New TT is every bit enjoyable as the LP12… bass is better, but soundstage a tiny bit narrower…
If that’s the new GAE 55 then you will love it. I much prefer to my previous LP12.
Give it 4 weeks to settle in and the soundstage fills out. My immediate impression was the same.
It takes a while for the wiring and table to bed in.
Congratulations
Nice to see another Techy amongst the sea of elastic band driven TT’s.
Yes its a GAE 55… Good to know it will sound even better over the coming weeks…I was surprised at just how solid the build is…
I did swap out the cartridge to my Dynavector 20x2… seems to work very well
I gave up a LP12 in 2010 and never was happy to be rid of it. I was also left without a local Linn dealer. Just some guy who ran thin gs out of his house by appointment. Screw that, I want to be able to walk into the shop during business hours. I never looked back.
Can you say anything about the custom Nagaoka cart, and why you wanted to replace it? Or did you just swap it straight out?
I was at Uni in a shared house with guy with a Townsend Rock, Merlin PSU and Excalibur tone arm, in 86/87. He was on the Acoustics Engineering course and became a partner in an Acoustics Consulting business.
He designed & built his own speakers during the 2nd year, writing the software in Fortran77 to run on the Prime Mainframe to model the designs through the Thiele/Small parameters.
His Turntable was an interesting design, very controlled, precise sound.
I had a Mission 774 arm (the straight tube one) with a silicon damping trough at the base, and so does my SME V today, however it was only Max Townsend that moved it to the end of the head shell to gain the control closer to the cartridge, and the other end of the tone arm tube to its pivot point.
You pays yer money and you takes yer choice
This isn’t meant to be negative on any brand, all come with pluses and minuses, I think we are fortunate just to appreciate quality kit and the sound it produces.
I’ve had Technics and Linn, appreciate both brands for their positives and would happily buy either at their respective price points
n-lot,
I used the Dynavector cartridge, because it was the one I wsa using on my Linn LP12… I have a new headsheel arriving today, on which I will mount the Nagaoka… I can then try it back to back - one real advantage with a removable headshell…
Clearly will have to change the setting on the phono stage to match a MM cartridge vs MC… I am looking forward to listening to the Nagaoka to see if performas
Please let us know.
Excellent! I’m using a different strategy, which is to buy one in bits… though not great one for negotiating a deal, but I’m enjoying the steps. So far I’ve got the motor drive psu and pulse-r tonearm cable which I’m using with my Xerxes X. For me, these have already been a pretty big upgrade over the stock Roksan items. Early in the new year I’ll ask my dealer if I can try the Redline power cable for the motor drive, followed later in the year by the the SG1 tonearm. Then at some point I’ll have to bite the bullet with the turntable itself.
I messed around with interconnects (some very expensive ones too) and the best sound that opened up the soundstage was the very affordable Van Den Hul D102mkiii. Very low capacitance so let’s the music through.
The provided cables that came with the TT are not great… I swapped them over to Atlas - same as the interconnects between my preamp an power amp.
Also got to try the Nagaoka cartridge provided with the TT, not exactly a simple swap, as had to rebalance the arm, different tracking, phono settings, but end result was good… the Dynavector had more air around the singers and the bass was a bit better, but very close between the two cartridges… the differences may close one the cartridge runs in a bit… my daughter tried the Nagaoka on her TT and there was a big jump in sound quality vs the entry cartridge she had… so it will on her deck
You have an audiophile daughter ? Lucky dad 
Hi, the reason Clearaudio don’t feature so highly is simply the strength of the UK turntable manufacturers such as Rega or Linn, as a result Clearaudio don’t have the market share .
My only comment is that to get the best out of my Clearaudio I needed a good phono stage, it took a couple of attempts , in the end I went fo Graham Slee , not for what it offered but what it didn’t offer.
The vast majority of phono stages are both MC/MM , so I went for phono stage that wasn’t . I went for a specialist high end MM phono stage, the sound I am getting is equivalent to the LP12 / Naim I had back in the 1990s
The phonostage one needs is a function of the cartridge (and perhaps arm, depending on compliance). I would dispute that a Clearaudio turntable per say needs a certain kind of phonostage. I have used four very different phonostages since I got my Ovation (two tubes, two solidstate), and they all worked well because of the cartridges I was using. Three of them supported either MM or LOMC out of the box, and one is LOMC only.
My observation was not specific to Clearaudio. Why when buying a phonostage should you spend extra for both MC and MM circuits?
Clearaudio, Michell , Linn etc are high quality products and less expensive phonostages won’t show products at their best .
I think the more meaningful way to put it is, these tables (depending on tonearm fitted) are capable of taking advantage of a good cartridge, and that needs a good phonostage to bring out the best of the cartridge.
If you restrict your choices to MM-only or MC-only phonostages, you exclude a majority of very fine devices. The MM-only phonostages are generally not higher end. I imagine the higher end phonostages that support both don’t really cost that much extra to support high output cartridges, and maybe some designs utililize the MM circuitry for the MC output gain stage.
Naim make their phonostages for one or the other exclusively, but that’s more the exception than rule.
So do Graham Slee and they are very highly regarded. I went down the strictly MM route for a number of reasons, like I’m retired and I know I have no wish to go into MC.
The most expensive MM phono stage only they make is £1100
I think EAR also make a similar priced phono stage for MM only
I use a SuperLine and it is for low output cartridges only, but I doubt I’ll ever get a high output cartridge. I don’t know of any at the higher end (e.g. $3000 and up).
