The Sound Of Vinyl

My pleasure Aaron!

Watch out with the styrene 45's though, the guy who set it up for me and I were curious about the comments about it on the SH forum, and we had a laugh when it basically ate the beginning of the Tim Finn 7" single, it was amazing how it basically changed the color of the grooves it played, and the hiss it left on them.

But I myself would not be have been that joyful if I had played any of my Madonna US promo styrene 45's. : P

I believe I only have styrenes by her, a couple Janet Jackson and Cyndi Lauper, the rest of my mini 7" singles collection are vinyl.

I can then guarantee an absolute new listening experience since you are also coming from a spherical Ortofon Concorde. Channel separation, clearer distinction of each sound itself, overall soundstage, beats it by far my friend.

And to my ear, it makes the sound quality gap between a 12" and a 7" vinyl a lot narrower, too. The difference was much more evident with the Concorde.

As a reference, I played a Paula Abdul "Cold Hearted" promo 45, and as I know you remember it has a lot of high frequencies, especially with the word "SSSnake".

Plays it beautifully for a 45, I could not listen to it with the Ortofon, it wrecked my ears and nerves ; )

I'm keeping the Ortofon anyway, if nothing else to play the styrenes (seldom as I do), or just for how cool it looks ; )

I say, go for the AT without hesitance : )

elcoleccionista wrote: Since you mention you have two microline styli, which ones do you have, and which one does not eat your styrenes?

The only one I have had that seemed to be safe on 99% of styrene was the Shure V15-VMR. Styli for this have started disappearing over the last year, so I'm guessing it'd be a tough one to find.

The other one I have is a 440ML (not MLa).

Edited by vanmeter

I just received and set up my AT-440MLa cartridge and stylus, and it sounds spectacular! I'm very grateful to Johann for suggesting it.

Now, I also dared to play a styrene 45 with it, but before doing so, I lowered the tracking weight from 1.8g to 1.4g, and I had no trouble at all. I tried about a half dozen styrene 45s, and they all played great.

Now, my other question, for anyone who owns a Technics 1200MK2 turntable, is how do you adjust the azimuth? Everything sounds great, but I'm getting about 2 to 3 dB lower volume in the left channel.

How can I tell if any given 45 is styrene?