on 2/17/01 5:32 PM, Aaron Shinn at ashinn@artic.edu wrote:
> The Ortofons (the integrated headshell models) have a bit of a
> reputation in this respect. The performance really is unrivaled, but
> if you constantly disconnect and reconnect the headshells (IE: going
> gig to gig with your own pair) they tend to develop weak connections
> to the audio contacts inside the tonearm. Eventually you lose a
> channel here or there - really sucks.
I just recently bought a brand new Ortofon nightclub cartridge (black body
with yellow stylus) and was only able to get a single channel on one of my
turntables (call it TT1). I tried it on the other turntable (TT2) and it
worked fine. I then took my old Ortofon that used to work on TT2 and tried
it on TT1 and I was only able to get one channel. So basically the
Ortofon's would only work on their respective turntables. If I switched
them around, I would get a single channel from both of them. A friend of
mine told me that the same thing happens to his and that the connections are
quite inconsistent. I found this hard to believe, since they're not cheap
cartridges, and I expected more after spending about $100 for each one. But
after reading this current thread, it seems that I'm not the only one
experiencing intermittent connectivity problems
Although since I've had my RCA cables on the Technics replaced with
audiophile quality ones, it hasn't happened - but I should say that this was
a _REAL_ pain. I paid for someone to perform this modification for me,
since although I'm proficient with a soldering iron, I didn't have the time
to do it myself. What a mistake that was. The person who switched the
cables wasn't able to replace the cable stress clip (since the newer cables
were much thicker than the old ones), so they just used a cable tie with a
self adhesive sticker to keep the cables in place (which came off pretty
easily). After getting my turntables home, it became evident that one of
the wires had become disconnected (although at first I thought it was just
my Ortofon's acting up again). I opened up the Turntable to find that the
wire that had been soldered on had snapped off from the circuit board and
took a piece of the printed circuit with it. What a pain in the ass. To
make a long story short, I had to open each turntable twice and resolder
them myself. It was not fun. I really don't understand why A) Ortofon
hasn't fixed the connectivity problem inherent in their Cartridges, and B)
why Technics insists on hardwiring crappy RCA cables onto their Turntables.
It would make much more sense if they provided RCA ports on the machine
itself so we could use our own.
But as far as the Ortofon's are concerned, they sound great when they do
work (and as I mentioned earlier, I haven't had any problems with them
recently, although I haven't disconnected them since). I mainly use my
turntables for archiving vinyl and making mixed CD's (through my sound card
on my computer), so audio quality is very important to me.
Speaking of Turntables, has anyone played around with the Denon DP-DJ151.
From what I've heard, it's got some great features. Digital output, line
level out (has a pre-amp built in), and also a built in DSP chip for time
stretching. Wonder how the unit compares to the 1200.
Adam
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Feb 18 2001 - 05:55:01 CET