Sunday, April 12, 2009

Frankenheadset


Soldered this little number up today so I could stop borrowing a roommate's mic, headset with mic is much easier and more convenient anyway. Mic came from some generic earclip-headset crap I bought in the Philippines way back when, I was much more frivolous with money back then. I never even used the headset (partially because it SUCKED, the drivers at least). The drivers are KSC-75 (clearance, $8), and the headband is Koss KTX/Pro with broken drivers ($1.50). Lo and behold, the KSC-75's drivers fit perfectly into where the old drivers used to be (the old drivers have a strong resemblance to KSC-35 drivers, no pic because they are far, far away.)

Works great! Just started playing TF2, this makes it more fun.

Oh yeah, the soldering was limited to soldering the leads from the headset to some 24 gauge speaker cable to a cheap mini plug. The drivers are attached to the stock KSC-75 cable. I've been wanting to recable it for a while, but didn't care enough to actually buy the materials.

If you look down at the previous post, you'll see that my 21st birthday occurred recently. I came into a little bit of money and bought this.



That pic is crap. Anyway, if you care, yes there is a dust cover. It's not in the best condition so I left it out for photos.

Yes that is the cardboard shelf (shoe-rack lol) from a previous post. After realizing most of the shoes taking up room belonged to only one of my roommates, I got selfish. After all, I made it, why should it be used to hold someone else's shoes? Anyway this is too off topic.

It's a Kenwood KD-44R with an Audio Technica MG200E cartridge. I can find next to NOTHING about either on the internet. From the looks of the cartridge and stylus, and some forum help, apparently I can upgrade to this stylus, which has a shibata diamond tip, as compared to my cheap AT10 or whatever with a conical tip. I was actually considering dropping another benjamin on a new cartridge! 80's Audio Technica cartridges were audio gold, according to some forum posts (don't feel like looking for them now) which said some of them sound better than cartridges selling for hundreds (think 5-8) of dollars today.

Here is the cartridge:

Removing the cart just to identify it was a bad idea, but curiosity got the better of me. It took me quite a while to realign it.

Anyway, I absolutely love this thing. I can't stop using it. It's a good thing this stylus is rated at 1000 hours of use (or so the dealer tells me) because I swear it gets an average of 4 hours a day. That means I have to replace this thing in less than 250 days. That's less than a year, obviously. I want a new stylus anyway.

More pics, this thing is beautiful. Perhaps it is only because I have spent the past week looking at pictures of turntables on the internet.

The old setup in the living room: my receiver is a little shallow front-to-back. The positioning was kind of awkward but the little rubber feet on the turntable (a nice touch!) adjusted well. They are terminated in what seems to be some kind of velvety-soft material.


The new setup in my room. Makes the room kind of cramped, but I tell myself this is temporary. Pictured are the turntable, receiver, my cardboard shelf, the record collection so far (about 13), my pink fake-diamond-encrusted belt (thanks Eve), and my Insignia NSB2111 speakers, which are pretty infamous. The entire thing sounds INCREDIBLE. I don't know, analog is just so much more fun and sounds so much more REAL than digital, more on some records than others though. Hopefully this will change when I upgrade my stylus. My copy of the My Fair Lady soundtrack in particular sounds excellent, even though it may be my oldest record.
If there are any audiophiles reading this, yes I realize how bad a very light cardboard shelf is for a turntable, this is temporary.
It is also a fire hazard, but it is okay as long as I keep everything off while I'm away, I believe.


So shiny! The record is Radiohead's Pablo Honey, 180g.


I love the look of this tonearm assembly. In fact, an edited version of this photo is my desktop background right now. My Alessandro MS-1s are in the background, as well as my roommate's desk.