Nope. Your pictures were not displaying - At. All. For Me…
They are now… 
Not sure what that was about then.
Anyway back home and ready to go and have a listen in a bit, it’s been left on since it turned up, but it’s brand new so I guess it will change in character
Wow, what a difference this is, I knew my tron wasn’t a great match for my cartridge, but I did still think it sounded great, I was wrong, very wrong.
I know no one is interested but just wish you could all hear this, its by far the best vinyl I have heard, be it dealers, hifi shows or mate’s etc.
It’s what I have been trying to reach for some time and finally I have found the right combo
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Well it went back today, very short demo in the end, but that’s life.
Will you be ordering one?
If I can sell my spare dynavector drt-xv1t cartridge and tron seven gt phono stage then I will, if not then I am going to get a second tonearm and pod and mount the dynavector on it and run it into the second input on the tron
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Well looks like I will get to try a superline/supercap on my turntable, as my mate ordered the pair yesterday.
Looking forward to trying this against my tron seven gt and hoping for a nice result
Well cartridge has gone back to Switzerland to be checked over as I feel something is wrong with it, sent it back to the dealer this week and he has sent it back to Switzerland.
Also got a band new superline here and 2 extra zfoil plugs to try, no supercap so it will have to be from the 552 once I get my cartridge back, but hopefully will have a supercap dr to try at some point as well, as I feel this will be needed to push the superline to the desired level, obviously still have the tron seven gt
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As some might have already seen, i have switched over my tonearm, but before that a little update on my vinyl rig.
The cartridge went back to thales in Switzerland and was rebuilt, they suspected that some glue inside it had been effected whilst in was on the plane over, whatever its better, but its still a very detailed cart, that will expose everything, but it sounds so dam good, i feel i can live with it and live with some albums having parts that i just hate.
Phono stage, well i sold the seven, because it just didn’t work with this cartridge due to loading, so in its place is now a superline and supercap, both now just about run in, i have tried a few different loading and at the moment i have a 456 zfoil plug and normal 1000 cap on the other.
Having gone back to this set up, i have found it to be most efficient and producing the quality, but its biggest quality for me is actually the one thing i once said was not great about it, its loading plugs and how annoying it can be to change them on the back, etc. That hasn’t changed obviously, but being able to make your own loading plugs up to suit your cartridge and you is a massive bonus and is partly why i have gone back to it, also its probably still one off the best solid state phono amps.
Now the tonearm, well i had a Simplicity 11 arm before and its fantastic, but had the opportunity to swap over to a statement are, this works on the same principle, but is made even more precisely, has much better fine adjustment and is slightly different in design.
This arm has a 5 pin din mounted in its bass, unlike my Simplicity are, so i am waiting on a tonearm cable right now, which is torture.
Obviously will update as things progress, but away for a while and for now some pics of it
Me trying to get the cartridge in the right place with the jig.
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Away still, but 5 pin tonearm cable is now sorted, so atleast i can get it all going once home.
So will update obviously when i can.
This was asked but in the nd555 thread, i missed it at the time and thought it would be better answered here. It was to do with my turntable v the solstice and my new arm.
Question
How do you know ? The Thales Statement arm is indeed much more expensive. But without comparing, you can trust only the price difference
Well i have heard the solstice to start with.
The Simplicity mk2 arm is already a fantastic arm that tracks with almost no distortion and true, unlike any other pivot arm. The statement takes this even further, with better materials used for sound quality, design, build, and finer adjustments so you can dial in a cartridge better. Plus its know to be one off the very best arms you can buy.
Plus my cartridge is very much better than what comes with the solstice, infact not even close.
Then the turntable itself, this once again is very well made out off a solid billet aluminium the motor is very quite and isolated, plus its battery powered, so no nasty mains, it has a low wow and flutter.
Plus then add that people are already changing thinks on the solstice to inpove it, like the cartridge for a dynavector drt 1t and phono stage to superline/supercap dr which i use, plus i have had 2 off the dynavector cartridges, both sold as they also couldn’t complete with my exquisite ST cartridge.
So to round up, i am very confident that my turntable is better than the solstice and rightly so
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You’d hope the Exquisite would be a perfect match for Thales’ own arm, the Dynavector might not be. How much each excite the arm and the arm’s control of any resulting resonance add extra dimensions to the mix. It’s not a linear range of good, better except for a given arm and even then the bolt tension can have a surprisingly marked effect even if both are perfectly aligned (if that can ever be known).
You would hope so, but then they make a few different ones, plus they have taken over EMT.
But the exquisite ST is certainly the best cartridge i have ever heard. The details it digs out is amazing, but it also shows up all the bad bits.
The dynavector is great and i certainly liked it, well i did have 2, but the ST is a step on again from it, but its expensive, well they both are.
But one good bit is the exquisite is far cheaper to get re tipped/built as the dynavector is £3k plus for it
I heard an EMT a while ago and liked it a lot but I heard an EMT JDS5 a couple of years ago and liked it a lot. I can’t use one with my standard superline however. What’s the deal on retipping the X quisite? It’s a bit rich to buy but if a retip is at the Soundsmith/Audionote UK level (20%) that makes it affordable in the long run. Also the micro ridge stylus is long lasting if it’s anything like that used by Dynavector uses on the Karat.
I can’t remember the exact price but it wasn’t as much as i was expecting, whereas the dynavector shocked me, especially as it sticks out and could easily be caught.
I have already gone into my finding earlier on in is thread. But the exquisite range is getting very good reviews and rightly so.
After selling my pmc speakers i had the podiums left, now i wasn’t going to try this but i had some solid laminate left over from a job and it just so happens to be big enough and the right colour to fit in so why not give it a go
Well i like the extra vibration resistance this will bring, plus i also like the way it looks. The podium happens to be spot on in size and the weight of the turntable falls nicely in the acceptable limits of the range of the cells.
Doing the tap test on the fraim rack did produce a tap noise through the speakers this has now gone, so you would hope other vibrations that was getting through before have now gone.
Well will be exploring what this has done or not over the next few days and report back
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Well it looks like the podiums have sold, so that little experiment didn’t last long. Not really had enough time to say if it made a worthwhile inpovement or not.
Must have been board Sunday with the F1 race as decided half way through it to, remove my shoe from my turntable arm ( holds the cartridge to the arm) and get it better aligned as i rushed it a bit last time and thats never good.
Anyway remove it and put it in its special jig, then got my daughter to look at it and sure enough it was out by about 1mm in 2 different directions. This means that its quite a bit out everywhere on the record, not good.
So after a good hour, daughter eyes and my microscope plugged into the pc, i finally got it smack bang in the dead centre. Then it was just a case of re fitting the shoe to the arm and checking vtf and level arm.
Not brave enough to start messing with the azimuth but on this arm its easier than the last one, but with out anything to measure the cross talk, etc, i will leave well alone for now.
The results of my OCD set up, well a much nicer bottom end, its certainly grown in depth. Top end has also inpoved, much nicer vocals, cymbals, etc.
Very happy with my time spent and how that i think my cartridge is finally in the right position ( i can’t get it any better) i can now concentrate on fine tuning it when ready.
Left my superline with the 453 zfoil airplug and 1nf capacitance in place as before.
But really enjoyed playing some records tonight and getting them 808’s rocking.
Cheers dunc
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