Is a stylus change worthwhile on a portable turntable?

That setup will be miles ahead of the nasty Crosley and Audio Technica LP60 players. Nice work!

 

Nice, thats the player I have. Im sure you will be pleased.

 

Change of plan - What Hi-Fi just rated the Q Acoustics 3020 speakers are best in price range.

I've also mumbled under my breath to the wife about it all and she just shook her head - which is her resigned acknowledgement of this is happening no matter what lol

 

Listen to both speakers and see what your ears like best with the music you enjoy. Since your system must make you happy. Enjoy thy music!

 

Good point!

I've to book into a listening session soon.

 

Fantastic!

 

Interesting stuff here. I'm not actually a vinyl fan as such - I just own a bunch of them from when that was all there was, plus a lot of the stuff I now buy - often fairly esoteric - comes as vinyl plus a download code (no CD option), which is sad - you get to buy the vinyl and just own it without ever necessarily playing it. To think it should come to this...

Anyway, portability is very useful for me - I owned a Sound Burger back in the day and wish I'd kept it - so I've been experimenting with a few of these Crosley-and equivalent (they're all rebadged OEM) players - used ones are so cheap on eBay that you can buy them just to torture them to death in various ways.

At the moment I'm experimenting with retrofit counterweights, replacement cartridges and so on - plus the things these guys propose for the range of PT01 variants is interesting:

Tutorials

Of course, all my problems would be solved if someone came up with an even slightly audiophile portable turntable. I'm not holding my breath.

 

Crosley already has several portable record players with an Audio-Technica magnetic cartridge and adjustable counterweight, such as the Collegiate:

 

Yes, I'm aware of this - it's on my 'maybe' list, but it's less portable than I'd like. I didn't know they had other portables with magnetic carts, though - can you point me at them?

My idea of portable is still this classic:



...so I'm tempted to try grafting a Bihari arm and preamp onto/into one of these and adding an internal battery pack:



...although the economics would be nonsensical, so I may just try wrenching a counterweighted tonearm plus cartridge off a discarded deck and adding that instead.

 

If you like the Sound Burger-type design, the original version of the Crosley Revolution, model CR6002A, also has a magnetic cartridge. But unfortunately Crosley replaced it with a cheapened-out ceramic cartridge version of the Revolution, the CR6020A. The easy way to tell the difference between them is that the good one has a clear window in the lid, while the bad one does not.

Good:



Bad:

 

Thanks so much for this - exactly what I need - and I just found one on Amazon.com and bought it at what was a sensible price even with shipping to the UK. You have my undying gratitude. I'll continue to experiment with the nasty cheapies just for the fun of it: if nothing else, they have a future in this kind of thing:



Speaking of YouTube, I've found your uploads there very useful - thanks for those, also.

I'd not really noted that Crosley had started with a design that seems to be closer to the original Burger - so let's see if it serves me as I hope it will!