No bass with new turntable?

Me too Stringreen. I have lots of LP's that are as quiet as CD's, or nearly so.

Wetfeet, I think that you made the right decision, whether you have lots of vinyl or no. The thing is to have clean vinyl. This quiets the noise and saves your cartridge. If you think about doubling or tripling the lifespan of a good cartridge, you can afford quite the record cleaner!

I use ultrasound. DIY audio has a good thread on this.

Also, may I suggest that you try to find your 10 favourite records as factory sealed copies. Many records have not been permanently damaged by previous play, but many others are irretrievable, and visual inspection is not always sufficient to differentiate them.

Really, it is all worth it. Enjoy, enjoy.

Wetfeet, as for taking cleaning a step further, I am rather unstable on the subject. I do a minimum of 15 minutes of ultrasound followed by 3 rinses of purified water plus one of distilled water. The results are obvious: water beads and streams off the records, like a newly waxed fender.

After 400 hours, I inspected my premium cartridge with a lab microscope, and could find no trace of wear. Nor could my dealer. That means that the ultrasound more than paid for itself in cartridge life, and the better sound is just a bonus.

I suggest that you go slow and improve things one step at a time. A record cleaning machine is a good investment, but buy it used - there is nothing much to go wrong. By the way, it is good to clean all records, even if they are new and sealed. Otherwise you risk a trace of oil in the grooves, which combines with dust, and forms a grinding compound which reshapes your stylus, and thence your wallet.

More about Bryston - the SST's were very musical, not harsh at all, and that in an all-electrostatic system. Now I have more clarity, but I could still be happy with a system built around Bryston. Recommended product, recommended company.

Hello Wetfeet.

Yes, as I mentioned, a bit unstable on the subject. I use a commercial US unit from Germany, Elmasonic, with a motor driven contraption above the tank to turn the records. I get best results cleaning two records at a time, which give the US waves plenty of room to develop fully, and also, allows about 80 W per record for cleaning.

I also use a lab grade detergent in the cleaning solution, specially formulated for plastics (so says the blurb), known as Versaclean, at the lower end of the recommended range (40:1). As you point out, Lew, pure water would not dissolve oil, and one would expect any oil removed by US cavitation to re-adhere to the vinyl surface.

Lew, I have read both: that mold release compound was (is?) used by some manufacturers but not others, and also that any residual oil is the product of the pressing process. I have no expert opinion on the matter, but I am playing it safe. Anyway, it's easier to plunge a new record into a standard solution - with 4 rinses, (3 with purified water (2 rinses under running water, one immersion), by 'purified' I mean the best tap water on the continent run through a grit filter and then a charcoal filter, and one rinse with distilled water), there are probably 0 molecules of detergent on the vinyl surface - comparable to the final plunge in distilled water.

I saw an analysis of the grunge in record grooves, and what caught my eye was something like 30% diamond dust!!!!! Now, where could that have come from? And what did it do to the next stylus?? AGHH???

Hence ultrasound. YMMD

Wetfeet, I forgot to respond to your question about Bryston.

I am using home-brew Class A electronics now, which is a big step up from Bryston, but I still remember both the 3B-SST and 4B-SST fondly. Bulletproof doesn't begin to say it. I accidentally shorted out the 4B by touching the speaker terminals to an aluminum chassis, basically using the machine as an arc-welder. Naturally, the 4B shut right down. I thought, "I can't expect Bryston to pay for this much foolishness," but thought that I might as well listen before I packed it up for factory service.

I waited half an hour for it to cool right down, then fired it up. Perfect. Unchanged. Wow.

Also, before I bought them, I talked to the factory. They put me through to some guy, highly expert, who took an hour to talk audio with me. Turned out, he was the president. Some company.

Wetfeet, I like Class A. Profligate use of power, but commensurately clean sound. With ESL's you really hear it.

[Heresy alert] By the way, my electronics are all solid state, full complementary designs. The electronics may not sound the best, but the system does. That is because the amps can be designed so that they cannot overdrive the speakers into protection - and that means that performance robbing protection circuits are necessary, and if present, can be removed with impunity.

Which explains the paradox: even if the amps are not the absolute best, the system as a whole has been optimized.