crustycoot
Responses from crustycoot
| What type of preamp do I use for an Electret stylus ? Tech HiFi sold a lot of MA carts in the ‘70s and ‘80s. They work with a 47kOhm 42dB gain preamp and they aren’t capacitive load sensitive either. | |
| Turntable versus tonearm versus cartridge: which is MOST important? OP's question is purposely obtuse, as kingbarbuda points out. Any real buyer would really ask "How do I apportion my $10.5K bundle to get the best sounding set?". In that case there are environmental considerations to consider in the choice of t... | |
| You own a store, you sell 2 brands, which? McIntosh and JBL because together you can make great stereo and home theater systems. I’m including Synthesis by JBL. Both brands are $$MONEY$$!! | |
| Commander Cody Fun stuff…CC brought joy humor and fine musicianship together and helped preserve a tradition of Texas Swing and Rockabilly for his generation. In countless local joints bands inspired by the LPA would entertain and delight. In Boston we had Memph... | |
| cassettes CAN sound better than vinyl. As others have said, live mic to 2-track (or Tri-Mic) on a clean, well aligned, degaussed crystalloy or sendust Nak or JVC or Sony portable recorder certainly made for some enjoyable listening back in the day, and I have fond memories, but how can... | |
| Upgrade my CD player or futile effort? Luxman, Hegel, and Bryston all make superb one-box CDPs. Parasound used to make one, too, that might be found used. That is the “keep it simple” solution. Almost as simple, Black Ice makes a tube hybrid DAC with a built-in transport that you could... | |
| Klipsch Forte ii too bright, or is it my room ? + Henry53!I worked in a Klipsch dealership for years and never could stand them. I understand the current product is better but I have no direct experience. Consider a Black Ice F11 at $1595. An affordable EL34 based integrated. If you are handy ... | |
| Are all amps being built wrong? Bob Carver made amps under the Sunfire brand that had speaker outputs selectable for voltage or current drive. I’m told the current drive was created by the insertion of a series resistor. | |
| Critical listening and altered states My audio journey was launched sober, but really took off on pot. There was a barrier to listening vs. being “convinced” that pot seemed to help remove. I no longer partake, and my tinnitus prevents me from trusting my judgement on what sounds best... | |
| Help me decide on first turntable purchase Pro-Ject Classic EVO comes with Sumiko Moonstone MM cart. Musical Suroundings Phonomena II phono preamp has all the adjustments and good enough SQ to get you going. Tweaking possible with platter mats, future cartridge upgrades, etc. An Ifi low... | |
| Auditioning headphones (ethically)? Ethics were part of your question, yet most responses seem to ignore that aspect. From the standpoint of a dealer selling headphones, the only real ethical point is that if you use a dealer's time, demo inventory, home trial policies, etc., you o... | |
| Please Suggest An Electronic Crossover I have used the Parts Express DSP-408 with good results. Offers a big slice of what mini-DSP does for next to no money. Experiment with that and see if you think you’re making progress. You’d have to break out the woofer input to direct couple it... | |
| Amp recommendation -- McIntosh, Luxman, Yamaha I'm not in a position to comment on SQ, but the Rotel RA1592MKII might be of interest. It lacks MC the gain stage but hits all your other desiderata. The MKII has audio tweaks by Ken Ishiwata, a respected Japanese audio guru, so it may not be mi... | |
| Panamax Power Conditioner: Keep or Upgrade I worked at a store near the NE coastline when our buyers brought in Panamax, and later, Monster Power, with incentives (carrots and sticks) to “attach” these profitable items to our sales, and to serve the best interests of our customers. Anecdot... | |
| Bad recordings and high end audio When I was a budding audiophile in the '70s I bought a pair of Stax SR5 electrostatic headphones to upgrade from my Sennheiser HD414s. Great records of the day, like "Catch Bull", or "Workingman's" sounded awesome, but what really got me was how ... |