One other thing I forgot to mention about the "Stanton" S-tonearm ...
The counterweight scale and motion is not as precise as the Technics, so what says "2 grams" tends
to be a little heavy. Invest a couple dozen bucks in a Shure mechanical stylus-force gauge and
you'll be safe. I found that "2 grams" was about 1/4 gram too heavy in all cases, so I used the
Shure gauge to make it right and then re-adjusted the tracking-force indicator. On the other hand,
the anti-skate spring seems to be accurate.
I can also say, after several more hours of listening through headphones (Audio-Technica, which
accentuate bass and thus accentuate rumble), that if you swap in a better cartridge, playback sounds
much better. This tells me that the turntable itself is pretty good mechanically and it's not adding
a bunch of annyoing rumble and resonance "howling". Speed tests with the Analogue Productions test
record shows it's accurate and stable, so the PLL system is sound. I also found that the pitch
control is uniform; I determined this by putting a tape mark at the point of 78RPM exactly ("78"
speed is 78-plus-something, I think 78.26) as determined by an old Presto strobe disk. I was able to
return the pitch control to that point and get 78-exactly on the strobe at several different times,
so the pitch slider isn't a piece of junk. Finally, the built-in preamp sounds better with a better
cartridge but it's still adequate at best. I fed it some dynamic material and it's not
overload-prone, which is a good thing. Same goes for the digital output, which is fed from the
internal preamp. Since your only choice is 44.1/16 digital output, you don't want too low levels,
but this thing seems to strike a decent balance with most records and using standard-output
moving-magnet cartridges.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 7:37 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Possibly another reason why Technics is exiting the turntable business
> I'm wondering if a fair number get returned due to people finding out it's fully manual and has no
> dust cover? For what it's worth, whomever re-packaged mine at ZZSounds or "Stanton" did a good job
> and the unit works no worse for the wear. I carefully inspected the needle with a microscope and
> it wasn't damaged. It's conical so it takes some really heavy misuse to chip it. That kind of
> misuse or mishandling is more likely to bend the cantilever.
>
> BTW, forgot to mention this before -- Kevin at KAB sells the standard Stanton 500 conical needles
> cheap because he removes them for the 78 needles for the two-headshell packages he sells.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Frank Strauss" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 10:53 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Possibly another reason why Technics is exiting the turntable business
>
>
>> On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 10:05 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>>
>>> "Stanton" now has a 1200 semi-knockoff with many useful features down below
>>> $250 street price, Stanton 500 cartridge included:
>>> http://www.stantondj.com/stanton-turntables/t92usb.html
>>>
>>>
>>> -- Tom Fine
>>>
>>
>> Thanks for that Tom. I looked around on Google a bit for the T.92 and found
>> many sources for it. Universal price seems to be $299, new. A number of
>> outlets had B stock or factory rewraps. Why do you think there are so many
>> of these? Are they returns?
>>
>> --
>> Frank B Strauss, DMD
>>
>
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