The turntable

A good friend of mine recently invited me and my girlfriend to a vinyl market held in Nordkraft. While i didn’t have a turntable, I reckoned it shouldn’t hold us back from going anyway.

Upon arriving, I discover there is a lottery, where you can win a turntable. I have long wanted a turntable, but I have never gotten around buying one. Seeing the limited attendance, I figure the odds to be pretty good and I promptly enter and also tell the others to join. My girlfriend wasn’t really willing, because in her own words “She never wins anything anyway”.
Fast forward a couple of hours later, its time to draw the winner. We have all bought some vinyls and are just idly chattering when they announce the winner – my girlfriend.

I immediately start laughing while my girlfriend is just standing there, flabbergasted.

So now we have a nice new turntable.

The amplifier

My old amplifier was nearing the end of its life. It was starting to crap out with sound vanishing from one random channel and coming back again. That gets old really fast.
With our newly acquired turntable I also had another problem – I had no phono entrance on my amplifier. So that meant I either had to buy a separate phono amplifier or upgrade my amplifier. With the above mentioned problems in mind, I figured it was time for a new amplifier – I didn’t really want to repair it for several reasons. I bought it used, so I wasn’t willing to throw a lot of money after it. And if I did repair it, how long before something else would come up?

So I started looking around for a new amplifier. To be honest, I had actually been doing that for some months at this point.

I read tons of reviews, forum posts and compared countless specifications. Doing research on audio gear is kinda annoying, because there are very few empirical reviews. There’s so many variables with speakers, cables and CD-players / turntables. No two setups are exactly the same.

In the end I fell in love with Yamaha’s A-S1100 series and it’s analogue meters. I had been looking at its bigger brother, the 2100, but it was a tad above my price range. However while enquiring different retailers for the 1100, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. The 1100 was in backorder with an estimated 3-4 months of waiting time. Though they had the 2100 in stock which I could get for a very reasonable price. Do I have to tell I accepted the offer?

So now I have a nice new amplifier.

The setup

With my new amplifier, I started experimenting with my setup. I have always wanted to bi-wire my speakers, but my old amplifier lacked the necessary connections. The new one didn’t, so bi-wire it was. The turntable also got hooked up. Speaking of which, when I first listened to the turntable, it had a very muddy and warm sound. Initially I was disappointed but I gave it a chance and listened a bit to it. Then I started thinking and concluded that something must be wrong for it to sound like that. Fortunately I was correct and after I switched from MC (Moving Coil) to MM (Moving Magnet) the sound improved immensely immediately.

Compared to my old setup, there is a really noticeable difference in sound quality. Songs I thought I knew suddenly had better details and the soundscape is vastly improved. All in all, I’m quite happy with how it all turned it. If my girlfriend didn’t win that turntable, it might all have turned out very differently.