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Post by ant on Jan 17, 2017 11:16:34 GMT
Its the risks involved in running a bar that are scary, the potential for harm is always there with electricity. A fuse wont completely mitigate that but offers some protection. Just dont do it again
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Post by ant on Jan 17, 2017 10:33:59 GMT
A fuse doesnt care what its resistance is. It gets hot and melts when the current pulled through it gets to a certain point. The resistance isnt really relevant apart from the fact that electrically it will have a bearing on what the failure point is. The conductor in a fuse is designed to fail given certain conditions a 3a fuse will fail if a fault condition pulls 3a or more through it. It is a piece of material about 3/4 inches long thats all. A 3a fuse and a 13a fuse will have slightly different electrical characteristics as the 13a fuse will survive more current through it at 230v so is either thicker and the same material or is a different material. No material is a 100% conductor unless its superconducting so has no resistance. The kind of thing they use at cern in that particle accelerator. It stands to reason that one fuse will have differing characteristics to another if the conducting material is different. There is probably something measurably different about a 90 quid fuse. However to measure it you would have to know what to measure. Personally right this minute i wouldnt try a different fuse, i have better things to spend 90 quid on. However im sure that if i had money to blow and the inclination to spend it on such things then i would give one a go. But who am i it tell another what they should and shouldnt spend their money on? There is no 'thinking' you hear a difference, you either do or you dont. Wether its pschoacoustic is completely irrelevant. If mr jones hears a difference but mr smith doesnt, it doesnt mean one is right and one is wrong. It means both are happy as one has spent the money and got an improvement and the other has not spent the money they thought they would and will spend it on something else instead I am sceptical about most things but i wont project my opinion onto another as there is no reason that my opinion is any more relevant than theirs is. This fuse thing is a circular argument within the forum community with one side saying "you lot are mad" and the other saying " no we arent" It seems silly to be honest Do what you want, but for the sake of safety, please dont remove the fuses completely Cheers ant
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Post by ant on Jan 14, 2017 0:07:47 GMT
Remember a fuse is there for a reason. I could never advocate deleting them from the piece of equipment. I have seen what happens when there is an fault on a piece of equipment that had a 13a fuse instead of a 3a fuse. Taking them out completely is a bad idea The fuse is there to stop your house potentially burning down in the event of fault conditions. Spend 90 quid on a fuse, hell, spend a couple of hundred quid on them for all your equipment. The idea of defeating a safety device that is a requirement on any mains equipment seems to me to be taking things too far. Spend the money, risking a potential hazard for the sake of perceived improvements in a ruddy audio system is a step too far in my book
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Post by ant on Jan 10, 2017 14:28:24 GMT
I have a collaro conquest here awaiting restoration! Lovely thing it is too. I got the bug from me dad too, first ever system I had of any type was a technics slp s50 cd player, and 3020i and some jpw minimonitors Loved it to bits and it spiralled from there. I then bought a nad c340 with my first wages and got all the cast offs such as the linn index's he swapped for kef q55s, then the q55s. Then upgraded to a full musical fidelity x system, dug his old lp12 that he hated out from under the bed and moved out shortly after. Then went round all the houses and ended up where I am now. S'all good fun. Good job the missus is understanding, she bought me a yamaha pf800 turntable for my birthday once........
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Post by ant on Jan 8, 2017 10:22:41 GMT
I finished off a rather nice bottle of talisker last night, my Christmas present from my sister Generally I'm an islay fan. I had a bottle of blended a few years called big Pete, it was blended from islay whiskies and was very nice
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Post by ant on Jan 5, 2017 1:21:44 GMT
The local twats round here have for some reason started to tear arse around in volvo s60's. Really. There are 3 of them now. There is one knobhead with a focus St which has the volvo 5 pot t5 motor in it, 2 of the volvo's are t5's and the other is a d5. I live at the top of long steep hill, right on the top where it flattens out quite suddenly and it is quite a scary experience to come out of the front gate and to be able to hear a t5 screaming it's nuts off but not be able to see the car.
When i was their age I was thrashing around on a gsxr750, but not in residential areas. I would not have even considered doing so, I waited until I got onto the back lanes before opening the taps. I commuted to work on the bike in a morning and took the long way on the way home so had abit of respect for pedestrians and other road users. These silly sods have not
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Post by ant on Jan 4, 2017 10:27:16 GMT
My findings are that valve amps are a strange beast. The best are sublime, the worst are bloody awful. The problem with most valve amps is that they lack power supply. By this I mean that the psu is usually designed to give the basic voltage and current capacity that the circuit is designed for. The rule of thumb when speccing a mains tx is take the quiescent current and add abit to give your current capacity. The psu basically lacks headroom. treble doesn't require alot of current, bass does. Someone boots a kickdrum, there needs to be an instant spike of current drawn from the psu to produce this. A circuit will have a basic quiescent current requirement, this is the current it requires to sit there idling but not playing music. This may be something like 300ma for a push pull el34 that makes say 40wpc. The psu is usually specced around this figure plus abit in reserve. Problem is, that when music is playing, the psu needs to be able to produce spikes of current all over the place that are much more than the quiescent figure. It needs to be able for produce these spikes, and not bottom out because the capacitors in the psu have discharged, or haven't recharged sufficiently. There are 2 schools of thought on this. Firstly a psu that has sod all capacitance in it that can charge in a very fast time frame to generate the spike for the next bit of music, Or my preferred way, a brute force psu that has a hugely over specced mains tx capable of delivering 3 or 4 times the quiescent current, and huge capacitance ( within reason) that means the amp always has the current capacity on hand. In my opinion, Crap bass from a valve amp is down to the psu not being man enough. Hazy imaging and detail the same. While a limp psu is trying to deliver all its power into a kickdrum, there ain't enough left to deliver that cymbal crash properly. Its all in the power supply. You can throw as many bijou components at it as you like, but if the psu is lacking it won't solve the problem. But mains transformers and caps on the scale needed are expensive, hence why the really good commercial valve amps are so expensive. I have heard a diy pp el84 amp with a rediculous psu that could out slam many ss amps. Naim got it very right with the hi cap, super cap et al, they recognised that the psu is perhaps the most important thing. Its even more important with a valve amp, and unfortunately it can be the most expensive part of the design which is why it is skimped on. Look inside a big ss amp and there is usually a massive toroid and a great big bank of caps. The psu in good ones are designed not to bottom out as Ss devices are low voltage high current devices, whereas valves are high voltage low current devices. But just because they need relatively low current to operate, it doesn't mean they need low current capacity to play music. It really doesn't matter how big an output transformer is as long as it doesn't saturate, the output transformer needs to be precisely wound and specced to give the least distortion possible, and precision is expensive. but again, if the psu can't deliver, the output transformer can only work with what it's given. Cheers ant
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Post by ant on Dec 26, 2016 14:31:25 GMT
It's something I might look at in the future to do to the Philips cd160 I'm playing with atm. I don't want to bugger about too much with this one as its condition is very good, if i can pick up another i might have a play with it. I remember that the arcam delta 170.3 transport I used to have had a clock link via an optical cable so the transport clock and dac clock could be synced. That was using a black box 3 at the time. I can't remember wether it made any difference though, T'was a long time ago
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Post by ant on Dec 23, 2016 13:11:15 GMT
Ive a few things in the pipeline, improvements are a possibility from them. Firstly, do some work on the kt77 se amp I built a few years ago. It really needs a complete rebuild, its been buggered about with so much that internally it's a bit of a state. That's the nice thing about the fact that I designed and built it, I know what each individual part is for and can rebuild it easily. It will be time consuming though and time is the bit that is lacking. Secondly I'm going to rebuild the nuvistor phono stage i designed and built about 5 years ago. At the moment there is no shielding whatsoever from the case it is in, and it needs doing. Nothing wrong with the sound, it will be alot quieter in a new aluminium case. It will look a sight better and be alot safer too.
Also have a pass f5 coming soon to replace the pro amp I'm using as a stand in for the kt77 amp. Ought to be abit less uncouth than the pro amp which is rather pokey and quite fun to thrash, but abit grained. It has a charm of its own though!
Put the crossovers for the speakers in boxes rather than having them connected up via clip leads
Build myself a new passive pre that has some more inputs
Restore some of the collection of turntables I have, ten at last count.
Quite a list, the downside to building stuff for other folks is that my own stuff tends to get neglected somewhat..... Cheers ant
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Post by ant on Dec 20, 2016 22:40:57 GMT
Yep it has a coax output though it seems a shame to bypass the tda dac chip with the beresford I use for the mac mini. The overall condition of it is fantastic, there isn't a mark on it. Only thing it wants is a bit of lubrication on the transport top clamp as its abit squeaky after all these years I had a meridian mcd that was a lovely thing with the tda1540. My mother in law still has a Philips cd 303 that I covet. Borrowed it a few years ago and wanted to keep it!
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Post by ant on Dec 20, 2016 20:39:58 GMT
picked this up at the weekend philips cd160, part of a complete 80s midi system comprising of a marantz reciever, sony speakers, marantz tape deck and an acoustic solutions turntable. bought the lot for 25 quid, partly for the cd player, and partly because my 10 year old daughter wants a little music system for her bedroom. she has a penchant for muse and feeder....... not sure i will give her the turntable although she wants it, and i had a sony cdp somethingorother in a cupboard she can use for the cds. saw the model number, thought tda1541 and decided to have it. 80stastic!
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Post by ant on Dec 7, 2016 17:41:08 GMT
Shure m97xe and the audio technica at440mlb spring to mind, around 100 quid, about the limit I would spend on that particular deck. Either would be perfectly good on anything else you upgraded to in the future if you decided to.
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Post by ant on Dec 1, 2016 22:26:26 GMT
He ducked back down the alley with the roly poly little bat-faced girl
Paul simon
Think I did that a couple of times
And
There goes my hero he's ordinary
Foo fighters
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Post by ant on Dec 1, 2016 21:23:23 GMT
That is rather nice 125, I haven't had a suspended deck in my system for years since I sold on my yamaha pf800. Have a td 160 here with a busted arm, i must do something with it soon
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Post by ant on Dec 1, 2016 19:17:48 GMT
haha! i see your g99, and raise you my g99! well it was mine, its with its new owner now
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Post by ant on Dec 1, 2016 18:47:12 GMT
Looks great. Personally, I could never trust myself to use a deck that doesn't have a bit of plinth under the full length of the tonearm, for fear of catching it and damaging the cartridge, but I know there are plenty of people who go for the minimal plinth look. Nice job. See that's the beauty, i could just build one thats a different shape ;-) Cheers ant
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Post by ant on Dec 1, 2016 13:58:05 GMT
Another shot so the shape can be seen abit more clearly Playing abit of frankie
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Post by ant on Nov 30, 2016 22:34:49 GMT
Thanks guys, this one was a difficult build due to the problems the donor had, but perseverance paid off. Just wish I hadn't buggered the audio technica at-f7 cart up. The m97 is nice enough but i chose the at to go with this deck. The new m97 stylus hasn't many hours on it yet though so it will probably get better Cheers ant
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Post by ant on Nov 30, 2016 17:14:59 GMT
The demonstrator is now finished. last detail was clear wax polish for the plinth over the top of the teak oil used to darken the walnut and add some depth of colour. The wax finish gives the sheen and brings out all the grain. Had to wait a bit to let the oil dry and settle throughout the veneer before the polish was applied otherwise it can have weird effects on the wax. With this one, there are 2 deviations from the standard spec I was aiming for, I.e built from completely standard parts. Firstly, the bearing was completely shot so has been rebuilt with new oilite bushes which are standard, but a standard nylatron thrust pad was not available so its had a new pom one put in. The bearing had to be shimmed down to take into account the extra thickness of the pad. Secondly, the idler wheel was shot, had a warp on it so I replaced it with a new audiosilente cnc one. Reason being, that buying a second hand one was no guarantee that it would be any better, and a nos one was more expensive than the audiosilente one. Other than that, it is all built from stock lenco gl75 parts. Some are replacement parts including the motor which was seized solid ( i havent even attempted to get it apart yet) as the original condition of the donor deck was utterly terrible, it was infact a write off. Nobody in their right mind would have taken it on. But i wanted to see if it could be rescued. It was Cheers ant
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Post by ant on Nov 29, 2016 18:47:00 GMT
The brand was the reason I even bothered with it in the first place, I used one their cd transports for a couple of years, and was rather happy with it. That and the arcam delta 170.2 were the only ones I was entirely happy with. Ive had a soft spot for micromega stuff since then. Them and musical fidelity, which is why I've kept the xlps going as my go to phono stage when messing around with my own builds I didnt know they were even still going. It seems to be opening up nicely after about 2 hours use with the m97 in the modified rb251 on the lenco
Ive been able to listen to Peter Gabriels so without wincing, so that's a good start
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