vinyl1
Super Member
My 15-year-old Basis 2001/Graham 2.2 is having motor troubles. There is a guy in my audio club who is professional audio repairer, and he has offered to try to fix it. A new motor from Basis is $1200.
So in the meantime, I went to my brother's house and reclaimed my very first 'high-end' turntable. It is an original Rega 2 with the Acos-sourced Rega R200 arm. I had purchased it from the original Sound by Singer in 1982, when Andy was still over the grocery store on Lexington Ave.
My brother had removed it from his system, he is using a nice Dual instead. We found the Rega in the basement, with a Shure M95ED mounted. I bought it home and stuck it in my system as-is. The Herron VTPH-2 does have a moving-magnet input, so I tried playing some records.
While rock and jazz records do sound good, you could clearly hear the lack of resolution and transparency in classical records.
After a week, I decided to try another cartridge. Looking through my collection, I picked out a Van den Hul MC One that I had used for a while, but was really too big and heavy for the Graham arm. It is from the early 90s, but was retipped by Mr. V around 1999. The guy who had it retipped never mounted it, and I paid about $300 for it in 2001. I think I used it for about a year, but it's hard to say how many hours I put on it.
I managed to mount the cartridge without too much difficulty, although I did over-crimp one of the headshell wires and had trouble re-opening it. I got good tangency fairly easily, and played a junk record as a test. The only set of resistor plugs I have is 1000 Ohms, so I played the same track with and without the plugs. It sound a little better at 1000 Ohms, but I think I need a set of 300 Ohm plugs for this cartridge.
Tracking is very good - I had a little trouble with the Shure bottoming on warped records. But the sound is something else. Even with this old semi-junk MC from 20 years ago, it's another world. I am playing the same record I purchased and played last night, the Moravec Chopin Ballades on cream-and-gold Connoisseur Society. If you don't know the label, they recorded directly to 30-IPS two-track tape, and cut the LPs directly from the master tape without any equalization or processing. They even cut some of their earliest pressing at 45-RPM - and this was in the middle 60s!
I'll have to decide what to do for a permanent turntable. For now, this will do.
So in the meantime, I went to my brother's house and reclaimed my very first 'high-end' turntable. It is an original Rega 2 with the Acos-sourced Rega R200 arm. I had purchased it from the original Sound by Singer in 1982, when Andy was still over the grocery store on Lexington Ave.
My brother had removed it from his system, he is using a nice Dual instead. We found the Rega in the basement, with a Shure M95ED mounted. I bought it home and stuck it in my system as-is. The Herron VTPH-2 does have a moving-magnet input, so I tried playing some records.
While rock and jazz records do sound good, you could clearly hear the lack of resolution and transparency in classical records.
After a week, I decided to try another cartridge. Looking through my collection, I picked out a Van den Hul MC One that I had used for a while, but was really too big and heavy for the Graham arm. It is from the early 90s, but was retipped by Mr. V around 1999. The guy who had it retipped never mounted it, and I paid about $300 for it in 2001. I think I used it for about a year, but it's hard to say how many hours I put on it.
I managed to mount the cartridge without too much difficulty, although I did over-crimp one of the headshell wires and had trouble re-opening it. I got good tangency fairly easily, and played a junk record as a test. The only set of resistor plugs I have is 1000 Ohms, so I played the same track with and without the plugs. It sound a little better at 1000 Ohms, but I think I need a set of 300 Ohm plugs for this cartridge.
Tracking is very good - I had a little trouble with the Shure bottoming on warped records. But the sound is something else. Even with this old semi-junk MC from 20 years ago, it's another world. I am playing the same record I purchased and played last night, the Moravec Chopin Ballades on cream-and-gold Connoisseur Society. If you don't know the label, they recorded directly to 30-IPS two-track tape, and cut the LPs directly from the master tape without any equalization or processing. They even cut some of their earliest pressing at 45-RPM - and this was in the middle 60s!
I'll have to decide what to do for a permanent turntable. For now, this will do.
