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God bless plasticky P-mount TTs of the '80s and '90s!

I got two tt's

I got two turntables and really can't tell between the two. One is p mount. But then again the head I'm using on the non pmount is probably xxx old and cheap. No fancy brand name or anything. So one day I hope to find a nicer tt that works. Something from the 70's that has lots of goodies.

As for now I got my Realistic lab 420 that has some problems. Using a new old stop shure 3x or 5x stylus. I purchased it when they was on close out in the early 90's or something. I went back to clear them out but they said another guy came in and did it. But for like 10.00 a stylus and me being a high school kid. I still had to wait until my next paycheck. Now they go for 30-50 on the net.

The other tt I love is a technics slq-350. I use that more than the relistic. It came with a ortofon needle. But I like just pushing the button and having it play. Then again my REalistic does that. But it does not work proply for 45's and the technics does.

Josh
 
I think the OP original concept was that the advent of P-mount allowed many albums to survive that otherwise would have been trashed by badly aligned and weighted turntables carts. Is a BPC P-mount better than say Dual 1229q, or TD124 nope sure isn't but we have a place for them in our hearts for not destroying that which is really the focus of our obsession, the Vinyl! And I had never given it a thought before this thread and he is quite right. Between that and the lighter treading carts of the post 50's 60's era ie 70's going into the 80s Left us with a wealth of vinyl that we will enjoy till the end, and hopefully our offspring will too. The other thing that brought us this time capsule of music is the demise of the general use of turntables. Think of all those collections that got stuck in basements or garages, that eventually find the way into the thrifts. I could never afforded to regrow my collection from scratch they way I have now. I lost (between neglect and theft) over 4000 albums.. I am back up to about 2000 and have expanded my horizons in music.
 
Boy, I dunno. I've also owned a couple and I get what the OP is saying but IME I've seen and still see a lot of P-mount TT's setup with no regard whatsoever to leveling, proper antiskating, or counterbalancing. People just seem to "fiddle" with the knobs until it sort of works. They aren't really plug & play but people seem to use them that way. The "good enough" factor.

I think those TT's (in general) and P-mounts sound OK, because you can't hear what your missing. Know what I mean? You don't hear the bad but you also don't hear the the top-end good. I can put a groove damaged record on one and it doesn't sound half as bad if I put the same record on my Thorens/Benz combo.
 
My SL-BD22 and my SL-Q5 really are "plug and play" with no way for the user to adjust the antiskate nor tracking force that were "preset at the factory." Well, they could have tried adjusting unlabelled random screws, some hidden under stickers, but but I'm guessing the vast majority didn't. They could have set them up without leveling the turntable, or installed a p-mount cart so far off the T4P standards that the tracking force was off, but for the most part, my cheap Technics turntable and my cheap Pickering p-mount cart did well by my vinyl collection, with no knob fiddling involved.
 
I bought a Technics SL-D20 to use while my original Philips 212 went in for overhaul.
Following Howard's advise I bought an AT 92ECD .
It sounds very nice and performed flawlessly.
My brother has it now ( long term loan) and one of my niece uses it, no complains so far.:music:
 
Shackman55 said:
I think the OP original concept was that the advent of P-mount allowed many albums to survive that otherwise would have been trashed by badly aligned and weighted turntables carts. Is a BPC P-mount better than say Dual 1229q, or TD124 nope sure isn't but we have a place for them in our hearts for not destroying that which is really the focus of our obsession, the Vinyl! And I had never given it a thought before this thread and he is quite right. Between that and the lighter treading carts of the post 50's 60's era ie 70's going into the 80s Left us with a wealth of vinyl that we will enjoy till the end, and hopefully our offspring will too. The other thing that brought us this time capsule of music is the demise of the general use of turntables. Think of all those collections that got stuck in basements or garages, that eventually find the way into the thrifts. I could never afforded to regrow my collection from scratch they way I have now. I lost (between neglect and theft) over 4000 albums.. I am back up to about 2000 and have expanded my horizons in music.
Click to expand...
That's right.

I'm not advocating them as having great sound quality (though some sound better than one might expect), but rather as preservers of records. Of the four I had, none had any sort of user adjustments on them, apart from replacing the stylus, which we never did.
 
meggy said:
\You don't hear the bad but you also don't hear the the top-end good. I can put a groove damaged record on one and it doesn't sound half as bad if I put the same record on my Thorens/Benz combo.
Click to expand...

When I did my aforementioned Technics P-mount/Thorens TD 160 with 440MLa shootout, the two records I tried were both pretty noisy on the Technics, but that noise dropped 80 or 90 percent on the Thorens. As I mentioned, a lot of that might be down to the hyper-elliptical stylus of the 440MLa, but still the result is the same--noisy records sounded much better on the better TT/cart combo.
 
^ Huh. No kidding. That's interesting. I got the opposite effect. My Thornes/Benz picks up everything.

As a matter of fact, I used to use my plastic pioneer w/pmount to test newly puchased bargin bin LP's before RCM cleaning so I could get an idea of how intense I'd have to work each one. But I found out I wasn't hearing as much "bad" that was really there so it wasn't a good eval process. Sorry, I digress.
 
The only problem comes when you look at the specs on some of them; I saw wow and flutter at 0.25% on a Pioneer TT. That will not sound good, whatever the cartridge.
 
Not all P-Mount tables are created equal .

My SL-M1A
 

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SA-708 said:
My SL-BD22 and my SL-Q5 really are "plug and play" with no way for the user to adjust the antiskate nor tracking force that were "preset at the factory." Well, they could have tried adjusting unlabelled random screws, some hidden under stickers, but but I'm guessing the vast majority didn't. They could have set them up without leveling the turntable, or installed a p-mount cart so far off the T4P standards that the tracking force was off, but for the most part, my cheap Technics turntable and my cheap Pickering p-mount cart did well by my vinyl collection, with no knob fiddling involved.
Click to expand...


I will agree with you, but only to a point. I had a Technics SL-Q30, that had both adjustable tracking force and adjustable anti-skating.....all this and a p-mount arm too. Also, the higher-end SL-M1/SL-MA-1 tables also had adjustable tracking force and anti-skating.
 
Oerets said:
Not all P-Mount tables are created equal .

My SL-M1A
Click to expand...

True. My Pioneer PL-707 came with a TP4 mount with an Ortofon mounted to it. It sounded pretty good but I liked the look of the standard 1/2" headshell that also came with the 707's and so I went that route but mainly because of the selection of 1/2" mount cartridges over P-mount carts.

Pioneer PL-707
PioneerPL-707TT6.jpg
 
I don't know if given the choice on my SL-MA1 I change it over . The Grado P-Mount has been pretty much trouble free .



Nice Pioneer you have there Pioneervato BTW .



Barney
 
iLUVanalog said:
I will agree with you, but only to a point. I had a Technics SL-Q30, that had both adjustable tracking force and adjustable anti-skating.....all this and a p-mount arm too. Also, the higher-end SL-M1/SL-MA-1 tables also had adjustable tracking force and anti-skating.
Click to expand...

I own both an SL-MA1 and SL-M3 so I understand what you are saying. Most consumers at the time were probably buying the less expensive plug-and-play p-mount models, at least that's my recollection from the 80s. Its what I bought because they were what I could afford at the time.

People at the time either had a high-end table (p-mount or 1/2 inch mount) and knew how to set it up (or pay someone else to), or had a low-end table which, unlike the previous generation of cheap turntables, was pretty much idiot-proof. Not that idiots couldn't be ingenious and still mess up their records.
 
iLa: Yup, the first generation of Technics' T4P radial trackers still sported both adjustments. Later on, the only radial trackers that still sported the anti-skating adjustment as well (except from the 2nd generation SL-M1 and SL-MA1) were the SL-QX200/300.

pv: Your point regarding the wider choice sure is true - but still makes me giggle in combination with your pic, as you seem to run an AT130E, of which you could have got the T4P version (AT132EP) just as well... ;)

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini
 
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