Cal Blacksmith
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Posts posted by Cal Blacksmith
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I have cleaned over 100 records so far. Everything from brand new to one that had mold starting to grow on it. On that one I pre cleaned with a nano carbon fiber brush. So far everything has been fantastic.
I also have a good quality ultrasonic cleaner from China for general cleaning and for clock movements. It is so noisy that it needs to be 2 rooms away.
My Isonic by comparison is nearly silent. I also love that it has a spin cycle to dry the records, it truly is an easy way to go from gross to great.
I have well over a thousand records so the ability to clean 10 at a time is important to me. The total cycle time for 10 LPs is about 40 minutes but that includes removing them from the sleeves. Loading the cleaner, 12 minute wash cycle and 15 minute dry cycle and putting everything away in archival LP sleeves and jacket sleeves.
All in the same room I am listening or relaxing in.
I looked into diy and that indeed costs much less but for me, the benefits of a quality pre engineered system by professionals especially for records is a worthwhile investment.
In my younger days I likely would have done 3 or 4 DIY setups but I am at the stage in life that I can afford to go the way I did and I am thankful for it.
Good luck with the DIY, it can be a fun and rewarding journey 😀
Oh, one more thing. Isonic says that tap water is just fine and actually cleans better than distilled as long as it doesn't have a high mineral load and leaves deposits when it air dries. They explain that the reason they say distilled water is that they have no idea what water comes out of your tap and that distilled is the safest instruction to use to avoid complaints.
I also use their low foaming solution. It is inexpensive at " from memory " around $10 for a small bottle. As you only use 1 to 2 caps to 2 gallons of water a bottle lasts a long time. YMMV!
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On 1/31/2024 at 10:14 PM, shawnwes said:
First post on the site and unable to message members directly yet.
Found it as I was searching for VTL Ultimate on the web as I've just purchased one and am looking for available documentation such as owners manual, schematic, etc. It's an early one - #106. Cal Blacksmith if you happen to see this post I know you still owned it as of a year ago and was wondering if you had any documents, and have the ability to scan, if you'd be willing to share a copy of whatever documentation you might have. I have found a copy of the VTL book vol 1 by David Manley and there's apparently some documentation there - hasn't arrived yet. Couldn't find anything on their site and have read they don't really make info avail or even sell it.
anyways it would be nice to hear about your experiences with it over the years & what if anything you've had to repair or modify, tube experience, etc.
Cheers,
Shawn
Kelowna, BC
Shawn, welcome to the club.
I have the data
......somewhere. I moved from CA to Georgia a couple years ago, a lot of my stuff is still packed up and I have no idea where it is.
I still use my VTL most every day. I have it in my den/ listening room along with my Sonic Frontiers power amp and khorns which I use for serious listening as well as TV audio and gaming.
The VTL is still going strong and I can't see any reason to nor do I have any plans to replace it.
Sure it is getting up there in age but it still is just as awesome as it was the day I bought it.
If I find the documents I will digitize them but right now I'm not in a big hurry to find them.
Enjoy the pre Amp!
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What are your thoughts on it?
I love my Planar 3 but years ago I settled in my cart.
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8 minutes ago, billybob said:
Yes welcome @jpantig
Can almost read the labels on those. Please let know or show closer pics. Thanks
Those are KG 1.5, and KG2.5S.
value? I have been out of the market for a while.
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15 hours ago, CWOReilly said:
Those are nice looking!
All the internals of his old set are good so I think we will give building new cabinets a try. The worst that can happen is we waste a bit of wood.
It will be a little while before I get around to making them though, I still need to build a shop building..... so a while lol.
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1 minute ago, nickyboy6100 said:
Keep your eye out. They pop up quite often on the usual sites. I have a pair that is as close to mint as you can get that I would part with if you’re close to Indiana.
Thanks, I would take you up on it but I am in NW Georgia. About 60 miles NW of Atlanta.
I will keep looking but when my shop building is built, I have some decent wood working stuff, making new cabinets won't be real hard but they won't say Hope Arkansas on them either and that isn't good for resale though I doubt he would ever part with cabinets built by his old man.
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1 minute ago, nickyboy6100 said:
That’s sucks.
You could always just find a used set and salvage what drivers are good to keep for backups. You can usually find excellent used for $300-$350.I have been looking but the last pair here sold for $700/pair.
As far as salvage parts, everything inside is good 👍
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No, just fat fingers and the wrong button, working on it
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Sorry for being away for awhile, stuff.
I took to heart the advice given in my thread asking for help.
I looked at so much information, videos, reviews etc. Until m e brain hurt.
I decided that I was going to do this once and done.
The price range is from $150 to $5k and more. Everything from China DIY to boutique units with twice the snake oil of $5k RCA interconnect cables. How to choose?
I went with a company that has been making ultrasonic cleaners for many decades, they make and sell over a million cleaners a year for medical, industrial and personal use. They developed a cleaner just for LPs, it can clean up to 10 at a time in 45, 10 and 12 inch formats then spin them dry..
That company is Isonic.
The unit I went with is the
And I purchased the drain tank to go with it.
I am very pleased with the results. I have thrown my worst at it and they came out sparkling clean. This includes one LP that had mold growing on it. I dusted it off with a carbon fiber brush and into the cleaner with 9 other LPS.
When it came out and was dry I put it on the TT, shot it with Zerostat because I could and dropped the needle.
It sounded better than a new record. OK, I am impressed.
It wasn't inexpensive but it is built like a tank and it does an excellent job.
I have it setup on a spare equipment rack I had in the listening room and thats where it will stay.
It isn't silent in operation but it isn't bad either. Fan and motors are the loudest things and a moderate level on the stereo will all but cover most of the sound it makes.
Thanks for the guidance!
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He had a flood in his basement and they were sitting upside down (in storage in cardboard).
A pipe froze and they were in 4 or 5 inches of water.
Are there any plans to make him new cabinets or am I going to need to measure and remake what he had?
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Thanks everyone for the condolences. I agree that it seems that the posts have slowed down quite a bit.
I am mostly helping the son and his wife take care of daily life lol.
I have picked up a lot of music on vinyl, still considering what cleaner to use.
Listening and enjoying retirement!
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I have a few cleaners, a record adapter with motor is about 150 give or take.
What solutions do you use?
How do you dry the record, microfiber?
The cleaning machines vacuum them dry.
39 minutes ago, kevinmi said:ultrasonic cleaning is all the rage these days. I have cleaned all my records with an ultrasonic cleaner and they sound great. You can get in pretty cheap if you do some digging.
I have a few cleaners, a record adapter with motor is about 150 give or take.
What solutions do you use?
How do you dry the record, microfiber?
The cleaning machines vacuum them dry.
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5 minutes ago, Coytee said:
Long time, welcome back and condolences on the loss of your wife.
Yikes, which means I'm about 3-3 1/2..... I better go reinforce the doors and let the dogs out.
Or, maybe in Spring we could have a group meet in the Chattanooga area, have lunch and yell & scream at each other?!!!
Thanks. I am slowly getting used to being alone. Playing music anytime and any volume I want is nice though.
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2 minutes ago, Coytee said:
Long time, welcome back and condolences on the loss of your wife.
Yikes, which means I'm about 3-3 1/2..... I better go reinforce the doors and let the dogs out.
Or, maybe in Spring we could have a group meet in the Chattanooga area, have lunch and yell & scream at each other?!!!
That sounds great. It would be awesome to get some face to face time with some of the names I have talking with for now, decades 😀
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What is the general wisdom on LP cleaning?
I recently purchased some used records from mostly the 60s to early 80s. The seller did a fantastic job of cleaning them to the point that they are cleaner than many brand new records I have bought.
I contacted the seller and he uses a spin clean (which I have also owned and used) but he used a Nitty-gritty to vacuum them dry.
My question is about the vacuum systems. The least expensive Nitty-gritty is ball park $650 new.
There are several other systems out there such as the ProJect etc. which is comfortably less.
If using the cleaner mostly for drying the records, is there much difference between the units or is the Nitty-gritty kind of the king of cleaners?
I am at the point of just spending the money regardless of how much to get a quality cleaning as I know first hand with the recent purchase of LPs it is possible.
I just don't want to invest in one direction and then find out that a different direction may have been better. I want to make a "one and done" purchase but ss mentioned in my hi again thread, I have been out of these discussions for a while.
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7 hours ago, Marvel said:
Sorry to hear of your loss. I'm less than two hours north.
As to the get together, a group is meeting in Hope this weekend to see and hear Roy's new Heritage horn subs (3 sizes). Not the regular get together, but things are happening
Welcome back!
Thanks, I have been away from the audio scene other than enjoying what I have, for a while.
It will take a while to get back into the scene.
I am sure that there are lots of names I don't recognize and those who I do know are like old friends at a reunion. Very comforting.
Thanks again for the welcome!
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35 minutes ago, babadono said:
@Cal Blacksmith Pilgrimage is pretty much dead. They get together on PWK birthday now and I have not been but it does not appear to be anything like the old pilgrimages. And it is more than Covid that caused its demise IMO.
Bummer. I had always wanted to get to the pilgrimage but traveling from CA was a bit far. Now that I live a 8 hour drive away, it would be much more feasible.
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Better pictures of the pre and amp.
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51 minutes ago, Shakeydeal said:
Yeah I see it now. A sonic frontiers Power 2 on the right.Actually it is a Power 1 but with the cage on, it is next to impossible to tell. Good eye.
The Preamp is a VTL ultimate and I have a thread here about it when I bought it used in 2004.
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There has been way too much that has happened since my last post.
Shortest story, we moved to Rockmart Georgia in December 2021, I lost my wife of 41 years in August of 2022 and I have slowly, very slowly been moving in.
I just got around to setting up the music room and it has been awesome to get back to great audio.
There is so much more work to do but music breaks are awesome.
Rosewood Khorns and vinyl with all tube amplification.
Is there still an annual Klipch gathering in Hope or has that been a victim of the "cough"?
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On 6/12/2020 at 4:04 PM, artto said:
Have you tried floating the grounds?
I'm sure you know how to do this, but..... I always use just ONE ground point. Everything/anything that has a third ground pin gets "lifted", in the case of 3-prong plugs I use a 2 prong adapter. Only the main power source/supply that everything else is plugged into for power at the wall electrical outlet gets grounded.
BTW Cal, I still have the mustard rub B-B-Q recipe you posted here years ago. Great stuff! Thanks!
Thanks! I tried pretty much every trick I knew. In the end, what fixed it was getting another Toslink DAC and just keeping everything 100% divided. Funny how light does not conduct electrical current
I hope that rub has had lots of ribs under it!
Your Welcome
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Thanks, yes it took a lot of years and work to get to this point.
The PC I have is newly built by me just a couple months ago, I did go a little overboard too but it should last a good 5 years and still be viable.
Games have a lot of music in them so it is not just bullet noises and explosions LOL!
I am having a bit of a ground loop issue though. It is annoying when it is quiet but it is easily drowned out. I am feeding Toslink from the PC to a DAC (so it is not coming from the PC) where the audio is split to 2 runs of RCA cables, one to each amp. Both the integrated and the amp are plugged into the same power conditioner with each outlet fed through an isolation transformer. The hum is through the preamp to the Khorn run. If I seperate the RCA feeds then the hum goes away or if I pull the power plug on the integrated but leave the feeds connected it is gone also. I think my next move may be to get a Toslink splitter and add in another DAC so that each RCA run is separate and not electrically connected. Any opinions are welcome!
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I am sitting here in the semi dark, watching 2 4K, 42 inch screens, playing a video game on my computer while the audio is being fed through my 2 ch tube Pre-amp to my tube amp then to my Khorns while also being fed through a tube integrated and into my Quartets. I wonder what the other 99% play on?
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22 hours ago, Dave A said:
I did a job in Orange County back in 1983 or so. Spent some time with my parents who lived in Westminster and with my brother going to Sequoia and the Redwoods for cross country skiing. It was a whole different world out there then and I could have lived and afforded CA then. I don't recognize what I see anymore other than land mass.
Went from there to Seattle for another month or so to build another night club. That was interesting too but not now. Rural areas can shelter you from the big cities until election time when people who have no clue about country life tell you how to live it.
One of the interesting things about Tennessee is the nature of the forest which is loaded up with native fruits and nuts. Real hardwoods too like Hickory and Oak for smoking and tons of varieties for woodworking. The south east forest is my favorite though the trees are miniscule compared to the west.
How true. We live rural Riverside county. Life is nowhere near like when we lived in Long Beach which is really just an extension of the city next to it and the one next to it and next to it. All in all there are 88 different cities in "Los Angeles" Except for a sign at each city border, you never know the difference ONE BIG city mushed together from 88. Looking at the state land mass wise, in an election and seeing which counties voted for the Elephant or the A$$, 98% of the state is RED but the big cities, LA, SF, Sac. are blue. THEY tell the 98% of the state how to live while at the same time the 2% land mass have NO CLUE how the rest of us live. Our son moved to Georgia about 5 years ago for a job at Lockheed, he loves it there while he was born and raised here, in So Cal, mostly in the country as we moved here when he was 5. That was 31 years ago and now we are moving to follow him. The state gov is SOOOOOOOOO rigged against other than radical left folks it is impossible to take the state back. For decades the voting districts have been carved out to give Dems every advantage. Many times, two sections of a district DON'T EVEN TOUCH EACH OTHER with a second district between the two parts of the first. Lets not forget about the BILLIONS of dollars wasted on the train to nowhere. It starts in the desert, runs through farm land and ends in a place that few want to go. It was supposed to be a high speed (over 100 mph) connector between So and North Ca. Now it is a slow speed, local to local train that will be supported by tax dollars as it can't possibly earn what it costs to run. The "new" Gov. did kill it but because if it does not actually work, even if poorly, the state must give back the funds to the Fed gov that were spent. Heaven forbid we take a one time hit and give the money back but no, we must live for decades and decades paying for a train that no one rides.
Your Welcome
Ultrasonic LP cleaning
in 2-Channel Home Audio
Posted
Actually, simple green is organic and is completely drinkable. No alcohol. We sold it when it first came out and part of the demo of the product was the salesman trying to get us to buy it to sell retail would drink some.
I don't advise drinking cleaner but it made a good demonstration!