2. misc-audio
  3. 190550-77830

Enjoying "Affordable" Equipment

Having never owned a direct drive turntable, curiosity motivated a purchase of a Technics SL-1200GR2. I hooked it up to a stock Denon DL-103. Setup was fun and easy, no protractor required. Easy to understand tonearm height, VTF and anti-skate setup. All metrics were done to spec and VTF was exact without using a digital force gauge except to check my work.

After a brief warm-up the sound opened up and I say without reservation, it's been a while since I've enjoyed listening to vinyl this much. I am playing all my favorites; good recordings of original releases are truly special. More importantly, the price was affordable by today's standards.

The rest of the chain contains a Rhea Eclipse phono preamp, Kell Phantom preamp, Krell EVO 402e with all balanced interconnects and Harbeth 40.2 monitors.

I posted this simply to share an awesome experience provided by our great hobby and hoping to avoid the controversial topics often found on this forum. Thank you!

 

layton64

Showing 1 response by bassdude

bassdude
503 posts
 

Well... those Technics turntables are highly reviewed by most... and none other than Frank Schroder considers the Denon 103 one of the best cartridges available.

One of the "Best Cartridges" Available

Great Sound from Denon vs Lyra Cartridge

After you get to a certain point in the "price/quality" ratio - there are almost imperceptible improvements in the sound quality - assuming you’ve done a good job at matching your equipment to each other, and you’ve got a decent room, or room treatments.

As I’ve discovered recently (posted in another thread on this topic) - I’ve got a very inexpensive system set up (i.e. Maggie LRS+ with an older Class D Audio amp) that produces amazing sound quality - when compared to my other far more expensive systems (e.g. ARC, Hegel, Harbeth, Linkwitz, etc., etc.).

Great Sound From Modest Systems

The same is true for vinyl systems.

More to discover