Post by dsjr on Jul 16, 2018 8:28:34 GMT
Believe me, turntables DO affect the sound of records played and mid-bass colouration can kill them. the PL-71 was only around as a new model for less than a year and I all but ignored it as it looked pants to me, but I missed a goodie there. The HR100S is a direct coupled kind of product like the Rega RB series and I maintain without being able to prove it, that you were hearing a deck and arm mismatch. Most Jap decks of the mid to late 70's were horrible sounding things and sounded dead, dry and often lifeless. At the time, the more enlightened of us had drifted over to the well isolated Philips GA212 and even the AR XB1, the arms of both being better than you'd think. A couple of senior managers in the firm I worked for used Dual 701's and this one still has a lot to offer.
Oh by the way, in a perfect isolated situation, all a turntable needs to do is support the record and rotate it at the right speed adding nothing of its own or the room its used in to the result. Sadly, this doesn't happen in real life and whatever others say, in the late 70's, an LP12/Grace 707 and Supex 900E showed easily in 'musical terms' what other decks were doing so wrong! A Rega 2 or 3 with R200 arm did the same for Thorens 160's in stock form I remember. Today, I reckon I could take my old Technics SL110, fit a more sympathetic arm, change the mat (original had three very narrow concentric ribs which offered little to no support) and maybe mount it differently (sand lined box is recommended for these early models) and just maybe I'd get a 'better' sound from it - the SL1500 responds well to this...
I never heard about the RB casting varying. The differences in the mounting plate could have a massive sonic difference though.
I can't demonstrate what I'm trying to say so it's pointless really. As for arms, the Timestep one looks interesting and far more so than the Aro-derived javelin thingie, which seems to be cashing in on past flawed glories... I maintain the HR100S was a goodie but no idea what you heard Oliver or how you heard it, hence my intense surprise.
Oh by the way, in a perfect isolated situation, all a turntable needs to do is support the record and rotate it at the right speed adding nothing of its own or the room its used in to the result. Sadly, this doesn't happen in real life and whatever others say, in the late 70's, an LP12/Grace 707 and Supex 900E showed easily in 'musical terms' what other decks were doing so wrong! A Rega 2 or 3 with R200 arm did the same for Thorens 160's in stock form I remember. Today, I reckon I could take my old Technics SL110, fit a more sympathetic arm, change the mat (original had three very narrow concentric ribs which offered little to no support) and maybe mount it differently (sand lined box is recommended for these early models) and just maybe I'd get a 'better' sound from it - the SL1500 responds well to this...
I never heard about the RB casting varying. The differences in the mounting plate could have a massive sonic difference though.
I can't demonstrate what I'm trying to say so it's pointless really. As for arms, the Timestep one looks interesting and far more so than the Aro-derived javelin thingie, which seems to be cashing in on past flawed glories... I maintain the HR100S was a goodie but no idea what you heard Oliver or how you heard it, hence my intense surprise.
