Why does my phono preamp measure well but sound bad?

[John Hope]

Peranders: your Avatar is a type of succulent that grows in the Karoo in my old home, South Africa. We call it 'Olifant Se Poot' or 'Elephant's foot'. I have one in my cactus collection at home. They should be 'flash flooded' very occasionally; if you water them too often, they die. A pretty flower comes out of the slit in the middle, once in a while, and they 'moult' and slough off their outer skin every now and again.

Aquarium: Thanks for the link. Yes, my B&O MMC3 dates back to 1985. The turntable is a 2000 model SoundLab Belt Drive, which is a Chinese Copy of a Stanton Pro table very popular with disco DJs. The arm is an S-shaped chromed unit with adjustable counterweight and a spring-based anti-skate. (Ugh) It's probably all very run-of-the-mill to a proper vinyl enthusiast.
My objective is to know whether my amp's RIAA is good, I don't intend to start getting seriously into vinyl (I wouldn't get into vinyl without getting into valve amps as well ).
I'm more or less convinced now that I was being 'unjustly subjective', but I will make plans soon to try the amp out on someone else's state-of-the-art turntable +cartridge + record.

Prior to this Chinese Stanton, I had a B&O TX with parallel arm, from whence the MMC3 cartridge came. This B&O turntable begat an irritating fault, in that for the first 5 minutes of any session of use, the arm refused to stay down on the record and kept popping up. If one held down the play button for about a minute, it would behave itself, and I used to stick it down with duct tape. I disected that turntable time after time and eventually replaced every single one of the cheap and nasty electronic components they used in it, but the fault remained.

So one day I begat a great rage, removed the cartridge and smashed the turntable into bits with a sledgehammer.

Thanks all


John

[Upupa Epops]

Butler's front end have now also AD 8066, which is excelent device. Isn't any reason for bad sound of your preamp, it is half passive RIAA correction, which sound good. Reason will be somewhere else .

[7N7]

Good man!

You have my total support and sympathy; I used a four-pound club hammer to demolish a video tape machine (I have had four and not one will play a pre-recorded tape without problems).

I had a brand new Epson printer: this refused to work so I simply threw it across the room whence it exploded into pieces: most satisfying.

I did not learn my lesson, because I bought another Epson (a more expensive one). this worked for about three months. Then I simply jumped up and down on the bloody thing.

I now have an HP printer, so far, so good...

7N7

[John Hope]

Hi 7N7

I think I will go to engineering humour and list all the equipment I've 'punished' over the years.

John

[peranders]

Originally posted by John Hope
Peranders: your Avatar is a type of succulent that grows in the Karoo in my old home, South Africa. We call it 'Olifant Se Poot' or 'Elephant's foot'. I have one in my cactus collection at home. They should be 'flash flooded' very occasionally; if you water them too often, they die. A pretty flower comes out of the slit in the middle, once in a while, and they 'moult' and slough off their outer skin every now and again.

Lithops Optica Rubra C289

You sure are right, kill them with water is easy but give them to a person who can't handle catci because of too litlle watering. My neighbour is a hopeless case in having flowers including cacti but his Lithops are very nice! He got them from me.

Sorry, back to the topic.