Turntable upgrade?

[admin_exported]

Hi everyone,

I'm a hifi/vinyl newbie but have some second hand vinyl (120 LPs or so, plus singles) which I love listening to. At the moment I play it on an old Hitachi HT-6M, with an Audio Technica AT-95E cartridge. I also have an old Pioneer PL-112D with an Ortofon Pro cart.

I don't really know much about turntables, but the Hitachi sounds better despite having a much cheaper-looking tonearm (black plastic and straight) than the Pioneer (metal and curved). I also prefer the Hitachi because it's more automatic (the Pioneer is fully manual).

Can anyone talk to me about which is better and why? And how I might upgrade? Are these pretty rubbish turntables and I should consider getting a new one, or is there some way I could upgrade one of these?

Thanks for any input!

 

[Anonymous]

Well... "S" arm versus straight arm... I won't even get into that. Suffice to say you should chuck them both. I have a similar hitachi that I keep for sentimental reasons (in the closet). How much can you throw at this?

Incidentally those tables are both probably none-too-good for your records, and you're not going to find any automatic tables on the market for the same reason. They have a bad habit of scratching records.

 

[JoelSim]

If you can stretch to £480 there is a Roksan Radius V on eBay that has to be bargain of the year. New.

ÿ

 

[Anonymous]

So it sounds like these are both very bad turntables. Is it because it's automatic that the Hitachi is bad? What's wrong with them generally? Just outdated? Why do you think they will damage the records?

480 seems slightly out of my budget, I was wondering whether there was a turntable under around 200. I saw the Pro-Ject one that won the award in that range this year -- would this be significantly better than the Hitachi turntable?

If I did spring for that Roksan, would it really improve my current setup? Or would it be pointless without upgrading the whole lot, which I can't do at the moment?

 

[JoelSim]

The Project debut is a nice deck, but the Roksan is something else (and half price).ÿ

Your other kit is pretty decent.

By the way. hifi is about upgrading piece by piece, so each time it gets better and better, even if it takes 10 years it's worth it.

ÿ

ÿ

 

[DistortedVision]

...and turntables don't become obsolete after 10 years in the way digital source components do.

JoelSim:

The Project debut is a nice deck, but the Roksan is something else (and half price).

Your other kit is pretty decent.

By the way. hifi is about upgrading piece by piece, so each time it gets better and better, even if it takes 10 years it's worth it.

 

[Anonymous]

Was feeling impulsive tonight and now I'm now about 500 quid poorer. Points well made, although if I regret it enough in the morning maybe I'll think about selling it on ...

Am I going to need to get a pricey cartridge to match it? Will it come with one at all, or will the Audio Technica fit it?

 

[Anonymous]

As long as it's a standard mount and not a p-mount it will. GREAT UPGRADE by the way!!!!! Woooo!! We inspired greatness! I feel very positive about this development. Good on ya mate!

Save up for:

Minimum: Ortofon 2M Blue 100 quid
Middle: Ortofon Rondo Red 260 quid
Best: Ortofon Kontrapunkt a 500 quid

OR if you don't like the Danish gems:

Grado Gold Prestige 120 quid
Grado Reference Platinum 160 quid

I'm guestimating UK prices here... cartridges are pretty subjective but I really like all those and they're fairly well-accepted.

 

[gregory]

Have you bought the Roksan or just thinking about it because your pioneer is a great deck if all is well. A new belt and putting the AT 95E on it will improve it's performance.

 

[Anonymous]

I did buy the Roksan, but I bought it on ebay so it's not with me yet but hopefully will be shortly.

The Pioneer is beat up but functional...

 

[Anonymous]

OK, this turntable is allegedly coming tomorrow (or possibly Friday). Getting excited!

 

[Anonymous]

This turntable arrived yesterday. Took me about 3 hours to set it up. Mounting the cartridge was the hardest part -- in fact I'm still not happy with the fact that the tonearm wire sheathes don't completely cover the cartridge's prongs; is this a problem?

I did learn quite a bit about how the thing works; unlike the other turntables, with the Radius V everything's exposed. I especially like the anti-skating weight. Learned about azimuth and think I got it right, but still haven't tried the whole VTA thing. It looks very close to level, but could potentially be improved.

Another issue -- the stylus balance doesn't work very well. I was definitely putting more than 2 grams on it and the lever was getting a bit stuck in its plastic case if that makes sense. So I reversed it in its holder, which isn't perfect, but it allowed me to see where about 1.5 grams was, and from there estimate 2 grams. (I know that might not be clear...)

At first I was a little annoyed at how completely manual everything is when operating the table (the Hitachi never scratched anything, and I especially miss the fact that it puts the tonearm away when it's done with a record). But it's so well constructed that it's a joy to use.

It was more than I was thinking of spending, but I'm really happy with it, so thank you to everyone who gave advice in this thread!

 

[Charlie Jefferson]

I'm impressed by your setting-up skills. I've got the same turntable in an acrylic finish,and I had to have some professional input to change the cartridge (from an Orfton to a Goldring, incidentally).

I'm keen to know what your make of the sound it produces and any comparisons you've made with your previous deck.

I went form a NAD533 to the Roksan about a year ago, and prior to my recent addiction to Lossless files into an Airport Express/DAC set-up, I hardly played anything but vinyl. To my ears it's a fantastic deck, quite simply outstrips most CD playback with the usual caveats*.

Let us all know what your thoughts are when you've clocked up some listening time hours.

* decent quality, cleaned, flat vinyl. Pre-1990's origin preferably.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, well I did find it surprisingly difficult to set up. Had to google for some videos of how to change the head, and damaged one of the tonearm wires on the Hitachi head before figuring out how they worked. Ah well, only spent 20 pounds on that table... Anyway, the main reason I didn't seek professional help was because the documentation seemed pretty good, and I couldn't wait to hear the thing!

For how much I love music I've always been decidedly deficient at being able to describe sound. But it does sound much better. The noise floor is much lower -- the silent parts are much more silent, presumably from being a much more stable turntable without a dustcover to pick up air vibrations. Unfortunately I can't easily do a back-to-back comparison since I'm using the same cartridge that I was using on the old deck. But overall it's a lot cleaner, richer, and generally eradicates a lot of the downsides of vinyl (at least on good-condition records).

A few of my records are a bit beat up, but most of them are in pretty good nick, and overall they sound fantastic. I have a friend over who's heard the other two tables and she was very impressed with the sound.

What I've sampled so far: Kate Bush's Never Forever, Ian Dury's New Boots and Panties!!, Depeche Mode's Violator, Echo & the Bunnymen's Ocean Rain, Muddy Waters' Hard Again, Springsteen's Born in the USA, David Bowie's Low, Talking Heads' Fear of Music, Simply Red's Picture Book, Elvis Costello's Get Happy!!, and Duran Duran's self-titled. Yes, I like the 80s -- but if I liked newer music, what would the point of vinyl be?

Can't upgrade anything else for a while now, but must say I love the deck. Only other thing is the finish -- online, the acrylic looked much better than the maple to me, but actually the maple matches my room quite well. I personally think it's a beautiful object in its own right, and it sounds great to me.