DJ Vintage

Hamza21, post: 40944, member: 2284 wrote: genre? tracklist? without either I doubt many will bother listening to your mix.

Yes, that would be useful information. Before you can “sell” anything, you want to make people at least curious for it.

Greetinx,
C.

You can certainly break anything, depending on your … uhmmm … “style”.

And certainly in the early days (talking 35+ years ago), it was very normal to go through a mountain of stylii a year.

When I worked professionally (6 nights a week for 6-8 hours depending on the club), standing order was a bi-monthly needle change. We were allowed to stretch it to 3 months if need be (I was in places where getting new gear in wasn’t always easy, like mid-80s Baghdad). I have gone stretches without breaking anything, but I have also had months with two broken needles.

5gram needle pressure and heavy back-spinning and super quick needle dropping … it CAN be killing for any needle.

Greetinx,
C.

Hi,

Good to hear things are moving forward for you. I am not too surprised by the Skytecs showing their real colors. If you read any of my posts on the subject, you know I’ll tell anyone “you get what you pay for in PA” and you don’t pay much for Skytec (or DAP or LD or Citronic or …) and I am very weary of low end speaker systems.

As far as the cable goes, you are apparently able to fix it yourself, which means you could just order connectors and cable and make your own (not that is saves you a heap of money, but you get to make the lengths you like).

Then for the refitting of speakers, I am sure of two things:

1. A bad speaker will benefit from refitting with (a) better driver(s)
2. Regardless of the quality of the replacement driver(s), a bad speaker will never become a great speaker.

You are not changing the x-over filter (which in a good speaker is custom designed for the actual speaker and calibrated for the used driver(s)). X-overs are made/broken over the quality of the design and used components. Clearly in low end speakers there is often an off-the-shelf design executed with low end components. Often the slope (amount of damping as you move away from the x-over frequency) is less, meaning there is a broader range of frequency spread over two drivers. You can’t upgrade a filter by just sticking in another one from a better brand, unless you have the know-how and tools to then tune the filter right.
You are not changing the cabinet design. Think about radiation centers (the point where the soundwave leaves the speaker should be vertically aligned for the drivers (not always the case in low end speakers), bass reflection openings (be it tubes, slots, whatever), they need to be tuned for the cabinet/driver combination.
You are not changing the cabinet stiffness. Apart from the fancy design on the outside (my speakers are sooooo boring to look at lol), the quality of the sound has a strong link to the stiffness of the cabinet. That is why wood is preferred over plastic (ABS). Expensive speakers will have internal cross-bracing to make it as stiff as possible and reduce/eliminated unwanted cabinet interference (vibrations).
My conclusion/advice? It can be done and it will make a difference. However, the extra cost involved (and trust me, good drivers listen to the same “you get what you pay for” rule) will only postpone the moment you will have enough saved up to get something that sounds good from the manufacturer without being refitted, because all the other components are better too.
Greetinx,
C.
p.s. Be sure you do have it all set up correctly, so the shabby sound from the Skytec is not because of settings. You might also try another amp with the Skytecs. All to make sure that you make your decisions based on the right information.

Terry_42, post: 40847, member: 1843 wrote: My method for cleaning vinyl is very simple:
Get a anti static soft cloth (you can get them in most car accessory stores for the windshield of a car…).
Get a bowl of distilled water (comes quite cheap).
Get a mild hair shampoo (mild but not oily! some of the baby shampoos have a lot of oil in them, do not use them!) I just use the classic “head and shoulders” and put a few drops in the bowl with the water.
Mix it (I use clean chop sticks for mixing it in) and add a little shampoo until the water feels slightly “soapy”.
Soak the cloth and clean the vinyl softly.
Then put the vinyl on a dry clean towel and let it sit until it is dry.

Works like a charm. (But use at your own risk…)

About right. I was once told that dish washer detergent is the least aggressive and the strongest against grease, but I can see how hair shampoo would be anti-grease too :).

Not sure about the cloth though, it won’t go into the groove. But just running the liquid over the record won’t losen all particles in the groove either.

I am guessing that those cleaning services use a combination of a cleaning liquid and a very fine specialized “brush” to get crap out of the grooves. After all that is the only place audible stuff happens, not on the surface in between the grooves (which is where wiping would reach, right?).

Greetinx,
C.

I did a fashion show a few weeks ago. Manually gained my tracks as I cued them up. Some had dynamic range on the meters of in excess of 6dB. Some tracks were so compressed that the meter pretty much just showed a solid 0dB led with an occasional 3dB dip.

And the latter one sounded a lot louder while they were both at 0dB average.

They really need to lay off the compression when producing source material (CDs). It’s gotten crazy.

Greetinx,
C.