First Hi-Fi System

He has no memory on the speaker or cartridge but recalls Yamaha and Technics for the others so I started there. The Cornwalls being described as a live sound struck me as more of what I’m looking for.

 

Those look great too!

 

Awesome system! Do one of these every month and you're going to be in heaven:

1. $200 Kimber Kable 12VS speaker cable pair, and beyond that try not to get sucked into cable hype
2. $20 / pair new old stock Acoustic Research Pro Series II PR130 (3ft) / PR 131 (6ft) analog interconnects, on Ebay regularly
3. $15 / month Apple Music subscription, "the next generation of lossless sound is coming to subscribers June 2021 at no additional cost"
4. FREE library card to your regional public music collection (CDs, SACDs, Vinyl, you name it...)
5. >$200 some combination of media cabinet / audio rack / speaker stands for your gear
6. ~$100 used universal CD/DVD-A/SACD player with decent DAC (Oppo or Pioneer will do)
7. >$60 power conditioner with noise reduction and multiple filter banks (one each for analog, digital). start with ISOBAR or Furman
8. $25 Hubbell HBL5262 15A electrical receptacle. i'm not joking. also evaluate whether you have LED bulbs on the same circuit and consider halogen instead
9. >$500 subwoofer with built-in crossover that plays +/- 4 db from 34 Hz to below 20 Hz... with your Yamaha you need speaker level inputs. this was the biggest game changer for me
10. >$300 stereo processor. could be an iFi iTube2 tube buffer, a vintage White Instruments 4100 equalizer, a BBE pro-audio signal processor. this is where the fun starts
11. >$400 music server with decent DAC, and an Optical/TOSLINK input for your HDTV if possible. rip your friends CD collections.
12. $100 box set of your favorite artist

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Do all of this with respect for the significant other in your life. Let them know what's coming, and splurge on item #5 above so that it looks nice and hides your stuff

 

Nice going. You've probably scared him off

 

I would love to do that. I just moved to a smaller city. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there are any dealers in a couple hour radius. Might need to take a road trip.

 

Then you get potential reliability issues or frequency response problems due to the compound aging. Caps go bad, and old carbon resistors drift out of spec.

 

Yeah would be fun too

 

Nope. Just a noob to this world of unlimited options that tried to narrow it down based on memories from my dad and reading many posts on this forum since there there are no local shops for me to figure it out in person with.

 

Trying to avoid the rabbit hole of this hobby by keeping it simple but it’s probably inevitable based on my history with other hobbies. Apple Music is already in place and I found a vintage cabinet that my wife loves. I would be into adding a sub but she would really not love a big random black box sitting on the floor.

I intentionally left cables off of my post to avoid that debate.

 

Exactly the types of things that scared me away from my original vintage gear plan.

 

I think this makes 3 posts mentioning tubes for the Cornwall/Klipsch. Seems I need to investigate this further... Just when I was ready to pull the trigger.

 

No pressure, you should research integrated tube amps.
There are several reasons tubes with Klipsch have been mentioned. They're a horn speaker which can have a very detailed and extended presentation. The sonics of some SS amps aren't a good match for this. Tube amps are less linear and may offer better realism with such an efficient speaker.

 

What's your budget for the amp?

 

Trying to keep the overall budget at ~15k so currently looking at 5k for the s3000

 

I think you nailed it with your research and choices. Not that common! I’d take the victory lap with that rig and delete my account*

*after you updated with impressions and whether or not you should trust the sales guy about the power cord

(positioning and setup is everything…but you’ve probably already read about that)

 

I don’t have real expertise on it so the S3000 might be fine with an 0.5 low output cartridge on its own. However, based on the specs it seemed like a stretch and didn’t see a strong need to risk it.

I’m trying to keep my system as minimalist as possible for now but that could change as I go down the rabbit hole.

 

Actually, the specs show MC input sensitivity is 0.1 mV, so a gain of 66dB, which is probably a bit too much for a 0.5 mV cartridge and may even overload it on hot cuts. The Yamaha MC section is designed for very low output moving coil cartridges of 0.3 mV and below, and is specified with 50 ohm input impedance, so isn't a very good fit for the Hana EL.

So you're probably wise to think about a high output MC cart, or a MM cart that isn't very sensitive to the relatively high input capacitance on the Yamaha MM phono stage. That's another area where a separate phono stage can have the advantage, it can give you more freedom in cartridge selection. But yes, it adds complexity too.

 

Certainly looking into. Thank you for the advise.

These posts from Daedalus had me sold on the best of both worlds S3000 / Klipsch combo.

 

I don't wish to change your plan, you've done your research. I've read about the new Technics amps and they're designed to have a different sound signature.

I read that the Klipsch Cornwall IV are more refined than previous generations, so they may be fine since you have a large room. With a horn tweeter and midrange they should present very good detail and realism.
You should go for it, but try to audition the components. Here's my advise; you will need to acoustically treat your room. It's possible to do it tastefully, my listening room is also my living room. I don't have absorbion panels around the room, I have drapes on the windows, a tapestry hanging on the wall behind me, a large throw rug on the floor between the speakers and me.
I hope this works for you, this is way more than an entry level system.

 

FWIW I Run a AS2200 with Klipsch RB 5 oak Reference pair (year 1999) my Dads speakers and wowza. Great sound. I mean amazing. I am hooking them up again in my new home loft upstairs permanently when I set it up
Your AS3000 I bet will sound amazing with those Klipsch and the Yammies tend have a nice sound. Just right imo. You certainly will never run out of power with this combo

 

Oops, I previously wrote Technics amplifier. I know the AS3000 is a Yammy.

 

Like others here I don’t think the Yamaha is the best fit with those speakers. Tubes are great and you don’t need that much power.

Or somewhere in the middle are Luxman and Accuphase class A integrateds. The cheapest being the Luxman 550 which would have enough power and has a good phono stage. I know the Luxman 590’s phono stage works well with Hana ML - but not so well with the EL as it prefers higher loading. While the internal phono stage is good it is not flexible and you can’t change the loading.

 

The Hana EH is too light (5g) for the 1200G (as I found from bitter experience). Page 25 of the manual states the lightest cartridge applicable is 5.6g. The dealer fitted the cartridge anyway and "adjusted" the tracking weight to show the correct value, and the anti-skating kept pulling the the stylus off the start of the record!

If you do go this way, you will need a heavier headshell.

Rich

 

Lots of research but still pretty ignorant on this overall. I figured it was likely that I was missing something on how well this all might sound together and/or in my space that could change the plan.

I like how you think about acoustically treating a room with rugs, drapes, etc. It’s a new house that we have not moved into yet. I will heed your advice as we plan out the space.

 

Sounds like the kind of thing I would have been very frustrated trying to figure out. Thanks for the heads up!