Equipment Recommendations - The Home For New System and Upgrade Advice

HiFi Guy said:
If your amp is hesitating putting out power to one channel, then the power supply (likely the caps) are on the way out.

“Serviced” means many different things to different people. I’ll give you a couple of examples:

More years ago than I care to think about,
my first “real” job was managing a shop that did repairs and bought and sold used gear on the side. All of the gear was “checked out” by me. Does it work? Does it look good? Yes? Does it have issue- like noisy controls? No problem. I’d open it up, and hit it with some tuner cleaner. Problem solved. We’d sell our gear as “professionally inspected” with a 90 day guarantee. Would I accept a piece of gear like your Sansui? No. We’d have to run it through the shop. That would kill my profit margin.

Years later, I found myself in sales and finance for a VW dealership. We sold Factory Certified used VWs. To the public, that means the best of the best, right? Nope. The cars would have to fall into age/mileage requirements. The dealer paid for a warranty from VW. Shazam! It’s certified. So that 100 point check? We’d check the oil. If it was clean on the dipstick, it’s good to go. If not, we’d change the oil. Of course, a detail. The joke when you bought the car (besides the $3000 you paid for a $300 certification) was “Two down, 98 to go.”

There are good shops and good dealerships- ask me about the $5000 of repairs my dealership just did on my Alfa under warranty- with a free Alfa loaner. But you have to have some understanding of what you are dealing with. Most people don’t.

These days, I’m not fond of most vintage gear. The prices have gotten ridiculous. I’d recommend you buy a NAD 326BEE V2 to replace your Sansui. That’s where I’d start. I’d not spend the money to properly bring the Sansui up to snuff.
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Great, thanks for all the advice guys.

Change of plans though: before I get a new integrated amp and/or phono stage, I’ll have to get a new stylus for my Ortofon OM cartridge because my wife accidentally bent the stylus the other day.

Any advice on a stylus? I had an aftermarket shibata from turntableneedles which I enjoyed but they’ve since increased their price from $160 to $185 and with the weak Canadian dollar, I’m considering other options for a replacement.

I can get an OM20 for $229 CAD (about $170 USD) or an OM30 for $350 CAD (about $260 USD) with free shipping and no duty but I’m wondering if the OM30 is overkill for my table (Debut III).

My shibata sounded good and pretty much eliminated any IGD when compared to my OM5e so I’m hoping the OM20 or OM30 will do the same.

Thoughts?

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neuorder said:
Great, thanks for all the advice guys.

Change of plans though: before I get a new integrated amp and/or phono stage, I’ll have to get a new stylus for my Ortofon OM cartridge because my wife accidentally bent the stylus the other day.

Any advice on a stylus? I had an aftermarket shibata from turntableneedles which I enjoyed but they’ve since increased their price from $160 to $185 and with the weak Canadian dollar, I’m considering other options for a replacement.

I can get an OM20 for $229 CAD (about $170 USD) or an OM30 for $350 CAD (about $260 USD) with free shipping and no duty but I’m wondering if the OM30 is overkill for my table (Debut III).

My shibata sounded good and pretty much eliminated any IGD when compared to my OM5e so I’m hoping the OM20 or OM30 will do the same.

Thoughts?

View attachment 50650
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Ouch. The OM20 is perfect. The OM30 is overkill.
 
Does anyone have thoughts or know more about Cayin Tube Amps? They're Chinese but seem to have a presence here in Germany and they seem to receive strong recommendations from the HiFi publications here.
 
Joe Mac said:
At 9w a channel that’s a pretty low powered amp. Are you running efficient enough speakers for a low power tube amp?
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HiFi Guy said:
What speakers do you have? That amp is only 9 watts per channel.
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Speakers would be on the list of things to upgrade in which cases. Any recommendations?

Is it good to pick your speakers based on this amp or just scrap the idea altogether and go for a better amp that's more versatile?
 
uvwxVinyl said:
Speakers would be on the list of things to upgrade in which cases. Any recommendations?

Is it good to pick your speakers based on this amp or just scrap the idea altogether and go for a better amp that's more versatile?
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If you’re planning a tube amp they’re going to be lower voltage that most solid state anyway plus higher efficiency speakers tend to be more versatile anyway, they’ll work happily with your current amp and if you go forward to tube will give you more flexibility to go for lower powered options. I’d get the speakers first and match the amp to them.

Stateside it seems to be Klipsch and Zu that our forum friends like and in Europe Tannoy do lines of well regarded speakers that are more efficient. They aren’t always the cheapest though, particularly some of those gorgeous Tannoy Heritage models. I’m sure there will be more make/model suggestions from the gallery! Be looking at an efficiency of at least 90dB, and probably higher for the very low output ones. for tube amps.
 
uvwxVinyl said:
Speakers would be on the list of things to upgrade in which cases. Any recommendations?

Is it good to pick your speakers based on this amp or just scrap the idea altogether and go for a better amp that's more versatile?
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In an ideal world where everyone has money and is really good at saving and being patient, I think buying speakers and amps together is best. But that's just not reality for most people (myself included). As someone who's run a 10W amp before, it's limiting on the type of speakers you can work with, but can be fantastic when it's paired correctly. I also like Joe's 90db estimate, I'd agree with that as a minimum efficiency. Really 93db would probably be best if you have a larger room.

But if your speakers are still up in the air, I wouldn't go with a 9w amp as your primary. It's going to greatly limit your speaker selection. Even when I run my amp in 20w it can be run out of juice with some speakers. But when I was running my 90db JBLs with 10W, I believe that's about as good as those speakers could possibly sound.
 
displayname said:
In an ideal world where everyone has money and is really good at saving and being patient, I think buying speakers and amps together is best. But that's just not reality for most people (myself included). As someone who's run a 10W amp before, it's limiting on the type of speakers you can work with, but can be fantastic when it's paired correctly. I also like Joe's 90db estimate, I'd agree with that as a minimum efficiency. Really 93db would probably be best if you have a larger room.

But if your speakers are still up in the air, I wouldn't go with a 9w amp as your primary. It's going to greatly limit your speaker selection. Even when I run my amp in 20w it can be run out of juice with some speakers. But when I was running my 90db JBLs with 10W, I believe that's about as good as those speakers could possibly sound.
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@uvwxVinyl My speakers would match perfectly well with a 9 watt amp, and I wouldn’t go that low.
 
whatcha all think of the nagaoka MP110.. seeing hivinyws praise is so much and saying its certainly worth even more than those higher quality cartridge and more enjoyable than a grado green and goldring. so i wondered what you all think.. i will go to a hifi shop in the future but i wanted to know the stance
 
duke86fan said:
whatcha all think of the nagaoka MP110.. seeing hivinyws praise is so much and saying its certainly worth even more than those higher quality cartridge and more enjoyable than a grado green and goldring. so i wondered what you all think.. i will go to a hifi shop in the future but i wanted to know the stance
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I've the 200 and it's immense. Granted it's twice the price of the 110 but if the 110 is half the cartridge then it's going to be the bargain cart out there.
 
Rowan said:
I've the 200 and it's immense. Granted it's twice the price of the 110 but if the 110 is half the cartridge then it's going to be the bargain cart out there.
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i just wondered because of figuring out what would be a good upgrade from the black.. and hivi said that the best of the even more expensive ones that the grado red and ortofon blue were only a SLIGHT upgrade from the 110
 
so it seems i either upgrade to a grado red (or gold if i somehow get gold money), a nagaoka, or an audiotechnica.. at least thats whats commonly heard around here.

since i want the between 100 and 200 dollar price range.. or is a bigger jump a better idea for going from a grado black
 
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Friends, I currently have a Vincent Pho-8 pre-amp with my Technics 1200 mkII, Grado Gold 2 and Klipsch RP 150M. I was entertaining the idea of swapping the Vincent with a tube pre-amp.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Stay put?
 
gafacaode said:
Friends, I currently have a Vincent Pho-8 pre-amp with my Technics 1200 mkII, Grado Gold 2 and Klipsch RP 150M. I was entertaining the idea of swapping the Vincent with a tube pre-amp.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Stay put?
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If depends on budget. A fully tube phono stage, as opposed to a phono stage with tubes just to colour the output, will not come cheap. What’s amp is feeding the klipsch? My instinct is that an amp/speaker upgrade may be a bigger jump, the pho8 is a good phono stage.
 
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