Koss Totem Mani-2 User Manual

Page 14

ee A

may now, therefore, make sense. Or it

may not. It’s your choice which horse to

bet on.

A true test would require having two

LP-12’s that are absolutely identical,

getting one of them modified, and then

having both properly adjusted by some-

one who didn’t have a vested interest in

the outcome. It’s not the sort of demo

any store is likely to offer.

I recently wrote to you questioning if I

needed to have my speakers connected to my

tube amp even if I was listening to it via the

headphones. You expected that my headphones

would provide sufficient load on the amp, and

that the speakers did not need to be connected.

But I expect that one day I will turn on the

amp and will have forgotten to either attach

the speakers or the headphones, and then…

So, I would like to make a pair of 8 ohm

resistors. Can this be done easily from a pair

of speaker binding post soldered up to a 8 ohm

resistors, or is it more complicated than that?

If it is a DIY project, how do I do it? I don’t

trust the guy at The Source.

Tim Leeney

GEORGETOWN, ON

We’re not sure why you want those 8

ohm resistors, Tim. You can’t leave them

connected all the time, and the danger

remains that you might turn on the

amplifier when none of the loads is con-

nected: speakers, phones or resistors.

That said, we can understand why

you’re wary of the people at The Source

(full name, for the benefit of non-Cana-

dians, is The Source by Circuit City, the

sign affixed to what used to be Radio

Shack stores). The resistors you’re likely

to find there have a power rating of a

quarter watt, and we’re being optimis-

tic. Put any amount of power into one,

and…poof! Followed by possibly another

poof from a tube in your amplifier.

You’ll need a power resistor from an

electronics supply house, and you may

have to put several resistors together to

get the rating you need. When we made

up the dummy load we use in amplifier

tests, we purchased three large precision

24 ohm resistors and connected them in

parallel (24 divided by 3 is 8). If we had

found 2 ohm resistors, we could have

wired four of them in series (four times

2 ohms is 8).

I just replaced my aging Dual turntable

with a Goldring GR2. I also replaced my

Rotel RQ970 with an ASL Phono LUX

DT. The Dual had a Grado Green cartridge

with a 5 mV output. The GR2 uses the

Goldring 1012GX, with a 6.5 mV output.

The ASL phono stage has 41 dB of gain. Is

this combination too much gain? I don’t know

the gain on the Rotel, but with my old combo

I had to turn up the volume much more to

get an equivalent output level (as CD). The

current Goldring/ASL combo is at least the

same, but probably slightly more than what

I get from most CD’s.

What are the drawbacks of this combo?

Should I be looking for a lower gain phono

preamp, or should I stop worrying and enjoy

the music?

Tim Leeney

GEORGETOWN, ON

We suggest enjoying the music, Tim.

It’s normal to hear some hiss when you

turn up the volume on a phono stage. A

worse sign would be hum that is louder

than the hiss. The output voltage from

even a moving magnet phono pickup is

a thousand times lower than that from a

CD player or other component. What’s

important is that the noise not be notice-

able from listening position even in a

quiet room.

The output difference between the

Grado and Goldring cartridges is not

significant, a mere 2.3 dB. Even so, it

could be accounted for merely by dif-

ferences in testing methods of the two

companies. Those figures are what are

called “nominal output.” Translation:

well, we had to say something.

ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine