stereo turntables in DD use.

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

Dual Mods

Hello whirlcool that sounds like a very good idea and I bet it looks better aswell, i wonder if it be worth damping the pressed steel chassis (a bit of a job i know) but any deck i have had that uses a pressed steel chassis PL-12Ds Dual 505's etc has always benefited sonically from bitumen damping being applied, it stops them ringing.
I always do a recording of before and after when i alter things to see.

Gary
 
I have the Dual 701 in an enclosed case in our entertainment center. It plays with the glass door closed so that pretty much keeps the bass off the turntable. Maybe one of these days I'll consider damping it more. But getting under that top on a Dual can be a job!
 
I have the Dual 701 in an enclosed case in our entertainment center. It plays with the glass door closed so that pretty much keeps the bass off the turntable. Maybe one of these days I'll consider damping it more. But getting under that top on a Dual can be a job!
 
My first and only turntable is a Technics SL-230, purchased new in 1979. My original setup, which I used for many years, consisted of that, a Kenwood KR4070 receiver/amp, a Phillips N2535 cassette deck, and a pair of Lyric 3-way bass reflex speakers. (Lyric was a Circuit City house brand, made by Fisher.) The N2535 was interesting because it had settings for recording and playing back ferrichrome tape, which didn't stay on the market for very long. I still have it, although I don't use it anymore. The turntable has an interesting feature too: a "repeat play" control that can be set to play a record from 1-6 times, or indefinitely. If you set the control to one of the 1-6 settings, the lever moves over a notch every time the tonearm returns.

I mainly use the turntable these days to transfer stuff to my computer. Over the years I've replaced the neon strobe and the belt; the automatic mechanism no longer engages reliably, and the speed control is a bit flaky. I was still using the Kenwood amp up until two years ago, when one of the output channels died. At that point I bought a JVC amp which is what I use now. (I also have a St. Louis Music stereo monitor amp, but I don't use it much.) I let the Lyric speakers go in a yard sale some years go; my current listening pair is a pair of Cerwin-Vega which I purchased in 1992, but have spent most of their lifetimes in storage (long story). They've only got about three years of actual use on them.
 
Whirlcool, I love them!

If you didn't buy those, I don't want to hear about it! LOL There was a man in the Stuart flea market that had the identical set, he may still have them, they weren't for sale unfortunately. I found ONE main unit in Early American with the little trapezoidal speaker set attached. Idiot that I am, I didn't grab it. It ended up in an antique mall for more, then I think it disappeared before the entire mall left. I guess I didn't grab it because I've got the Contemporary version, and I wanted its companion matching storage/speaker unit.
 
Denon DP-30L direct drive turntable from the late 1970's. Still works great. A/T cartridge with a variety of different styluses.

I picked up a "free" turntable last year, a belt drive TransAudio 1800 minus a belt and a cartridge.

Also have an ION USB turntable. POS, IMHO, I could just have easily used the Denon and a pre-amp with the freeware Audacity software instead.

Built-in turntables: Garrard in old late 1960's KLH Model 11-FM. Pretty good but the spherical stylus doesn't have the definition of the more modern elliptical ones.

Also the Imperial Micronic turntable in the Motorola console stereo... same lack of high def the Garrard has. But that in part is because I couldn't find an exact replacement for the cartridge. The original has a broken stylus support. Lots of bass response, though ;-)
 
Actually, we have four turntables.

The Dual 701
The Kyocera PL-601
Dual CS-528 (mediocre at best)
The original AR turntable

The AR turntable was given to me about 10 years ago. Someone put it in storage in the attic of their home here in Houston. It was up there for about 15 years. Need I say what 15 years of a hot Houston attic did to the turntable? The plinth is warped and is falling apart. The base itself isn't too bad. All the pieces are still there.
I imagine if I restored the base finish, made a new plinth and put a new motor in it I would probably be ok. But that tonearm is sooo primitive.
Just another project for one of those days when I have nothing to do (Ha! I ALWAYS have projects to do! Lots and lots of "Honey-do's).
 
for 35 years...

We've had a Thorens TD-145, for which an Empire 595 was traded, for which my first TT a Dual 1009 was traded... but just last week sold the old Thorens, we're going to go new. One of the country's best stereo stores, Audio Classics' is about 5 mi away. And of course McIntosh is stil made here in Binghamton. We've had a few of those, over-rated imho.

The TTs are played through tube theater amps: Altec 128B pair, Scott 130 preamp, to feed a pair of Altec Valencia speakers. Better 1/2 thinks they're too big, so to my son they will go, to be replaced by something more living roon friendly, what I don't know yet.
 
What brand of turntable are you looking at for a replacement? That Thorens is goint to be tough to beat. They sure do have a following.
It sounds like you are in the Rega or ClearAudio area. What do you think of Klipsch speakers?
 
Allan

thanks for posting these.......SWEET!.......

now I'm gonna be on the look out for them at sales.......endtables and speakers combined.....does it get any better than that.....
 
Scott

I saw a Scott turntable at a thrift store recently.  Any advice on that make?  Chances are it's still there (it's all there too, as in including the cartridge), and I've been regretting having let a turntable go when I moved a few years ago.
 
I don't think Scott made their own turntables, but sourced them from someone else.
Sometimes you can end up with a great turntable this way. SAE had a turntable for awhile under their own name, but it was really a Micro Seike under the cover. A really nice unit.
 
I went back today to get a better look at the Scott and it was gone.   I was surprised.  Nothing moves out of that store very quickly.  I think that thing was ready to plug & play.

 

 
 
too bad it was gone!

Scott turntables were made by Fairchild, super well made for that vintage (late '50s).
I'm not sure what we're going to get. The Thorens was very good but after 35 years it was time to change. And the big Altec VOTTs had to go, the spousal approval factor just wasn't there... now to try to get approval for Magneplanars, that should be fun!
 
Yes they were used in radio stations...

and so were Empires, but I wasn't fond of my Empire 596, so it was traded for the Thorens in the mid 70s. The VOTTs are now at my son's house, he has a bigger room than we have and they do need big space to come into their own.

WHirlcool - I do like Klipsch, a friend has the original Klipschorns, they are great but also need a lot of space to sound good and strictly corner placement. The smaller LaScalas are nice sounding and not so huge. We bought new a pair of Klipsch KSB 3.1 about 10 yr ago for use with a little Scott 222 tube amp and were very happy with them, they are reasonably efficient around 92db/watt/meter, with an modern design exponential horn/driver tweeter & 8" woof. Very nice for a reasonably low price.
 
Here is my turntable. I've had it for a number of years. If I remember right, I paid $10 for it. Its an Accutrac 4000. As you can see from the picture that there a bunch of buttons on the front. The purpose of those buttons is so you could actually select which track of the record you wanted. It originally would have come with a remote but mine didn't when I bought it. The picture is not of my actual turntable, just one I found on the internet.

countryford++2-10-2012-06-05-37.jpg
 
Then of course no stereo system wouldn't be complete without an 8-track player (or as I've seen it called an A-track player. LOL). Here is a Wollensak 8055. Again not my unit just one off the internet.

countryford++2-10-2012-06-08-28.jpg
 
excuse my grammer in the last post. It should be no stereo would be complete.
Anyways here is the baby that powers everything up. Its a Denon avr-4802r. My partner Steve bought it new a number of years back. This is what all our components are hooked up to(actuall just in the process of hooking everything up to it, hence the reason of the pics coming off the internet and not of my actual units). Once its complete it will run not only the turntable, cassette deck, 8-track player, but also the surround sound system, dvd player, vcr, laserdisc player, and satellite player.

countryford++2-10-2012-06-12-27.jpg
 
And to just show you how complex the unit is here is a picture of the back side of it with all the hookups. Again both photos of the amp are not of my actual machine, but ones off the internet.

countryford++2-10-2012-06-13-22.jpg
 
3M wollensak

that is a cool wollensak 8-track player-probably u.s. made and AC motor.
I have a wollensak cassette player made in 1982;it's very high quality and is
made in USA-including the cassette transport.Unfortunatly its mono....This unit
was meant to go with a slide projector for educational use.
 
Bygone Qaulity

When you see all this lovely old gear it makes me sad that we will never see it again................

i remember Wollensak tape decks appearing this country the biggest stir was that they used idler drive for the capstan rather than a belt, they were well engineered and tested well

I also remember well the ADC Accutrac, this was featured on a science tv program we had here called "Tomorrows World" that caused a stir aswell, in some ways ahead of its time with regards to the logic being used, it was fitted with a Technics OEM motor for the turntable drive but the Bristish hi-fi purists slammed it as a gimmick whilst others praised it for its design, I am sure if Bang & Olufsen had made it then it would have been praised alround (the British hi-fi press were a snobby lot then)

for all that there is still some fantastic real hi-fi still around all over the world, as there are washing machines :-)

Good luck to it all

Gary
 
I remember when ADC was big in the audio world. Some of their phono cartridges are still highly sought after especially the QLM & ZLM series.

Yes, that Accutrac turntable did cause quite a stir when it came out. You could play record tracks in the order YOU wanted vs how they were arranged on the record.
And they did come with a remote control too. I just wish it didn't have so much plastic on it. Dual also had a remote controlled turntable too, the CS6250 but the remote control was an option rather than standard. And they are considered pretty rare too.

That Wollensak 8track looks like an 8 track recorder and a good one at that. A lot of 8 track recording machines were pretty cheap. This one looks pretty good.
 
ADC also made speakers. When I was a teenager I bought my first component set, a KLH Model 52 receiver, ADC XT-10 speakers, and a Dual turntable of some sort. The XT-10s were very nicely made and had a 10" woofer with two tweeters per speaker. The tweeters were identical as far as I could tell. Sounded pretty good, but a few years later my sister got a pair of early Boston A-100s and I tried a side by side test. Both had decent bottom ends, but at the top the Bostons blew the ADCs away - Ella Fitzgerald sounded much nicer on the Bostons. So I engineered a swap with my sister as the ADCs really looked better with real walnut veneer versus Boston's woodgrain vinyl, and her listening habits tended more to Led Zeppelin so I doubt she ever heard the difference. I still have the A-100s and love 'em, and I think the XT-10s are now in an attic somewhere.
 
I think I still have a 3M Wollensak tape recorder somewhere in my attic. It's a mono unit that worked with slide projectors to make presentations (that was before PowerPoint and affordable multimedia projectors!). I never used it...
 

Similar threads

C
Dual turntables.
2
Replies
53
Views
306
ovrphil
ovrphil
C
phonograph motors.
Replies
3
Views
38
tolivac
T
C
home stereo tape machines
Replies
14
Views
122
cfz2882
C
B
More on Disposals (for disposal lovers only)
Replies
19
Views
138
tolivac
T

Latest posts

Back
Top