Up grade to a new turntable

@daveyonthecoastYou have a nice list and depending on your phono stage a low or high output cartridge may or may not make a difference. I have an Acoustic Signature Triple X with an ATArt9x (low output) and the sound is unbelievable. I have it going into a SPL Phonos and achieve great results. You might find a good deal on the Acoustic Signature and they are built to last. I’m sure others will chime in but enjoy the listening and good luck!

Davey, of the group I would go with the Kuzma Stabi and upgraded arm. It really is a great table for the money.

Here in Australia, there only a few turntables available!!, at my price, as I’m on a pension!

Better high-end turntables for lower price for you: 
Technics SL1200G for $4000 or SL1200GR for $1700

Check out this company. They build turntables that are not run of the mill and priced for what you get.
https://sotaturntables.com/

Davey, I know Donna at Sota personally. Check out their web site. The Sapphire is their best value. If you like I'd be happy to ask if she will ship to Australia. 

Another vote for the Kuzma GREAT table and arm. Built to last and sounds wonderful.

Turntables matter less than most people think. Once you have a fairly good one, it all comes down to the Cartridge and Phono Section.
That is important, and the reason after much research, that I have bought a SUT from Bob at Bob's Devices and am almost finished building a Sunvalley SV-EQ1616D tube phono section for the SUT to use. Just the SUT into my modest Musical Fidelity Phono Section is a large step up.

Yet another vote for the Kuzma, among those on your list. I did have extensive experience with the Well Tempered Reference and its tonearm, when it was owned by a close friend who developed dementia in his last years. Thus I was doing the work for him in terms of mounting and aligning cartridges, plus he and I would often get together at his home for listening sessions during which I was even setting LPs on the platter for him. His system was very fine. I would summarize my critique of the WT as follows: Although it does nothing to irritate, it does tend to sound "over-damped", with the result that nearly all LPs sound the same, on the sweet and mellow side without high end extension or great bass definition. As I intimated, I heard it with more than one cartridge, so the colorations were not per se due to the cartridge. Plus, he owned 6000 LPs, so we heard it with a wide variety of labels and musical genres. Let me qualify my remarks by noting that I have never heard the Amadeus, which seems to please many WT fans and may be a big improvement on the Reference. I am not casting aspersions on all WT products, in other words.

Hello, 
I love the VTA on the fly. Make sure people tell you if the cart you want goes with your tone arm and more importantly the phono preamp. I am going through this right now deciding between the Ortifon Black LVB MM or the Dynavector 10x5 MKII MC for my Linn basic tone arm and the Sutherland Little LOCO. 

Hold On hshifi!! The Little Loco is a current mode phono stage. Neither the Ortofon LVB or the Dynavector will work well with it if at all. The Little Loco will work well only with cartridges that have an impedance rating less than 10 ohms. 

VTA on the fly is highly over rated and can be detrimental to the performance of the tonearm. On this subject I think Michael Fremer is correct. Set it to 92 degrees and forget about it. Even if you swap cartridges frequently it is not necessary. You can index the tonearms post for each cartridge you use. 

Sorry, but I am gonna break protocol and radio silence on this one. Don’t care what MF says. Don’t care what anyone says. Only care what my ears hear, because that is what we call REALITY. And reality tells me there is nothing in all of turntable setup that you can do that will have a greater impact on imaging, tone balance, detail and harmonic rightness than to precisely dial in VTA.

Budget tables have to meet a price point. For that they must make all kinds of sacrifices. VTA is relatively expensive to implement. As soon as funds allow however and you are in a range where VTA on the fly is possible, one of the smartest things you can do is exclude from consideration arms that lack VTA adjustment.

Tracking alignment you can do reasonably accurate and do just fine. Tracking angle after all varies several degrees across the side no matter what you do. Nobody ever hears this, though they love to opine on how critical it is. Even though they never hear it. VTF you are always given a range, and while small differences can be heard within that range they are nothing compared to the differences heard with VTA.

This leaves VTA as by far the most important of all the adjustments we have control over. It can only be done by ear. Not by measuring.

Maybe that is the reason some talk it down? It calls for listening skills?

@daveyonthecoast
Given your 4 options I'd choose the Kuzma.

Other $4k price/performance suggestions:
- MOFI Ultradeck with the MasterTracker cart for $2.5k total.  Lots of favorable reviews.
- Rega Planar 8 or used Rega Planar 10 - great sound for the $, cutting edge lightweight design, but doesn't have the deepest bass energy and tonearm may be a bit more finicky to set up.

Who said VTA adjustment was unimportant or makes no significant difference?


Mijo, you’re thinking of SRA, not VTA, when you mentioned 92 degrees. I’m sure that was just a mental typo. Me, I never have even tried to visualize SRA. I just set VTA so the top of the headshell is parallel to the LP surface, listen, and then tweak VTA up or down from there looking for best tonal balance.

Hello,
Mijo.,
I recently helped a friend setup a VPI Prime with the unipivot. Pain in the @$$! But once I finished setting it up; it was the VTA was the real factor that made it sound incredible. Another friend who has the same table had it setup by a guy who does this for a living using state of the art gear said I nailed it. It was as good as he has heard. But, you are correct about the Ortifon LVB. I would have to go with a different phono stage for that. Maybe the 20/20 or the Duo. I will call Ron Sutherland about the Dynavector 10X5 Mk2. When I was demoing to the TZ Vibe for him he did not mention it would not work. At the time I was listening to a Rega P8 with the Ania pro cart. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I am not being sarcastic. I really do appreciate it. I was given a Linn Axis TT so I didn’t want to go crazy with the cart on this table. I think my endgame table is the VPI prime with or prime 21. I think I like the unipivot more than the Gimbal arm. 

He didn't just say it is overrated, he said it is detrimental. 

VTA on the fly is highly over rated and can be detrimental to the performance of the tonearm.

Fremer never said any such thing. There are various methods of implementing (designing, building) VTA on the fly. Some of them undoubtedly not so good as others. Poorly implemented anything is never good. But VTA in and of itself? Essential.

As hshifi just said:

it was the VTA was the real factor that made it sound incredible.

Indeed. 

Roy Gandy on VTA:



https://mackiefamily.unospace.net/documents/regaonvta.html

mijostyn

VTA on the fly is highly over rated and can be detrimental to the performance of the tonearm. On this subject I think Michael Fremer is correct.

C'mon, where did Fremer ever say that???@mijostyn, it increasingly looks like you just like to make stuff up.

Technics tonearm has VTA on the fly, Lustre tonearm has VTA on the fly, Ikeda tonearms with B60 has VTA on the fly, Reed 3p tonearm has VTA and azimuth on the fly. Those are my favorite tonearms. VTA on the fly is great feature when you swap cartridges. If you use one cartridge matched to specific tonearm then you don’t need VTA on the fly, but there must be VTA adjustment anyway, tonearms without any VTA adjustment like Rega are junk.

If you are going to adjust by ear ,then if  your listening sweet spot is going to be quite a ways from the turntable , what real value is vta on the fly.  Easy enough to do but wondering any real advantage???.  Maybe one less allen wrench?

Enjoy the ride
Tom

@tomwh    I guess sometime a turntable designer will implement VTA on the fly adjusted by an electric motor to raise and lower the arm pillar and a remote to operate it.  Then you can stay in your seat and tune it by ear.

On my Simon Yorke Aeroarm the pillar is raised by a knurled wheel acting on a rack and Simon could easily engineer a motorised adaptation.
But he would not do it as he enjoys the ritual of getting up and down from the seat and wants his customers to get the same buzz.

Hello,
When I adjusted the VTA on the VPI Prime it was really a 1/4 turn at a time. I just kept track of what I did as far as moving the VTA from zero. Besides, that was the fun part of setting it up. The hard part was setting up the VTF and azimuth just using the counterweight on the unipivot arm. I wanted to leave the side weights alone since they didn’t seem to have a locking mechanism. I was worried over time they could be bumped or vibrate out of adjustment. I am very picky when I do things with micro adjustments. After I adjusted the VTA for typical thickness of vinyl I grabbed a 180 gram record and marked the spot for that. This way you can literally adjust the VTA very quickly by the thickness of the album with the markings on the VTA dial. Just a note you do have to loosen the two VTA arm set screws by hand before you adjust. When you listen to an album dialed in with your system and your ears it is as close to audio Heaven as you can get. 

hshifi

... After I adjusted the VTA for typical thickness of vinyl I grabbed a 180 gram record and marked the spot for that. This way you can literally adjust the VTA very quickly by the thickness of the album with the markings on the VTA dial ...

After changing VTA, do you also adjust overhang? One affects the other, and that is the limitation of VTA on-the-fly, imo.

Go for the well tempered with the dynavector and make sure you switch to the moving magnet setting on your phono stage or you will have overload issues and distortion. The other thing is that you will love the dynavector cartridge, they are amazing with all types of music.

wowThanks for the info??, bot back to my original question!!The Well Tempered has sold to some one else!!Here in Australia, there only a few turntables available!!1 TNT turntables2. Kuzma TurntablesFriends what your thoughts?? as both these are over $5,000 !!I can maybe able to afford this!! at the moment!!, but over the months, wish to upgrade, piece by piece, but I'm on a pension, so will take a while!!I live down on the far south coast, the is no hi fi shops, with in 4 hours drive??, but they only sell, the basics!!I do really need advice!!My music, is rock,rock/jazz, new wave, funk, etcHoping for advice!!Kuzma or VPIMany ThanksDavid Spry

The VTA on the Technics G tables is on the fly and ever-so-awesome.  

@daveyonthecoast ,  I highly recommend looking at the newer Technics tables.  As Chakster noted, they are very difficult to beat. They are rock solid. They are not fussy.  They sound strong and sublime.  They are all you might ever need and allow you to focus on the phono stage and cartridge. 

Kuzma for sure

Better high-end turntables for lower price for you:
Technics SL1200G for $4000

ohhhh yeahhhh....+1

The Kuzma in a heart beat.

@ $4000.00 1200/1210- GAE are hard to beat!

@danmar123 , any Rega. Much better arms.

perhaps the opener does not like the Technics too aesthetically similar to the fifty-year-old 1200 and will annoy him, not knowing the extreme improvements made.
After all, not everyone likes the aesthetics of the 1200s

BTW:

…Dynavector 20 xx high output, I’m using low output, at the moment, on my "Once Analog" turntable!!, so I don’t now how it would sound, would the higher output, sound harsh, on my phono stage, in MC, or should I switch to MM??

You can always try a high output MC with MM phono stage, it depends how high is the output, optional gain/loading on the phono stage is a nice bonus feature for MM and MC phono stages.

@mijostyn; My 1200 mkll has an SME 309 on it, & it a close competitor to my 1210. I can switch arms, but the new Mag. arm just fits my setup. I don’t think there would be such an improvement in sound.