New and first post.
I have a few 5.1 and 7.2 units and have not been happy with the sound. I have been out of Hi-Fi for many years. I bought an Onkio 2.1 Receiver and this kick started me back to 2.0 stuff.
I dug out my Kenwood Model 11 that I bought from the Army Base Audio/Photo shop in 1976 while in Germany and it is alive but my Marantz speakers are not so I will be working on some good speakers soon.
Over the years, for turntables I have had Marantz, Technics, Thorns, BSR's and Garrards so I do have a few headshells and cartridges left over to pick from, even a few "Quadraphonic" ones. By the way, the old 90's Dolby Surround 4.0 would decode Quad albums. I have not tried it yet on my 7.2 Yamaha.
I have Rick Wakeman's "7 Wife's of King Henry the 8th" in Quad and about 5 others.
But my Thrift Shop find last week was a dirty/dusty Realistic Lab 400. The sticker said "Table turns but has HUM" and it was $5. I get a military discount and walked out with it for $3.25. The bad: Dust cover has a small crack but the hinges are the metal ones and are good. The headshell and cartridge are the Realistic OEM. So I put my best Shure and titanum Headshell on it and dialed in the counterweight. Still had a loud hum even after I ran a ground wire to my amp. So I dug out my VOM and found that the left side shield was open. Feeling the RCA cables I found a nick that was 2/3 through the cable so I opened it up and de-soldered it, cut off and wired in a new 12 inch longer dual shielded RCA patch cord. I never understood why turntables had HARDWIRED RCA cables that were always a foot or two too short for placement. Can not always have the TT next to or on top of the AMP.
Two words,
OHHHH MYYYYY! This platter rocks. I put Santana's Abraxas on it and cranked it up using an old set of Sansui SP2500X speakers. Yes it still has that ever so slight hum of "Wow and Flutter" but who cares, its the COLOR these records were made with. And yes I would call it even with my old Marantz 6300 but I like the looks of this Lab 400 better. Time to dig out my 1,000's of vinyl records and my ZERO-Stat "D4" cleaning set.
Oh, IMHO, I'll take a Idle wheel Garrard over most 80's Belt drive TT's any day.
On Amazon Fire's "Bosch" he is running a Marantz 6300 thru a Mac Pre-Amp and a Mac Power TUBE amp. I know that system well as a friend had that setup with different speakers. I sold him my Marantz 6300 for $175 many years ago and a ADC SX-80 6 channel mixer for DJ'ing. I still have 1 ADC SX-80 and 1 SX-120 mixers.
