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Consider the power supply instead

Posted by texanater (A) on April 26, 2007 at 10:54:42

In Reply to: Re: Definitely the Technics posted by waters on April 25, 2007 at 22:40:52:

I don't own the KAB powersupply so I'm not speaking from experience. I do own the fluid dampner and its great, but I think I would have forgone the fluid dampner for the power supply. Below is an excerpt from a post by the inmate "Ugly." It makes a lot of sense to me. I would follow this logic if I were to do it over again.

"The problem is a fundamental design issue with the 1200's that can't be fixed with a bandaid like an arm damper. You see there are speed variations evident, it's just that they are very tiny and fast. It shows up as a sort of fuzziness or haziness on top of the music that you don't really notice until it's gone. Audibly the haziness kind of reminds me of the difference in sound between a higher quality DAC and a lower quality one. For me the point that the speed regulation may not be all that on these SL-1200's was also hit home by a visual cue. I happen to be a designer of electronic hardware for my day job and am specifically very interested in and aware of the various motion control systems in my daily life (why is this relevant?). Because I am a control system geek I noticed almost immediately how fuzzy and hazy looking the little speed indicator dots (that the speed strobe reflects off of)on the side of the platter looked even though they were staying in the same location. After adding the regulated supply these little dots are obviously less hazy looking and more clearly defined outlines. This evidence in parallel with my perceptiopn of clearer sound shows me that independent of arm and cartridge the basic platform is flawed and easily fixable for low cash outlay.

After hearing for myself what the power supply mod fixes I can't for the life of me figure out why the KAB site seems to focus on what I consider more of a bandaid in the damper mod to tame compliance/weight mismatches between tha arm and needle as opposed to an actual engineeered enhancement in the form of a more robust power supply which allows the control to operate more perfectly."

Back to my words:
I own the dampner and it makes a remarkable improvement in sound. I think the power supply would do you much better and is not terribly much more. I think its $250 and dampner is $150. If you go with the dampner or already have done so, don't regret it. Its a good value and a good improvement. I think Ugly described it best as a band aid rather than a fix. I will get the power supply eventually, I just have other priorities at the moment.

My 2 cents.

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