Our daughter, Toni, has been playing for a rep basketball team, the East York Eagles, for the past three years. Toni is an only child, so it’s been fairly easy for me to attend all the games, and it’s been a fun, rewarding experience to be part of this group.
I’ve never really played a team sport—I used to be good at scoring own goals in soccer back in public school—so I didn’t know what to expect from being a “sportsball” parent. I get the feeling my wife and I lucked into a great team. The coaches are patient and supportive—genuinely nice people who volunteer their time. The other parents are a great bunch. There’s plenty of time to chat as we sit on the sidelines, and Marcia and I have formed some great friendships of convenience.
Of course, we parents chat among ourselves, and I often mention my SoundStage! Ultra gig. For the most part, I get polite responses, but as you no doubt know from your own experience, most people just don’t get hi‑fi.
I try to sit next to Rashay at games. I don’t know much about basketball—I’m still learning as I go—but nothing gets by Rashay. “What just happened?” I’ll exclaim, about five or six times through the average game, and he’ll patiently explain the ref’s call. He’s razor-sharp, is Rashay.
Our extra-basketball worlds crossed paths when Rashay told me that his youngest daughter had taken an interest in vinyl. He wanted to purchase a turntable for her to play the few records she’d bought so far, and we chatted about this quest over the course of a weekend tournament. Rashay is humble, a good listener, and, as I said, extremely sharp. As you can imagine, his perceptive questions fired me up and I began to pontificate. Rashay didn’t mind and seemed to absorb my ranting.
Of course, his biggest question was what turntable should I buy? As I often do, I pointed Rashay toward Pro‑Ject’s extensive lineup. “Just go to the company’s website and look around. Bay Bloor Radio here in Toronto sells the full Pro‑Ject line, and you can easily find the one you like there.”
Rashay is a man of action. I’d also mentioned Canuck Audio Mart in case he was interested in buying used gear, and right quick he sent me two ads—one for a Pro‑Ject Debut Carbon, and another for a Classic, which was being sold with an Ortofon Quintet Bronze moving-coil cartridge. “Is this worth the extra over the Debut?” he asked, on day two of the tournament.
“Absolutely,” I replied. “That’s a great turntable, with a fantastic cartridge. Keep in mind that you have to assume the cartridge is smoked, though, as they’re easy to break, they wear out, and it’s impossible to tell if it’s still good just by looking. If it’s in great shape, then it’s a bonus.”
Rashay pulled the trigger on the Classic. The seller also had an RJM phono stage for sale, and before I could ask too many questions, Rashay bought that as well. A man of action. Once he’d picked up the ’table, he called me and started asking setup questions. It was at this point that I realized Rashay didn’t have much experience with turntables. Very little, in fact, based on his questions.
It’s easy to underestimate the complexity of a vinyl-playback system. After all, a turntable is extremely old tech. It only has three moving parts. How hard could it be to set one up? Well, I guess it’s not that hard if you buy a $200 all-in-one Bluetooth ’table off Amazon, unpack it, plug it in, and plonk a record on top. But this wasn’t the direction that Rashay was going. In our discussions, Rashay had made it clear he wanted to cut to the chase and get his daughter a good-quality turntable straightaway. So now we were departing the world of set-and-forget and entering the realm of tweaking and fussing. I offered to assist Rashay via a Teams video chat, and we made a date.
When he called and turned his phone around, I noted that the Pro‑Ject was out of the box and settled on a nice, sturdy-looking piece of furniture that almost looked custom-made. So far, so good. We dug in.
“I’m having trouble getting the needle down on the record,” he said. It was hard to see what was going on via the lo-rez video stream, so I talked him through some troubleshooting steps. My first thought was that the cueing platform wasn’t lowering the tonearm, so we looked at that. Nope. All good. After another few minutes of snooping around, Rashay brought the camera down level with the plinth, and I saw it—the gap between the plinth and the platter looked way too large. I pointed this out, and Rashay took the felt mat off the platter. Now it was obvious—the platter was upside down. He flipped it over and problem one was fixed.
Next step: verify the tracking force. The cartridge was preinstalled, but it never hurts to double-check the VTF. Rashay had on hand a very primitive-looking VTF/alignment jig—a plastic seesaw, balance-beam doodad. It had a hole in one end that’s meant to be hooked over the spindle when you’re aligning the cartridge. The friction when configured this way made it impossible to set the VTF, and that’s how Rashay was trying to do it. I suggested unhooking it from the spindle, which he did. Then I watched in horror as Rashay placed the stylus on the scale and dragged it to the side to get it into the 1.8g groove.
“Noooooo!” My shriek must have seemed out of proportion to his action, but I could easily imagine the stylus snapping clean off the cantilever. Especially considering that Rashay was gripping the headshell between his finger and thumb, rather than just lifting it with the crook of his index finger. A quick etiquette lesson in safe tonearm handling ensued.
Once Rashay had verified the VTF, we ended the call, as he wanted to get the turntable hooked up and playing. Not an hour later, Rashay called back. “It’s working, but it doesn’t sound right. It’s all distorted.” Not wanting to rush into buying more gear until he knew his daughter was going to continue with this hobby, Rashay had cobbled together a working stereo using parts of his old home-theater system. That included some older (but not vintage) Tannoy speakers and a fairly high-end Pioneer receiver. I had a feeling that I knew what was going on.
“Which input is the RJM phono stage plugged into?”
Rashay told me it was the phono input, in a way that implied he was thinking Duh! What else would I use?
“Try another input. Maybe CD or Aux.” I explained to him that the phono input on his amplifier likely had a moving-magnet stage that was both bumping up the signal big-time and performing serious equalization. His RJM phono stage was also doing those things, hence the distortion. He agreed to try another input and we adjourned once more.
Another call—the system was working better now, but Rashay could hear a 60Hz hum. This was an easy fix. I explained the need for a ground wire, but Rashay didn’t have one handy. I could see I was reaching the limit of what I could do remotely. Besides, I wanted to see and hear this ’table for myself, so we made a date to get together on the May long weekend (when, strangely, we celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday here in Canada). The forecast was sunny and warm, so Toni made arrangements with Kareena, Rashay’s daughter, for a swim in their backyard pool.
I probably should have made a house call right from the start and done the work myself. That’s what I usually do when a friend buys a ’table, because—as is evident here—it’s not the straightforward task many people assume.
But Rashay was interested in doing it himself, which is admirable. And he had me to fall back on, so it was doable. Of course, Rashay could have invested a whole bunch of time watching YouTube videos dealing with turntable setup. There are plenty of guides available, plenty of influencers clamoring for the chance to help you do whatever you need. Remember, though, this was to be a one-time thing. There’s not much point spending a full day fast-forwarding through needlessly long videos just to find the few nuggets that you need to do the job. Not when you have someone well-versed in the topic to help you out.
When I arrived, Rashay showed me the work he’d done. The turntable was level, the speakers were hooked up and in position, and he had a few new records ready for us to listen to. First things first. I verified the tracking force with my own scale, hooked up an old tonearm cable of mine that has an integrated ground wire, and checked out the cartridge alignment using my Pro‑Ject Align it protractor. The VTF was set to 1.8g, which is too light for the Quintet Bronze cartridge. I set it to the recommended 2.3g. Alignment was off a bit, so I loosened the headshell screws and adjusted it. The vertical tracking angle was also just a touch out of spec—the back of the cartridge was riding a little low, but based on where the ’table was set up, I would have had to unhook everything and move it elsewhere to get at the pivot point’s adjustment screw.
We sat down for a listen. The speakers were pushed back against the walls, and deep into the corners. I could hear significant thickness in the bass, and there wasn’t much imaging coming out of the rig. After I had pulled the speakers out into the room about a foot—more than that and there’s no way they’d have passed the decor test—it sounded much better.
The room itself needed help. Rashay’s family had recently moved into the house, which is significantly larger than their old one. As such, the furnishings were a touch sparse, and the room was extremely lively. I clapped my hands and heard a serious slap echo. “You need a rug in here,” I said. Rashay told me that a rug for this room was on their to-do list.
In all, Rashay had built himself a fine analog front end. This wasn’t a bare-bones starter system. The Pro‑Ject Classic turntable is a nice piece. It’s well built, with a good ’arm, and more than able to hold its own with the high-quality Quintet Bronze cartridge. The speakers, while dated and just kinda okay, will serve well until Rashay upgrades them. Same with that home-theater receiver, four channels of which he’s using to biamp the Tannoys—I told you he was clever.
So while Rashay’s system as a whole is far from world-class, he’s gotten a solid base on which to build. This exercise—the virtual call followed by a meatspace visit—was most worthwhile. Not least because I had the chance to pay Rashay back for all of his valuable basketball commentary and expertise. The Teams call made me appreciate just how tricky this archaic manual process can be for the uninitiated.
It’s not exactly a marketable skill I’ve got here, but I’m pleased that it can be of some use.
. . . Jason Thorpe
jasont@soundstagenetwork.com
