When we said good buy to my parents to relocate from The Netherlands to Texas my Dad gave me his Thorens TD105 turntable. It was the best value for the money back than when he had bought it more than 40 years ago.
Considering:
the use when me and my sisters were young throwing parties when the parents left home
the transport in a container forth and back the Atlantic Ocean
that it still has all original parts including the belt
it plays wonderful and every single function (full automatic) still works
It is the best bang for the bucks ever. The reason I have not purchased a TD 1601 yet is that my wife wants me to replace the TD 105 with it and that is simply not going to happen.
For me, fun in playing music is not limited to sound quality only.
My 1st “good” receiver was from 1974 (a Marantz 4300) and it looked similar to the photo that’s why I remembered.
I’ve always liked that subdued/understated look myself. They’re about to introduce a new preamp the ART88. I’m hoping the photos I’ve seen are not capturing it correctly because it looks to me plastic-like and the color, too, is not to my taste. It’s going to be very expensive, as well.
Its interesting to hear opinions on gold - personally I’ve never really liked gold on anything. I had the Musical Fidelity a300 integrated amp for years, and loved how it sounded… but hated that gold knob
Back in the days I had a Sonic Frontiers amp or something else (don’t remember). All I remember is it had a huge front plate in gold color. I had to get rid of it not be because the gold color, but because it didn’t sound as good as my next replacement.
Yeah. Back in the day I had an EAD DSP-7000 (that I eventually upgraded to a Mk.III). It had that awesome gold faceplate. It was truly gorgeous, but turned out to be an annoying fingerprint magnet. I bought the black faceplate and retired the gold one, putting it in safe storage. When I sold everything off I got almost as much for the faceplate alone as I did for the Mk.III, which by then had just about every upgrade available from Noble Electronics! That was a great DAC for its day.
I had a similar opinion on gold but have acclimated to the MBL gold knob accents. It is essentially jewelry that adds nothing to the sound. I prefer PS Audios black over the silver look.
I have asked several dealers which sells more, black or silver. Every one of them has said black. I personally prefer silver, but I have purchased Black in the past for resale purposes.
Robert Koda keeps to a gold, champagne theme, mixing in some pewter(?) tones - very nice indeed. I once barely missed out on a K10 preamp (auction) that went for under 9K
I wanted to use my Audience Front Row power cables elsewhere, so I bought ZU Audio “Event” Power Light cables for my PST and Denafrips Pontus 2. At $350 each, these cables are fantastic value for money. Their release of high quality sound is way above and superior to anything else I’ve tried at their price point.
Interesting. Is that a Space-Tech Laboratory super rectifier? I know they make them.
Yes, it’s a space tech super rectifier. A couple $20 rectifier tubes just blow away the mainstream rectifiers that most other equipment uses. I can flip the switch to 5 volt and put mainstream rectifiers in it also or even a 300b as a rectifier.
The Front Row produce an improvement over any other cable in my experience, to the degree that the Audience are without doubt, a component level influence on the sound.
They improve every aspect of tonality, dynamics and timbre. At the same time that they improve bass, they also add a wonderful delicacy to the top end.
But obviously, that’s my ears speaking. I have a friend who dislikes them and prefers Dragons.
The ZU Events do pretty much the same thing that the Audience do, but to a much smaller degree. The Events don’t have nearly the impact on bass that the FRs do.
I ordered a couple more for my second system.
