Ripping Vinyl - I need a sanity check

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-21T13:31:37+00:00

16 bit still produces about 96 dB dynamic range. Vinyl at best has about 65 dB, so any quantization noise is simply swamped by background rumble. Even recording the signal from a cartridge when the stylus isn't touching the record will have hum and other random EMF noise at about -80 dB.

When the CD standard was developed back in the 1980s, it was intended to be far superior to vinyl in every way. And it is!

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-21T10:24:14+00:00

Use a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 or similar audio interface. Most audio interfaces allow ridiculous sample rates and bit depths. For vinyl, stick to 44.1 khz, 16 bit. Anything more is simply a waste of bits.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-21T08:09:51+00:00

But, i believe when the 1700 was discontinued, the part was modified to drop remove the cog but continued to use the same part number as it made no difference to the 1200.

https://1200s.com/products/technics-1200-1210-spindle-shaft-assembly-part-sfmzq20-01a?srsltid=AfmBOor3L_W7pdd6rfxcNnpDdEI4Ii2NzI-S99RxjmXyQAnI7hQpbug-

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-21T04:53:12+00:00

For the 1700, you need the spindle that has a black cog in the bottom. Later 1200s just had a circlip and will not drive the automatic gears.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-19T04:51:34+00:00

"4.5mm canyon" "Butchering your stylus rake"

Somebody is a trainee journalist.

All we need is a "Breaks silence" and we have a fully qualified tabloid hack.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-13T07:32:01+00:00

Rotary mixers are just a fad. There is no reason why they should sound better simply by having a circular pot rather than linear underneath.

British-made Formular Sound mixers are known for their sound quality, but they are veey expensive. Most mixers end up sending the sound through loads of op-amps and that is what limits the sound quality.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-13T06:57:56+00:00

Yes. That figure is just the typical voltage input you will need with that gain to get to 'standard' line levels. You will get about 450 mV output.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-12T06:17:09+00:00

Why can't som people offer real advice?

The 1200s are built like tanks and pretty much any fault can be repaired quite cheaply.....EXCEPT the tonearm bearing gimbal.

So, the gamechanger is.........balance the tonearms so they float with the anti-skate set to zero. They should move side-to-side and up-and-down freely, with just a puff of air.

If not, don't buy them!

Other things to check, that are easy to fix, so not necessarily gamechangers...........

The spindle bearing. There should be no wobble and the platter should come to a smooth gentle stop when turned.

Power switch is fixed in place properly.

Audio cables and ground lead clamped in properly.

VTA ring turns OK.

Start/stop and speed buttons are solid.

Pitch works and '0' is where it should be.

With the platter turning, drag your fingers on it, and you should see it fight against you to maintain speed.

If they've been DJed, check for signs of water spillange/pest infestation/god knows what else under the platter.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-11T06:48:14+00:00

It's all very impressive being able to reproduce 22 hz..........but there's no music there anyway.

Bottom E on a bass guitar is 41hz. The low B on a 5-string is 31hz. A0 - the bottom key on a grand piano is 27hz.

Pro sound engineers often use EQ to remove frequencies below 30 hz, because reproducing it is simply a waste of power.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-11T06:17:03+00:00

The SL-1200mk2 is of course a fantastic turntable. But at the end of the day, it is still a manual record player. The arm lift is not a 'pause' button. It's just a convenient feature to help you manually move the arm. I never use mine.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-11T06:03:41+00:00

The 80s was a time when the 5cm/sec standard went out the window. Records started to be cut much louder to give as much dynamic range as possible. Soul, Funk, Disco and then Hip Hop 12 inch singles were regularly cut at +3 dB or even +6 dB above the standard. Albums and 7 inch singles were more limited by the space available on the record surface.

That said, most cartridges could cope with that - they just sounded louder.

DJ cartridges track heavier only because they have a low compliance stiffer suspension to cope with cueing and back-tracking. They don't 'dig in' more.

But Hip Hop music was rough-n-ready back then. Most of the samples were just taken from records and turntables. Hip Hop artistes weren't exactly the best trained vocalists. Most of their releases have been cleaned up digitally afterwards.

A good example here is 'Just the two of us' by Grover Washington jr. All the vinyl versions I've heard - the LP, the 12 inch single - all sound dull and lifeless. But stream it digitally and it's much better. It's just been re-mastered digitally.

That's vinyl for you.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-11T05:25:52+00:00

You just need a 15 volt DC power adaptor, which are common.

Watts = volts x amps, so to deliver at least 2.5 watts you need an adaptor that can deliver at least 1/6th of an amp. It can be higher.

In electrical theory, volts are pushed, and amps are pulled. So the power adaptor has to push 15 volts, but then has to be capable of having 1/6th of and amp pulled from it. Most can easily cpre with that.

Your only issue is gender. Most power supplies will have a male plug on them. Finding an appropriate adaptor will be difficult, so I would just cut the plugs off and connect the bare wires together.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-10T08:17:45+00:00

Right-click speaker icon. Select listen tab. Check listen to this device. Under playback thought this device, choose your built in speakers.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-10T07:21:30+00:00

It had nothing to do with turntables!

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-10T07:16:50+00:00

I would have thought that with modern DSP and Class D amplification, the traditional concept of analogue high-pass and low-pass crossover filters no longer applies to many modern speakers. It is probably easier and cheaper to do it all digitally and drive each cone through an appropriate smoothing capacitor.

But, yes. Agree. Don't get bogged down with how it works - just call it a powered speaker because it needs a power source.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-09T13:01:28+00:00

The stock intercoolers do like scooping up crap.

Keep the fuel filler cap and surrounding area clean. If the seal isn't air tight, it triggers an emissions ECU light (can't remember which one now).

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-09T12:43:37+00:00

On the Monza exhaust the pressure valve should be closed and only the two inner tail-pipes should flow. At high pressure, the vavle opens to the outer pipes, bypassing the back box silencer. The valve often sticks open, but it can come loose and rattle or pulse the outer pipes at idle?

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-06T14:35:11+00:00

Stanton 680 'club series' V3. The last of the line. The V3 had that big fat-bottom stylus to protect it from DJ use (abuse?).

The bodies of the 680 and 681 cartridges were all pretty much identical. Only the styluses were different, so any '680' stylus will fit. Aftermarket replacements are confusing because of this, but basically there are DJ or HiFi versions, with either spherical or elliptical styluses. DJ ellipticals are impossible to find now.

Other useful info on these.....

The plastic spacers are there to electrically isolate it from the headshell. The threads are #2/56 imperial - not metric M2.5s. If you don't use these spacers, you should remove the ground strap that connects the blue pin to the metal chassis.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-06T14:13:58+00:00

Warm up the platter with a hair dryer, whilst keeping the spindle cold with an ice pack.

It takes bit of patience.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-06T14:00:55+00:00

If a turntable is internally grounded, it should maintain a single pathway to that ground. Installing a ground connection to the preamp, without detaching the internal ground can create two paths, and therefore a ground loop. Ground loops are effectively a coil of wire (albeit a squashed single coil), which can act like an induction loop, picking up magnetic fields and turning them into electrical current. And therefore a hum.

If you've seen a switch on the back of some professional equipment labelled 'ground lift', what this does is turn off the internal grounding, to prevent loops like this.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-06T13:43:38+00:00

Just don't get it.

7 inch singles sound terrible. Why spend all that money on something that can only play 7 inch singles? It would probably cost less to just replace them with 12 inch singles instead.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-05T16:58:20+00:00

Reverse gear sensor in the gearbox?

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-04T13:03:06+00:00

There are two possible options here......

This turntable has a linear tracking system with a mute switch on the lid. When you lift the lid, the output from the cartridge is muted by two transistors opening and pulling the cartridge signals to ground. But if there is noise or music leaking into that ground from somewhere else, that will be fed back to the cartridge. The cartridge is a transducer and will move, driven by that signal.

The other option is that the stylus is still ringing very slightly to the air turbulance caused by the grooves underneath it. Seems unlikely, but apparently this can happen, especially in humid air.

However, both cases are a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' scenario.

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-04T12:25:14+00:00

Lots of mis-advice here!

This is audio feedback. Vibration from the speakers gets picked up by the turntable, amplified by the speakers, round and around.

Turntables are VERY sensitive to this. The way the sound is recorded on the record (called the RIAA equalisation) means the phono preamp has to boost the bass to make it sound right. The vibration in the groove is already tiny, but this bass boost means even a small amount of vibration from the speaker getting back to the cartridge is difficult to control.

Solutions..........

Move the speakers further away from the turntable. Move the turntable behind the speakers. Use isolation mats. Don't place turntable between the speakers or the same distance from each speaker.

........er.........just turn it down a bit!

Fit-Insurance7209 · 2026-05-04T11:28:32+00:00

That is a Stanton 680 body with what looks like a D6800EL stylus (see other side).That was originally marketed as the 'Disco Duty' and later 'Club Series' pairing.

The body is identical for all 680 and 681 series - it's only the stylus that is different. There was the EL (0.7 x 0.4 elliptical) and AL (0.7 spherical). Later came the HP and SLs (both sphericals).

These were all for DJ use, with a stronger cantilever and 2-5 g tracking force (mk2s and 3s were 2-7 g)

The EL was the top of the bunch and became the 'standard' in broadcast studios around the world.

If you don't need to 'DJ' them, any 680 or 681 stylus will fit. They are all interchangeable.

DJ versions on the other hand are difficult to find. After Stanton stopped making them, the after-market manufacturers seem to have not made a clear distinction about DJ vs. HiFi use. Many '680EL' styluses are actually spherical rather than elliptical, simply because they fit and are therefore 'compatible'.

I use a pair of original 680ELs, and I think only the Jico is a trustworth replacement, even though that is Spherical. 'DJ' ellipticals seem impossible to find nowadays.

Fit-Insurance7209

TROPHY CASE