Rgrds

Yep, I know of the Pass Aleph series, nice amps. Too bulky and too hot, but nice sounding. Regarding the Dynamite or Dynamight, I've not even seen one recently for sale at Head-fi, so forget to find one in Europe. I suppose it could be custom ordered to some reliable builder who were able to build the

On tube gear, I'd be more concerned for the vibration coming from the fans than for the noise. I don't think I'd ever buy a tube amp needing fans for cooling. Seems like a very compromised solution to me. The cheap way to fix a serious design flaw on the chassis and board I hope it sounds heavenly Rgrds

Thanks for the write up Asr. I agree that the

Wonderful pics Justin, thanks for sharing them. I still have to hear from the former owner and the current seller I share the interest of others about how do the

LOL What's that thing? I not even dared to read the "review" or whatever that is