^ Thank you both!

motorbike guy wrote: Fri Oct 14, 2022 7:07 am

Teacher's Pet wrote: Thu Oct 13, 2022 11:31 am I inherited an Empire 208 turntable, circa 1961. Anybody have any experience with these?
It's missing the counterweight, cartridge, and stylus. The old mat is rumpled and the belt is loose.

It's dusty but gorgeous. Cool wooden plinth. I'm just not sure I need to own and maintain a turntable this old.
I'm wondering if I should just try to liquidate it, as the person who gave it to me could use the cash.

Then again, I might already have a cartridge that fits, a new belt doesn't cost too much, the motor seems to be working fine, maybe I should invest minimally and see how it goes? Maybe sell it after it's running again?

This is a big heavy "mass loaded" style old fashioned turntable, along the lines of the old Lencos, Garrards, Thorens, etc. The tonearm is garbage, so if it is missing parts, I would replace it and you could have a decent sounding TT. You may, however, find that there are parts out there if you search hard enough.

If the motor turns smoothly, the platter turns smoothly (check to see that the bearing is oiled) and you can find the right sized belt for it, it is a lovely old record spinner.

I have seen pictures of these with all sorts of tonearms. You have to build an adapter plate to bolt onto the chassis where the existing tonearm is, but otherwise should be pretty straighforward.

This guy strips them down and re-makes them into a modern hifi record player:
https://www.analog-engineering.net/ae2008.htm

Thanks for the info, I have an update/question:

I replaced the pilot light, belt and oil, but I can't spring for the new tone arm right now.
I had an old school (period-correct?) cartridge/stylus handy and it fit the headshell, so I put it in and it's all working.

EXCEPT that the ancient cartridge wiring scheme does not follow the red/blue/green/white color convention, and I get a buzz/noise when touching the headshell.
Do I have my cartridge wires in the wrong place? Or do I need to check the ground wire?
It's very quiet when I'm not touching it.

And it does sound great, I was kinda dazzled.

B&W DM 602 s2 speakers. I am very happy with them. I sold a pair of Paradigm Monitor 3s to a nice man from Scotland and bought these from a nice Australian. The imaging is terrific; it sounds like a center speaker is on.

Teacher's Pet wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 2:04 pm

motorbike guy wrote: Fri Oct 14, 2022 7:07 am

Teacher's Pet wrote: Thu Oct 13, 2022 11:31 am I inherited an Empire 208 turntable, circa 1961. Anybody have any experience with these?
It's missing the counterweight, cartridge, and stylus. The old mat is rumpled and the belt is loose.

It's dusty but gorgeous. Cool wooden plinth. I'm just not sure I need to own and maintain a turntable this old.
I'm wondering if I should just try to liquidate it, as the person who gave it to me could use the cash.

Then again, I might already have a cartridge that fits, a new belt doesn't cost too much, the motor seems to be working fine, maybe I should invest minimally and see how it goes? Maybe sell it after it's running again?

This is a big heavy "mass loaded" style old fashioned turntable, along the lines of the old Lencos, Garrards, Thorens, etc. The tonearm is garbage, so if it is missing parts, I would replace it and you could have a decent sounding TT. You may, however, find that there are parts out there if you search hard enough.

If the motor turns smoothly, the platter turns smoothly (check to see that the bearing is oiled) and you can find the right sized belt for it, it is a lovely old record spinner.

I have seen pictures of these with all sorts of tonearms. You have to build an adapter plate to bolt onto the chassis where the existing tonearm is, but otherwise should be pretty straighforward.

This guy strips them down and re-makes them into a modern hifi record player:
https://www.analog-engineering.net/ae2008.htm

Thanks for the info, I have an update/question:

I replaced the pilot light, belt and oil, but I can't spring for the new tone arm right now.
I had an old school (period-correct?) cartridge/stylus handy and it fit the headshell, so I put it in and it's all working.

EXCEPT that the ancient cartridge wiring scheme does not follow the red/blue/green/white color convention, and I get a buzz/noise when touching the headshell.
Do I have my cartridge wires in the wrong place? Or do I need to check the ground wire?
It's very quiet when I'm not touching it.

And it does sound great, I was kinda dazzled.

if the channels are in the correct positions and are both in phase, you have the cart. hooked up properly.

the buzz on the headshell means a messed up ground connection somewhere, or the contacts between the headshell and the tonearm are dirty.

uglysound wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2023 12:51 pm Any ideas for a decent cassette deck or CD player that is not full rack width? Like 13" wide at the most. Would be really cool if they stacked on each other. Prices on the nice little Marantz stereo field recorders seem to have blown up for some reason.

What deck?

Our basement was redone last year but various things have kept us from getting it setup, but today I finally got the basement stereo setup going.

Turntable: Thorens TD 160 MK II (belongs to my wife, inherited from a family friend)
Receiver: Pioneer SX-737 (also my wife’s, her dad is the original owner, had to get it worked on this spring as one channel intermittently cut out)
Speakers: B&W 602 (I’ve had these for almost a decade, got a set of the B&W 600 series floor standing speakers for upstairs)

Phono preamp actually sounds pretty damn good on the Pioneer!

Put an Audio Technica VM95ML stylus on my SL1210 today, quite an amazing improvement over the VM95E that was on previously. Very happy!

This is not in my hi-fi, nor is it likely to be, but if I ran a head shop or black light poster emporium the pyramid-shaped amp would be hard to resist.

https://www.whathifi.com/news/oranges-a ... e-pharaohs

I've been reading this thread during slow days at work, lots of valuable info here. FM Motorbike Guy - salut for all the insights!

This thread needs more pictures, though.

My setup was was one of those all ine one mini all-in-one system (Sony RCD-M39 to be exact) and it sounds surprisingly good

in one room, and an late 80's/early 90's Aiwa hi-fi which was used as TV / bluetooth (through a seperate device connected to RCA in, of cource) speakers as both cassette decks were non functioning and it didn't have cd player.

However, one day the terrible drama struck - the Denon wouldn't CD tray wouldn't open, so I could play all the cds in the world there as long as it was the Deep Purple 'Made in Japan' CD. After a year of getting to know this record really well I've opened the system to get to the CD mechanism but it's dug deep inside and getting to it would mean disconnecting a lot of small ribbon-style connectors I'm sure I would break, so I gave up and emailed a Denon repair shop. They say 'yeah, sure, but any post warranty repair takes about 3 months' so I said 'what the fuck' and though about something like that but with a streamer, so I wouldn't be streaming via bluetooth which was annoying (and degrading audio quality, I think. Bluetooth confuses me).

Things escalated quickly.

I've found used used Kef Q700 floorstanding speakers, a guy from the city I live in was selling them as being to bass-heavy for his room which I've assumed would also be the case for me, but he said in the description he also has Q500 in perfect condition (still floorstanders, but smaller) for sale - I've emailed him asking for price and he said 285ish EUR/USD. According to google they listed price was 1200 USD back in 2015, so like wtf, yes please.

After going through a rabbit hole of reading about amps I've settled on Denon PMA-900NE becasue it seems to have all I need (including streamer - one box and cable less) and all I might need in the future (phono stage, sub out, tons of ins).
Local store had deal on it with a matching CD player so I bought both from them.

Then I fought "there should be a box of cassettes" somewhere in the basement. There was, so in came a properly serviced Denon PMA-800, with new belts etc. Was the first cassette played on it "Queen live at Wembley vol.2" which was the very first cassette I'ever bought in the summer of 1992? Fuck yes it was.

Then I heard "it would be nice if you had a turntable" when a friend was visiting, but c'mon, I've never heard one, and cassettes fulfill all my nostalgia driven needs of annoying format with inferior sound quality plus records are exensive, so naah, thanks, that would be just stupid.
Then I heard it from another friend.
And another.
All of those friends are rather attractive women.
...
Welcome, Audio Technica AT-LPW40WN. Other than the sexy name, it doesn't have the dj features the more popular 120's models have which I wouldn't be using and visually it fit the room it sits in way better

The problem was, there's a TV in the mix too so there's plenty of cables and looking at them was very annoying. After spending way too much time looking for something the TV could stand on with the audio boxes underneath I've ordered a custom sized cheaply made but ok looking table and I've cut out a pice of cloth which I've put on the back side of the table. Almost no cables visible*, magic!
(*unless you walk in closely and look at the space between the tv and the wall - there's a proper cable vomit there, but there is no need for that unless I'm cleaning). Will post pictures when I'm home.

So was it worth it? FUCK ME, YES A THOUSAND TIMES. I expected sound quality would improve, but it's like magic. The Kef's fill the room with sound even at low volume and I hear details now I've never heard before. One of the first CD's I've put was 'Fear of Music' and I couldn't shake off the feeling I'm listening to a remixed/remastered version even thought it was the very same CD I bought 20 years ago or so. I've actually felt like I'm 10 and it's Christmas. NOT CRAP.

A Rega Planar One Plus
Sonos across the apartment with a Port streaming the turntable.
A Schitt Audio Headphone amp plugged into the Port Out for some EQing. I’m considering a Schitt EQ in front to better control the Sonos output which is limited.
Sony MX blah blah headphones but considering some Monolith M1060 as an upgrade. I was pretty surprised Sonos’ big headphones release wasn’t able to receive streamed audio from the Port. I would have brought if they had.

Anyone upgraded a Planar One to a Three? A quality increase?