mulveling
Responses from mulveling
| Koetsu cartridges. They must be something special. One thing I would advise for folks considering a retip on Koetsu: Koetsu used an "interface" type mount, where the stylus is fitted through a collar of different (softer) metal, then into a groove prepared in the boron. Glue is added mostly on the... | |
| Hagerman Piccolo Zero: New transimpedance head amp Once the current has been converted to voltage, the signal must be handled as voltage because all the downstream components are voltage driven. That’s why I suggested that the Piccolo Zero might be identical to the original Piccolo, after current... | |
| Hagerman Piccolo Zero: New transimpedance head amp (@mulveling - given your extensive experience with the MC-1, any comments on the two units would be especially useful.) @jobeare I still really like my Zero a lot - just listened to it last night, actually. It gives you a whole lot of the weig... | |
| Anyone wear gloves to handle vacuum tubes? No. Normal skin oil is no danger to the tubes. You know what is a danger to tubes? Dropping them. And what makes one more likely to drop them? Those cheesy, slick white cotton gloves included with some tube gear. It’s fine if you use gloves with a... | |
| Do sound characteristics matter when moving from midfi to hifi? But I've also built 2 other systems along the way. One is my reference system and one is an 'experimental' system. @bluorion I also have this kind of 2-system setup now, and it's extremely helpful for evaluating components. | |
| Hagerman Trumpet MC review Hi y'all, chiming in late on this thread, but I'm currently considering buying a Trumpet. I'm curious if any of you have been running an MM cart on the Trumpet MC. The lowest setting of 48 db of gain seems like too much for most MM carts, especi... | |
| Koetsu cartridges. They must be something special. but what is the possible mechanism, other than the above, mass, field strength, and geometry (meaning how the magnet and coil are placed in space)? Can someone ’splain me? "Dynamic conditions". The magnetic field varies during playback (however... | |
| Do sound characteristics matter when moving from midfi to hifi? You can absolutely upgrade from midfi to hifi tier and not like the result. There are matters of synergy and taste at play. Look at the used market! Lots of high end gear getting constantly shuffled around. Lots of mid and low tier gear too, and s... | |
| Koetsu cartridges. They must be something special. Koetsu cartridges deliver a warm, rich and “saturated” sound without sounding murky or slow sounding which is not an easy trick to pull off. That’s a perfect description @larryi I used to think they were stupid, overpriced little boxy rocks. ... | |
| Bent Audioquest Robin Hood banana plugs 2nd ozzy - I would just buy replacement set of bananas and do it myself. No soldering required; it’s a screw down connector. The pressure plus a conductive copper paste (already on there - DON’T clean it off) is what they call the "cold-weld syste... | |
| Analogue front end. You want more weight, scale and dynamics.Where do you start upgrading? Yeah, assuming that the cartridge is reasonably good, as counter-intuitive as it is, cartridge is the least important element in turntable set up. I have the impression that many people get it wrong and prematurely upgrade cartridges. Similar thi... | |
| Using digital 75/50 ohm cables for analog No problems - the "75 ohms" (or 50 BNC, or 110 AES) only applies to much higher frequencies than audio spectrum, for digital signals. You'll get debate on whether other non-coaxial geometries are more optimal for phono-level or line-level audio si... | |
| Do vacuum tube test values reflect sound quality? You can notice (bad measurements == bad sound) when something’s really wrong: Severely mismatched triodes and/or tubes (north of ~ 25 - 30%) Extremely weak or below nominal results (transconductance) Consistently noisy tubes (microphonics and... | |
| ICs with slim RCA Barrels? Lots of vintage gear, like tube amps and tape decks, have obnoxiously close RCA inputs. In these cases, I found Audioquest's older RCA plug design - ala Diamondback, King Cobra, Jaguar, Panther, Cheetah, Leopard - work great, and are very good qua... | |
| Headphones for sound control Sure, go for it (headphones). I think you would be remiss to not explore planar-dynamics and electrostats - though planars are generally harder to drive, and electrostats even require their own special dedicated amplifiers (that you can't use for ... |