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Vinyl vs. FM question

D

Delshadowrio

Active Member
I have finally dug out my old lp's and bought a turntable. I am using a Marantz 6200 turntable with a Marantz 2285B receiver.

My concern is that it just does not sound as well as it should or as I remember from 20 years ago. The fm is much more clear and loud at the same volume setting than the lp's. I do not remember that from the past.

I have switched it out with a Hitachi turntable and get the same results.

My question is. Is it my old ears? or could it possibly be the stylus on the turn tables? They are not new. The albums are in good shape. There is a lot of woofer movement that does not match to the music. There is no vibration or feedback from the speakers as I can tell.
Any suggestions?

Any feedback is welcome, No pun intended.:dunno:

MM
 
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Sounds like you have two probs there. First is Rumble. To cure that you need to isolate the table a little better.

Second one seems to be the stylus on the tables.


Grumpy
 
Thanks Grumpy!

I will look for a stylus.

Anyone know of a good quailty brand to look for at a reasonable price? or at least under a hundred bucks.

MM
 
Our very own BrianB from Venus Hifi has the Grado Blacks for under 40 bucks. Hows that ? ;)
 
Grado Black is (IMO) an excellent-sounding cartridge at an excellent price. I am planning to buy one (from Brian) for my daughter (who is intending to add vinyl to her rather 'retro' hi-fi at school this fall).
 
Don't forget when looking back, most FM broadcasts nowadays are highly compressed, which makes them sound
L O U D and FM nowadays is being run off of satellite, played off CD or some form of digital storage. Back in the day, most stations played their music off of Insta-Carts or used pre-recorded music played back on R2R automation. The Insta-Carts for the most part were okay for commercials but awful for music. Worst case scenario: Warped or off-center 45 rpm single transferred to an Insta-Cart that has wow and flutter probs and is in need of a head alignment and being demagnetized. {{{shudder}}}
 
Celt

Yikes... I dont think our 2 local stations (the only 2 in english) are satellite, I think they are tapes or something because last weekend I listnening to the same music played 3 times in 3 hours in the same order. We have the Mix 96 and a country station.

They suck!!!!


MM
 
We had an IGM automation system at our station in the 70's. All the music was sent to use from Los Angeles by Drake-Chenault (Hitparade and XT-40). We ran that during the day and went live at night using albums and 45's. Most automated stations these days are either satellite or getting their service sent to them on CD (TM Century-Hit Disc), even with the possibility of having a decent library, they almost always play the same 40 songs over and over and over and over... Radio sucks these days. When I was a kid, stations played Billboard's Hot 100. That's right! 100 current songs in constant rotation and those were mixed with re-current and oldies. You could listen for hours on end and not hear a repeat. Then by the late sixties-early seventies, Top 40 became dominant and you would hear the same songs repeated ad-nauseum. To make matters worse, if a oldie didn't fall in the Top 10, it never got played again. And people wonder why I listen to NPR. :rolleyes:
 
I am presently using an old Stanton 681EEE cartridge on an unmodified Thorens TD150 . This is presently going through either a Marantz 4300 or a Pioneer 780 (I love the sound of both and can't seem to settle down with one). Would the Grado black unit be a positive upgrade for my scenario... I'm not knowledeable in the area of turntable and cartridge tuning or matching.

;)
 
I think the Grado's sound great. But as Grumpy can testify, they are sensitive to motors and magnetic fields. In other words, you may hear HUM with a Grado. :(
 
Ya know I am not really sure if it will hum on his marantz or not. I think the marantz tables has slightly better shielded motors then the duals so I'm pretty sure it wont be a prob

Now if you want to be certain of no hum opt for one of the Goldrings. They are only a couple of bucks more and I really like them ;)
 
I'm running into a signal level discrepancy of my own. The TT I got a little bit ago has an onboard preamp. Yeah I guess you might as well know it is just one of those ratshack specials.
(pause to stop drop and roll)?:para: :para:
Its preamp tops out at about 450 mV. My CD player runs at 2V and the VCR (playing tapes at least) and DVD seem comparable in volume to the CD, as does the receiver's tuner. So basically when I play a record I gotta jack the volume up and make sure not to forget to turn it back down. So that's had me looking for a separate preamp to set between the table and receiver. But among the ones that list their signal level, they seem to be not a lot different from what I already have, if not even lower. Anybody got a (preferably) low cost recommendation or is it time to warm up the soldering pen
 
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