Phono Transfer System

[gold]

Wayne Kirkwood made a post in the Circuits section. This is now a reality. If you have ever struggled to get clean playback from a lathe mounted tonearm this is your dream come true. Check out the thread here.

http://www.proaudiodesignforum.com/forum/php/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=753&p=8823#p8823

In getting this up and running I discovered that a D-Sub 15 fits perfectly as a replacement connector for the SME 3012. Those connectors are hard to come by. Most of them have seen better days. If you want to be able to screw lock the connectors then you will have to replace the stock connector mounting screws. They are Brittish thread, ugg. 4-40 standoffs will thread a few revolutions. It's enough for the standoffs to be secure but not strip the threads in case you want to go back to stock.

[opcode66]

Nice! A great contribution by Wayne! Nice build by Gold.

[ejemmons]

Agreed! Nice job, and better yet, your bench looks as bad as mine does - the sign of a mind hard at play ergo work...

[gold]

The bench usually looks more like this. I've since put two more benches at the back of the room. Now this bench is for electronics and the other benches are for metalwork. The machinists chest, drill bit cases and flex shaft rotary tool are on the other bench.

It looks like I will be offering one off builds once Wayne gets up to speed, for those who aren't builders.

[tubeactive]

Nice stuff ! Wayne's design and craft is definitely proven worthy. If anyone checks the original posts and original threads, (including comments with the original engineers involved !), amazingly the folks who tried state of the art FETs actually did not hear any benefits over choice op-amps. How do you describe the sound of the units ?

I see you have built or installed a dual mono PCB ? It looks like dual mono. How about separate power trannies for each channel ? Could you show the good people your power supply build, please ? Also, any estimate of pricing ? Best Regards !

[gold]

Wayne tried a FET input OPA2134 but found the bipolar input opamp was about 3dB quieter. I have no desire to do an opamp shuffle and see what happens.

The boards are not set up for dual mono. If you used two complete sets you could use one for left and another for right. Seems like overkill to me and I am not opposed to overkill. I built my console and it has central power supplies that use Condor open frame linear supplies. One thing I forgot to do in the unit is add extra filtering at the DC input. The PSU's send out regulated and filtered DC but I like to add filtering at each unit.

For a demo unit I'd just use a bog standard three terminal regulator circuit. I haven't tried any of the Jung style regulators or done much experimenting with different PSU topologies. One of these days I'll go down that rabbit hole.

No pricing estimates yet, but not cheap. I only do industrial strength. I plan on charging full price for my time. Wayne hasn't figured out how much he needs for assembled and tested boards. It will take me somewhere between four and six hours for me to make one up.

[gold]

I've had this up and running for a little while now. If you have a lathe you want this. By far the cleanest best phono playback I've ever had.