Finally Added TT to Living Room System

When I moved from my NYC apartment to Candlewood Lake in Danbury, CT. I purchased some vintage Pioneer components for the Living Room, mainly for entertaining. My main system is downstairs in my Media Room for serious listening so I was mostly interested in getting the best sound for not too much money (relatively speaking) and I wanted a vintage system for good value and also to go with my Mid-Century Modern décor. I got a Pioneer SA-9900 integrated amp, a TX-9500 II Tuner and a CT-F950 cassette deck (a little later vintage than the other components because I wanted the ability to play metal tapes recorded on my Dragon).

To keep my wife happy, I wanted to get small, attractive speakers that sounded good, so I went with B&W Nautilus 805s.

I've been enjoying the system for the last year or so, but decided to break down and add a vintage TT. To keep true to the vintage Pioneer theme, I got a PL-550 TT. I mounted a Dynavector DV-20X MC Cart through a Hagerman SUT into the SA-9900 phono stage.

I was very pleasantly surprised by how good it sounds!

Now for some vintage Hi-Fi eye candy:


The TT:




The Step-up Transformer:



I am very pleased with the system both looks and sound wise.

 

Looks good!

 

It costs a lot of money to find a new TT to outperform many vintage TTs.

 

Tasty!!

 

That is a great looking system!

 

I like your system, looks really nice. I have a bunch of mismatched gear but its favorites from past years of collecting and bargain shopping. My current turntable looks like a BSR from the 70's but the sound is Phenomenal, it was also my first TT. I tried to upgrade a couple times with different TT's but I couldn't swap my cart over because the Panasonic is a Strain gauge and takes a special preamp so I just keep rolling with it.

 

With all that nice silver, you should have got a PL-630.

 

Awesome. And beautiful gear. I have a very similar system in my basement. But with a PL-L100 table.

 

Nicely done!

 

Very nice! And looks and no doubt sounds better than a lot of folks' primary systems! Those Nautlus 805s are seriously excellent speakers, and I'll bet combining them with vintage Pioneer amplification makes for a very interesting combo.

 

Very nice. Vintage is cool. I got back into vinyl recently and at first picked up a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon table which I quickly swapped out for a better built, cooler Denon DP-60L and haven’t looked back.

 

That's a gorgeous looking turntable---I love the wood plinth. Well done!!

 

Thanks for all the kind words! I bought a cheap Chinese hybrid tube phono stage- a Yaqin MS-23B. It sounded really good but hums like crazy. A gentleman by the name of Les Carpenter has posted detailed instructions for modding it to be an all tube phono stage along the lines of the British WAD phono stage. I have purchased all the parts to do the mod, but the Pioneer stage sounds really good, so I have not been in a hurry to do the mod.

The mod is discussed on this forum here.

Now that the Holidays are over, I will be starting on this soon. I will report back on hw it goes.

 

very unique match you have! congrats.
I am putting together a Pioneers TX-9500, SA-9900 Amp and CT-F8282. all with wood cases of course, trying to stay around the same year and physical size.
Can someone let me know if this is a good match ? Thanks.

 

I can vouch for the TX-9500 and SA-9900 being a good match, but am not familiar with the cassette deck, but it should work well. That's probably closer to the vintage of the rest of my Pioneer gear, but I needed to be able to play metal tapes, so I got a later model. I make my own tapes on a Nakamichi Dragon using metal tapes.

 

Beautiful gear. Bet it sounds great. I love that vintage Pioneer look.

 

I like the vintage TTs. I have a Luxman PD-272 and bought a Pioneer PL7 for my GF. PL7 is huge bang for buck TT that rarely fails after all these years of service.