Shiny brand new second hand things in my system today V1.2

Supposed to be nice, any thoughts on it?

No, not in so far I haven’t plugged anything in to it yet!

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No I haven’t
Should get round to it sometime

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So plugged in and playing. The things this is feeding are my streamer, DAC, phono stage, and preamp (sort of as it runs off battery in its highest SQ mode).

So far listening to digital it seems pretty good to my ears. I’ve got some nice hi res stuff and that’s sounded super clear and dynamic.

Vinyl in a bit.

Can’t say much more than that until I play for a few days and then plug it all into the wall instead and see what the difference is.

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followed up your reco. Tweeters were blown but I replaced them with Diamond 4, which I will assume are identical. Sound decent enough hanging off the Denon 860 and the Audiolab 8000a. Now ready to be condescended to by hifi pundits suggesting an upgrade path. If I can fiddle the space, have a Systemdek II biscuit tin for added Eightiesness.

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Not mine but a Luxman L-85V I’m checking over for Matt. Seems only to have needed a bit of contact cleaner on some switches. Functions well and sounds pretty good.


Bit of a beast inside (for an integrated)

Has a nice rosewood sleeve I haven’t refitted yet.

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Does the little light above the volume come on?
I presume that is the power on or off light.

Couldn’t see if it was on or not.

No it doesn’t come on on this sample. It’s accessible from the rear so it wouldn’t be that difficult to replace.

:+1:

It’s funny when you look at these old things and consider what it would cost for a cottage hifi maker to produce today - This thing has faff options galore, when it wasn’t crackling it actually sounded half promising

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Lovely switches. Purposeful, like.

I’m a sucker for a shiny faceplate and a host of high quality superfluous knobs.

Ooh er missus (etc)

Thought it better to stay away from the knob angle.

Probably wise.

Wth standard PCM it is at least adequate, someone with golden ears who ignored measurements would probably think in error that it was better for some reason despite bits being bits. However, no DoP shenanigans so I may need to get another pi to do DSD when needed.

Henley Designs sent me the details of the connector I need, so I’ve ordered one.

Unfortunately, the age of the amp and the fact that MF has new owners since it was designed means there are no wiring diagrams available.

The 5 pin connector Alan sent me uses all the internal wires except the black one. I wonder what the odds are that the six pin connector has the same wiring scheme but with the black wire connected to the sixth pin?

Simplest way forward is to find an X-T100 owner and get them to peer at the wiring in the connector.

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I’ve been listening to vinyl every night since I stuck the new phono stage and MC cart into the set up and I can honestly say that this is far and away the best sound I’ve ever had in any system I’ve owned. I genuinely want to thank you lot for guiding me along the path of rightousness to a happy Spacehopper.

The Heko Direkts were the first piece of the jigsaw and unanimous praise from you lot made that an easy decision but Chris @thebiglebowski recommending an EL84 amp for them was the clincher . :ok_hand:

The new cart and phono stage were a bit of a leap of faith but feck me has it paid off big time. I have been thinking about upgrading the Turn 5 deck at some point but tbh it’s sounding so good I might just try and get another one for mono duties and stick to buying more albums.

Happy days.

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Buy more records. The concept of enough does not apply. El84s are the biz if you don’t need too many watts.

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Sounds like a truly great result Al - really pleased for you :star_struck: :heart_eyes: :sunglasses:

One of the best sounding systems I ever owned used much the same ingredients.

Which EL84s are you using in there?

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Another :+1: for EL84 and Direkts. A dream combo :rainbow:

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