One last little thing @cathovisor please thank your knowledgeable friend his/her help was invaluable.
One last little thing @cathovisor please thank your knowledgeable friend his/her help was invaluable.
Of course I will, Greg. Do keep us updated on your progress!
OK
I have just cut a couple of RCA connectors out of a dead VCR these bypass the existing connection when plugged in. I will mount them on the back through one of the vent holes and connect them between the record changer and the amp. This will allow the sledgehammer approach to co-exist with the cartridge upgrade without doing any physical damage to the unit.
It would also allow me to connect my Internet radio through the valve amp (now we are talking serious sacrilege please don't burn me at the stake. I was also toying with the idea of adding a Bluetooth connection powered off the 5V light rail and feeding the output into the amp but that would just be going way too far 😆 Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.)
Something you could do with that proposed mod you're planning is to add one of these external Chinese adaptors that provide FM radio reception along with USB/microSD/Bluetooth connectivity, and even have an auxiliary input on a 3.5mm jack. I'm hoping to build a couple of these for friends to go into the 'gram' socket of a typical valve radio.
I'm still tinkering about with the RGD 1046G3 radiogram.
A Garrard SP25 Mark II record deck has been installed. The output from the Shure pick-up is too low for use with the amplifier.
How about this phono pre-amplifier?
It was designed to use 12VDC for the heaters of the four ECC83 double-triodes.
Till Eulenspiegel.
@cathovisor I saw one similar on ebay the other day and that started me thinking about bluetooth.
Young people love their bluetooth boomboxes. As AM and FM radio disapears these ideas could be a way to actually keep these units usable into the future.
one thing I did do was add an internet radio via a Raspberry Pi to a mantle radio. I used a pot with the appropriate sized disc wrapped into the tuner string so to change the internet radio station you used the normal dial.
Only problem there is the Pi needs to be shutdown properly so it was dismantled waiting on a better idea.
One of my future projects is to do the same with an esspresif ESP32 which doesn't care and you can just power it off the lighting power rail with an appropriate Low Dropout power regulator. These have an 8 bit DAC which could then be fed into the amp of the unit with an appropriate voltage divider.
Now I am starting to understand electronics and valve tech a little better that project may resurface.
Ok everyone here is an update. Received my SC11M cartridge great price fast service. Also my "Turntable Stylus Force Scale Gauge Tester" 🙂 installed the cartridge taking note of right left positive and negative connections. The two cartridges have different pinouts.
These new testers max out at 5 grams so adjusting the weight spring was tricky until I came up with a solution. They come with a 5 gram test weight. So I simply tared the unit to the 5 grams Then i could set the tracking weight to 0.8 grams ie 5 + 0.8 should have a tracking weight just under 6 grams.
Results, Sade is playing happily in my bedroom. 🙂 What more could an old man ask for. Thanks heaps everyone It may not be a complete solution for all records but it is fantastic so far.
Well, that's good to hear (no pun intended!) - pleased to have played some small part in this.
