We're happy to announce the winner of our "Show us your Analog Apartment" contest. This amazing setup comes to us from Aaron, an analog enthusiast based in the French Alps. Check it out below.
The Turntable
Of course I bought the plater , bearing and motor (from Scheu in Germany) but I made the battery power supply, the chassis, and the sandbox it sits on.
This turntable has very little surface noise... I mean really silent. Often the recording tapes have more hiss than the groove noise. Sound stage is huge! and vocals are so lifelike it can sometimes be a little unnerving.. You can also bash the vinyl quite hard whilst playing with almost no effect whatsoever to the sound. That's a great party piece for the doubters of analog.
I use a Pierre Lurné unipivot arm (whilst I experiment with DIY options .. which are showing great promise) and the cartridge is the famous Shelter 501 (although in the photo is an Audio Technica ART1.. my spare)
The whole thing is weighing in at about 50kgs (110lbs)
The pre-amp / speakers
It is fed into a DIY pre-amp (completely my own design) which features Sowter 8055 input transformer 2 stages with 6C45 tubes, passive RIAA & SAC transformer volume control. That feeds a Jeff Rowland model 1 power amp (to be replaced by a DIY SE triode amp) and finally Monitor audio GR60 speakers.
My pre-amp design completely whooped my previous pre-amp which was an Audio Research, but I did build an absolute no holes barred design, so I expected something good.. but you can never tell till it's built. I am still tweaking the design a little, but it's almost at the point where I would want no more.
The Collection
I've about 1100 LPs 75% rock /folk. 10% Classical and 15% for Jazz, blues and world music. The shelf is from Ikea.
Thanks Aaron for sharing your great setup and thanks to everyone that submitted. We had such a great response that we'll be doing more of these mini-contests over the next few months.
Our next contest will be geared towards people new to vinyl so if you didn't submit to this last one, the next one may be your time to shine.
Thanks again and congratulations Aaron.
Analog Apartment