$1000! How best spent?

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I have $1000 more or less. Please,if your cart costs more, don't laugh:).
I have a Leak stereo 20, rebuild with modern components but "original"
Technics 1200 with outboard power, as it was 110v and I needed 240v.
Ortofon red cart
A tetra 12ax7 pre amp
Kef speakers. Old ones. the ones with the b139. Duette I believe. Renovated tho
"Chinese interconnects"
20amp extension chord speaker wire..
Happy with the sound, well who really is, content maybe. It plays Pantera to Parsifal. How best to improve it on a budget? The bottom end is a little lacking at times.
Please take a moment and suggest how to spend the cash, I am a competent builder, with wood and electronics.
Thanks
 
First biggest improvment - even for free - is to be had by using the proper loading capacitance for your moving magnet cartridge.

Check what Ortofon recommends, subtract 100pF or so for the phono cable then you have the loading capacitance you should set at the phono input. Either replace the caps at the input with the optimum value ones or - better - make them switchable, such that you can finetune to your setup and taste.

With non-adjustable phono pres you'll find typically that these do not have the optimum value at the input, but mm-cartridges are very sensitive to that and I recommend from experience to stay within 50pF or so of the recommended value.

Otherwise the sound can be anything from boring, flat to overly shrill. Makes a big difference.

Hannes
 
i totaly agree with the loading comment.
also matching cartrage to arm.

i also though about air gap cap for loading. i asked the same thing, and a few guys answered and i learned allot. and got a link to a guy who has done just that.
if you look up threads i started youll see it.

if you mesure the cap and mark at 100/50pf intervals youll have a pretty good starting point.

have you tryied other cartrages? i have a red on my backup table a music hall and i have found it to be light in the low end.
infact my main has a sonus gold blue and i hate having to use the music hall.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions.. Thinking of a transmission line as I have some SEAS drivers from back in the day.... my favorite suggestion\
However, I have halved the recommended 47k resistor and made the turntable cable very short and it has rolled of the dog scaring brite stuff. Almost perfect now. It was a bit of an epiphany really. And it was cheap, so more vinyl I guess
Interesting tho that I might have spent money or undertaken labor to achieve what changing 47k to 47k paralleled (23.?K) and making the cable Very short achieved, maybe 15 minutes work? It has made a huge difference.
Thanks all for ur suggestions
 
Hi,

You should recap the x/o's pronto. 50 year old caps are not good.
Standard bipolar electrolytics are cheap from parts express.
Possibly use non polar polypropylene for smaller values.
Possibly use bi-polar and non-polar in parallel for bigger values.

http://www.kef.com/uploads/files/en/museum_pdf/60s/C_Series_1965.pdf

Can't find any details of the 7 element DN5 crossover.

Being 15 ohm well suited to older valve amplifiers, and quite
collectable, so other than recapping, perhaps rewiring, perhaps
better / new terminals, best left as standard as possible,
~ £400 worth depending on the condition.

(The 15 ohm drivers are very rare and TBH broken up into
parts, the individual drivers, and the crossovers, would
probably go for more than the complete speakers.)

rgds, sreten.
 
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