Teres update - After Week One

Hi all,

I thought I'd let everybody know how it has been working so far, and the problems I've encountered along the way.

First off, I had a very bad hum & background noise in Soro phono stage. I tracked it down to the 12ax7’s (4), and replaced them with a NOS Baldwin Organ quad. This got rid of just about all of my background noise. I also swapped the interconnects after I changed tubes. There was very little difference here. I was using silver custom IC’s in a litz configuration, and I thought that this would stop any RF interference. Close, but not quite. So, all I had were a decent set of AN IC’s, and they went in. They’ll stay.

I also think I set the gain to high on the K&K tranny. This is an easy fix. About 20 minutes with the soldering station, maybe today….

Now that the noise is ALMOST gone, on to the Teres. It sounded great from the start, but I felt it should sound better. It was very bright, but this was to be expected during break-in. Luckily, we had two snow days here in North Carolina, so I had a chance to keep the LP’s spinning more often then normal. The harsh edge has been disappearing gradually over the last 50 hours of play. Bass extension seems much better now. I feel it still needs another 50 hours minimum before things just right.

Setup was a breeze. The only problem there was the limitations on VTA adjustment with my armboard. Let me get this out of the way first: Since I built the armboard a little different than Teres spec. I should have known this would happen. No big deal, just a pain in the ass! One thing that amazed me was when I set-up the cartridge, I got it dead on, on the first try. I used the HFN protractor, the Rega protractor, the ETM protractor, and they all say perfect. I mean, when I screwed it down, I didn’t have to move it AT ALL. Talk about luck (not really)! I still have not played the HFN test record yet. I am going to wait another week.

Upgrade fever hit about 10 minutes after I got it going. The first thing I did was building a new arm board. This one is solid cocobolo with no lead. It is also only .8” thick. If you saw the pics of the day I set it up, you’ll see I experimented with some cones under the “stock” board. It was way too high. So, this board it made to work with the cones. Should be interesting.

After I swap arm boards I’ll post a few pictures of the new setup and let all know how it sounds. I feel it should extend the highs without any detrimental effect on the bass. We’ll see. I’ve also got the wheels in motion to build the next couple of tables. One plinth is already spoken for, and the second one may be too. Keep watching my home page for details.

Once again, I would like to thank all of you who offered input, help, and advice on this wonderful journey back into vinyl. It has been a most rewarding experience.

Joe’s Pages

Joe