quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
The VPI is a great table.
As for carts, I'm a big Denon MC fan.

For your recent questions I'd advise joining and then posting here:
https://www.audiosciencereview...m/index.php?reviews/

From my knothole, as a bang for your buck guy, I've avoided the extraneous for the most part and have gone for solid great sounding system components as described here:
https://cgi.audioasylum.com/systems/320.html
In the past I've posted pictures of both my stereo and home theater systems as well as close ups of my turntable and equipment rack here on sigforum. Yes I have separate systems as mixing them and their objectives never passed my sanity check as diluted compromised results would not be acceptable.

Great links. Thank you

Don’t have direct pictures of the space I have. This is a review from a house show I do annually. The pictures included give a better visual than I can describe and how room is set up except that it’s 28x35x15 acoustic tile ceiling and plate glass and pecky Cyprus paneling I position listening space (couch) and distance about 12ft infront of the Coke sign

https://thesouthlandmusicline....3YOs0JlZDdvP2cyj_xKc

snwghst, how did the project turn out?

Interested to know what you ended up with to complete the turntable project as well as your finished system.

quote:

Originally posted by Appliance Brad:
snwghst, how did the project turn out?

Interested to know what you ended up with to complete the turntable project as well as your finished system.

It turned out beautifully. It’s undergone a few upgrades along the way as well.
I replaced the uni- pivot arm with a gimbal. I trashed the Soundsmith cart by catching my tshirt on the cantilever so it got replaced by a ZYX Airy. Yes, I could have bought a brand new table for what I have in it now, but that wouldn’t have been near as much fun

The whole system has undergone multiple component swaps and upgrades. I’ve been very fortunate shopping used and demo pieces. Made a couple calls at the right time and secured items which hadn’t made it into the open market yet. I saved 2/3-3/4’s from retail on most all components. I still have spent a bunch. But I’m absolutely happy and have heard few systems which match its sound or better it

Couple pieces will get replaced still, but will be a while since they a bit more niche. Home theater processor and maybe the multi channel amp but those are low priority. Higher priority will be some room acoustic treatments

In its current state
Non Chinese manufacture was priority 3 piece were

VPI Aries 3 turntable ZYX Airy Cartridge (US and Japan)
Degritter Ultrasonic LP cleaner (Estonia)
Audiolab 6000cdt cd transport (China)
Pass Labs XP-27 phono stage (US)
Pass Labs XP-32 preamp
Pass Labs X350.5 2ch amp
dCS Lina DAC/ streamer with clock (UK)
McIntosh MX-123 home theater processor (US)
McIntosh MC-257 multi channel amp
Focal Sopra 3 main speakers (France)
Focal Sopra center and surrounds
Monitor Audio radius 90 surround rears (these I’ve had) (UK when I bought these)
REL SX212 sub (a pair) (China)
Cables and interconnects are all Mogami Gold (Japan)
Speaker wire for 2ch is Furutech OCC (Japan)

I understand cables and wire is a touchy controversial subject, I do believe metallurgy makes a difference, but one gets into diminishing returns very quickly so I’ll not be buying stupid expensive marketing hyped stuff

Thanks for asking

Super cool thread… takes me really far back to my childhood/adolescence.

My father was a huge audiophile, as was his best friend who made these turntables, Dr. Sao Win of Win Labs Research.



There are a few of these still in the world. He also made the mag-lev tonearms and the strain-gauge phono cartridges.

When I was about 13 or 14 years old, Uncle let me carry one of these things up to CES in Chicago late 1970s. I was shitting tacks.