Recent content by Captain Duff

My everyday record cleaner (before each play) is the carbon fibre brush (the one with two rows of bristles and soft material inbetween to collect the dust) priced at around £7. It used to be called the Hunt EDA (had one of those decades ago - before my toddler decided to clean some toys with...

For me if I wasnt the best sound quality on my own system I reach for vinyl. If I want easy press play and forget I use the streamer (although in fairness it is mainly used for internet radio). CD falls somewhere inbetween these two extremes, despite having a player with a sound that almost...

Well firstly the cartridge would need to be matcehd to the arm (in terms of mass etc.) rather than the platter part. Thorens decks either came with their own arms, and while these weren't bad they were considered inferior to those from the likes of Rega or SME that were commonly used instead...

Well for that money I would argue that a good s/h deck would be far better than a budget Rega or Pro-ject. Personally I would look at Thorens (as I think the suspended sub-chassis design is inherantly better than the solid Rega one), and you could even use your own arm (Rega mounts are cheap and...

I disagree with Chebby on this one. Yes, over-priced racks for digital componants can be questioned (do 1's and 0's really care?), but if ever there was a need to isolate a piece of hifi equipment from either vibrations through the floor from the speakers, or footfall on wooden sprung floors, it...

I think this may be a bigger present than you have planned for if as well as a turntable you also need an amp and speakers. To even begin to give advice on that you would need to state your overall budget and room size. In basic terms, both the cheaper Pro-Jects and Rega's are much of a...

Yes, except that IF the earth wire issue is an easy fix, and IF the 'jumping' is merely down to the retaining screws not being released, then a new belt and stylus to bring it back to life could be had for £15-20 all in. You may be very lucky to find a nice 505 on the bay that is local for that...

First of all this may be of interest: http://abstractnoise.co.uk/2011/01/09/dual-505-2-mini-restoration-and-first-impressions/ I used to have a 505-2, and a very good deck it was too. If I were to stick my neck out I would say easily the equal of something costing £200-300 today. But clearly...

Solid decks will always be prone to this, particularly when you have floorboards that give a little as opposed to a solid floor. A proper dedicated wall shelf for it is your best bet, failing that there are plenty of isolation platforms around (or you can diy your own) to put under the deck...

Do different amps sound different? Yes. Are expensive amps better? No, not necessarily. My own take on this is that the key element of an amp (once you get past the power issue) is actually its EQ. Bob Carver basically proved many years ago that it is possible with a little bit of knowledge to...

Apparently that is all he actually wanted to know, but he asked the wrong original question to find out, even with the rather bizarre sub-plot arguments that developed. His OP simply asked about build quailty between UK and China amps (although odd to ask that when Krell are nominally a US...

Yes, you are correct, and my first proper amp (a NAD 3020A bought in 1980) was made there (still works perfectly too). Mind you, the Chinese would and do claim (with a lot of justification) that Taiwan is actually part of China.

NAD were one of the first British companies to do this back in the late 70s/early 80s (a few owners ago, they are now still Chinese made but with a Canadian holding company in control), and it was for reasons of cost alone (and one of the reasons NAD gained a reputation that still to a certain...

Fantastic decks, and you would probably need to spend not far short of £1,000 (minus arm) to get a modern new deck of similar quality. In fact the reborn Thorens current 160 deck is a lot more than that. Of course while Linn got all the (UK) hifi plaudits, the Germans had been using similar...

First, are you certain it is a MD input on the amp, or MM? If it is MM that is fine (it stands for moving magnet, which is what most lower to mid-end cartridges on turntables are), but if it is MD (and being a Sony I'm guessing it probably is), that stands for mini disc, so is not suitable for a...