That70'sShow
Active Member
Prior to dating a former female DJ a few years ago I had never listened to anything on vinyl other than a Beatles and Dobie Gray 45 on a kids portable turntable when I was a kid. Listening as an adult now I enjoyed it a lot and found it to be a different music experience. So a few years ago I started buying things here or there scouring craigslist, garage sales, and barter town. Until recently I thought speakers were speakers and you could hook them up to whatever you wanted.
My main system over the past year after dedicating a spare bedroom as a listening space has been a Realistic Lab 420 turntable, Technics SU-7700, and ESS AMT monitors. They've sounded good together, but lyrics up front are a little fatiguing to me. I had bought a Marantz 140 and 3200 pre in great looking condition from a member, but hadn't tried it. I hooked it up a year ago and thought a channel was bad because it was quieter on one side, but I was using cables that were hooked up to another system I had bought where one channel sounded quieter and so it turns out I had a bad cable.
So I hooked up the Marantz system to compare to the SU-7700. The music sounded good, but lyrics were more in the background than on the SU-7700. Then I read about 4 ohm speakers. The Marantz is rated for 8 ohm minimum so now I quit using that. So now I'm changing back to the SU-7700.
So if you were me and had the following gear which would you use as the centerpiece to try and match the rest of the system around to be my main system or what else should I consider. Should I ditch the idea of using the 4 ohm ESS AMT speakers that sound really good to get 8 ohm of something comparable or.....? I'm not sure where to go from here. Keep in mind I'm a noob and I really only care about vinyl so tuner has no importance to me nor do separates vs receiver as long as it sounds good.
So here's what I have:
Amp and Pre
Technics SU-7700
Marantz 140 amp and 3200 pre
Dynaco ST-120
Luxman C1000
Sansui 7070
Sansui 2000x
Speakers
ESS AMT Monitors
Polk Model 10
Realistic Optimus T-120
Realistic Mach One
Turntables
BIC 980
Realistic Lab 420
Dual 522
AR18s
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