How much of an improvement will a tone arm upgrade make to a Technics 1210?

[admin_exported]

 

[the record spot]

If £300 is a stretch for the arm, upgrade the cartridge, change the platter mat (Funk firm and Ringmat Developments make a variety of mat replacements you can use) and you can then take it in stages.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah that's kinda what I had in mind, I can stretch to the cost of the arm and cart at a push, I'm just concerned about how much of a difference the Rega arm and OL stub would make. Is is that noticable? It is worth saving up and going for the OL Silver. also what has most effect on quality of sound with a turntable - cart or tonearm?

 

[chebby]

Why not just get a stock RB250 arm for £131 and do the OL counterweight upgrade at a later date?

You can get the armboard seperately for £39 from OL....

http://www.tonearm.co.uk/dj_technics_armboard.htm

With something like the Ortofon 2M Red cartridge (£65) that makes a total of £235 instead of £300

If you bought a decent used Rega P2/Planar 2 on e-bay you could get it for less than the cost of a brand new RB250, take the arm off to use for your Technics deck and then sell the remaining bits of Planar (plinth, platter, sub-platter, perspex lid, motor etc) on ebay to recover the cost of a good cartridge!

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah I had thought of going with the OL1 (with or without counterweight) with 2M Red, and then possibly upgrading to the 2M Blue later - I'm strugling to find reviews to see how the 2M series compares to the Goldrings and Grado's though.

The problem I have with the 1210 at the moment is that I find the bass too strong & quite unrefined. Obviously with listening to house and techno I lke my bass but I find it a bit 'cheap' sounding - for want of better words - with my 1210 compared to other music sources. I don't know how much I need to spend to resolve this problem.

 

[chebby]

Well there is no doubt in my mind that the Goldring 1042 is an astonishingly good cartridge (especially on an RB300 arm) with a colossal sound and deep, dark bass that made some budget MC owners wonder why the @#&! they bothered! (I know, I owned the combination for 7 years.)

The Goldring 1042 is around £185 nowadays so perhaps you need to look at the 1012 (no experience of that one, but I am sure it is similar in most respects.)