Wow! Now, being a technophobe I’m REALLY glad I never bought one of those!!! 
1 Like
It is also why (being an engineer, and impoverished) I never even considered buying one of them. I was impressed by the cunning ingenuity. However, I think they were inventing unnecessary boxes to tick for the sales brochure.
And I seem to remember it is not digital, just plain old analogue servos with just enough dead zone to prevent hunting.
I’ve been trying to find another unbelievably expensive deck with a mag-lev parallel tracking arm that came out a few years later, I’m beginning to think I imagined it, but I’m sure I can remember the rep trying to persuade us to buy some for work. (We bought more conventional Technics SL1200 instead.) Mag-lev eliminated the precision-ground rails and nylon rollers in the B&O 4000 that always collected dust when some over-enthusiastic owner made the mistake of polishing them, instead of merely using isopropyl to remove all traces of anything.
No, you’re not imagining things Richard, there was a B & O deck with parallel tracking, a guy at work bought one (1972 Beogram 4000?) he also had one of their tape (Cassette?) players that ran the tape backwards and forward to measure the stretch/bias before use. B & O and Philips always seemed to go out on their own with audio and video stuff and therefore failed to make inroads into the mass markets and financial success for the products.
2 Likes
Richard, I’d forgotten previously but I seem to remember there was a T/T (can’t remember the make) with a p/u that was driven across a wide, thick parallel arm that lay over the deck, is that what you were thinking of? I remember thinking that the idea of a p/u being “driven” across a disc just seemed wrong somehow,
Been out on a retro shopping trip. More on that in a bit 
sorry Mike, I might have bust the budget this time regarding hifi and related stuff !Anyway, these arrived to go on the amplifier end of the Chord speaker cables I recently got.
Already have the 4mm versions on the speaker ends
Barrie
1 Like
Right, on to the main event! I’ve just been and collected my most recent purchase. A collection of 10" 78rpm records, 1950’s mainly. Here is the content list;
Only showing the ‘A’ sides. They all need a good clean but I think there might be one or two rarer ones amongst them i need to get a 78 stylus for one of the carts, a lot of elbow grease and then test play them all:+1:
If anyone knows anything about any of the titles, comments would be appreciated. I know of quite a few of the artists Les Paul/Mary Ford, Frank, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Eartha Kitt etc.
They came in this '50’s case.
Barrie
1 Like
I’ve got one of these but it doesn’t seem to work anymore. Needs fettling but not got the knowledge to do so and no one locally seems to be interested in sorting it.
New in 1980 https://zstereo.co.uk/2013/11/13/pioneer-pl-l1000/
1 Like
Some popular classics in there.
Obviously a prized collection, if kept in numbered slots. I would expect the condition to be good.
My Mum and Dad would each have liked some of those and hated others, not necessarily the same choices either!
1 Like
Barrie, do the pretty shells on those ‘ends’ connect to the insides, in other words are the silver bits you touch live with the audio?
If so beware of inadvertent shorts to each other and other metalwork.
Or maybe the anodising is enough to insulate them, but I would not count on it.
I would consider adding some clear heat-shrink to sleeve them if they are live, especially if you use them with your meaty mono-blocks. (I’m guessing at the size of your ‘ends’, this stuff will shrink down to approx 7mm inside dia.)
1 Like
Hi Richard, I’ve used these or similar, for quite sometime and not considered it? Not had any issues (yet).
I suppose its no worse than the bare wire connections that they are replacing. The pin is rigid and should help in guiding it into the bare wire connectors on the rear of the amp.
The pin and its insert in the shroud are metal and must be conductive, the outer shroud is alloy, not tested for conductivity. Good shout on the heat shrink sleeves
Just read this review on Amazon.
“DANGER Astonishingly bad design for connecting Speakers to or from Amps with spring terminals. Which seems to be the only thing this could be used for. beware THE INNER CONDUCTOR IS NOT INSULATED from the Aluminium sleeve. Which required me to pay for a length of heatshrink to prevent them from shorting to each other. Even If they could push flush to the terminal I simply couldn’t get why you would risk this occurring”
Now, where’s my heat shrink?
Barrie
1 Like
Wow Barrie! There’s some absolute crackers there, ! have a few of those '78’s in my collection. Wonderful stuff, and if there isn’t too much surface noise you should be able to hear there sheer “depth” of sound compared with a 33.3rpm LP, and you can forget compressed digital downloads they are so “thin” viz a viz a good analogue recording. Yes! Yes!! Yes!!! 
1 Like
Thanks Roger, haven’t got a stylus yet but will dig through my various carts and see what might be an economical replacement stylus across the makes. Only for testing the records, if they play OK, I can invest in something more suitable
Barrie
1 Like
Need to get stuck in and do some cleaning on the new 78 collection. Also, over 60% of them don’t even have a dust jacket, just sat in between the dividers in the old case they came with. So, I’m having a go at making my own cleaning solution!
The ingredients I’ve purchased are;
99.9% pure isopropyl alcohol
De ionised water
Dishwasher rinse aid
Plus some of Mrs B’s liquid soap!
From the records I’ve pulled out of the case so far, they are very dirty and I’m sure will benefit from some TLC. Somewhere, in the loft, I have a stack of 10” 78’s (nothing of interest) so might dig them out and see how many have dust jackets that I can re use.
I’ve also found loads of them on eBay for sale, as well as new plain card ones, so that’s an option too! I still need a 78 rpm stylus or cartridge/stylus combo, easiest might be a replacement stylus for the Audio Technica VM95 cartridge as that shouldn’t affect tone arm balance or other settings and is easy to swap out
Barrie
Beware of over-cleaning them.
They are made with shellac, which can be dissolved in alcohol!
See the wiki on 78s where it talks about 78rpm materials.
Just use a damp microfibre velvet cloth.
1 Like
I did have my reservations on the use of it Richard. I’ve read a few articles and there does seem to be differences of opinion on the subject. My thoughts were to use a diluted amount mixed with the deionised water plus dish soap (20/80 possibly) and the rinse aid mixed with more deionised water to neutralise, avoidIng leaving anything on the record surface. Appreciate the heads up, requires more research I think. If I cannot use it on the shellac records, it may still be suitable for deep cleaning my vinyl. Having said that, there are also different camps on that as well! At the very least, I will have some hand sanitiser to use! 
Barrie
Nothing to do with any of the previous posts.
Just spotted a bit of Denon AV socket p0rn on Facebook.
2 Likes
Looks like an old telephone switchboard to me!
2 Likes
I’ve got an Onkyo one of these. All it’s used for now is to take a signal from my virgin box and power a centre speaker and send a line level signal to my stereo amp. What a waste…
That is right on the cusp of everything A/V changing from S-Video to digital. It has surround sound and digital audio via optical or SPDIF but not yet HDMI.
With the R&D involved in getting something that complex stable and hifi, and then the manufacturing costs, it must have made Denon quite a big loss when the market changed almost overnight in 2004 with the advent of HDMI making everything so simple.
That is the sort of thing I might have lusted after in the late 1990s, but more likely custom made with fewer connections and facilities because I could not afford to buy it, nor had the space for it…
I mapped out a domestic ‘mixer’ design in the mid 1980s for something entirely analogue stereo and with almost as many sources and tape I/O destinations (no surround nor video), but with my job changes, coming off shift, and a growing family it never happened.
Then a burglary on 22nd Dec 2006 took all my crucial Hi8 video kit, so that forced a change to HDMI and consequently three-quarters of my hifi/video wiring vanished from the living room in just one January afternoon.
Following on from advice freely given by our resident technical guru AKA Richardfx, I have heat shrunk the bodies of the new 2mm banana connectors!
I didn’t want to cover them completely as this would hide the colour identifiers. I hope that’s sufficient. Had the heat shrink already in various sizes, I used 10mm x 80mm size which was perfect and two lengths cut down, did all eight plugs
Thanks again Richard. I would have quite happily used them as they were and might have caused serious damage to my aging equipment!
Barrie
1 Like