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Pioneer PL-530 Turntable


DirtyErnie

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I'm about to get my $60 PL-530 up and running, and run off a bunch of vinyl to digital.  Right now I think it has an ADC 34MkIII cartridge in it, and it probably needs a new stylus.
Might think about going for a new cartridge as well.
Any thoughts about what would be a good way to go with this project? I'm not looking to upgrade anything more than the electrolytic caps inside the control board and the stylus or cartridge.
Interwebs seems to think the effective tonearm mass is around 15g

Thanks!

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I will need to get a tracking force scale, which I think is recommended around 1.5 grams or somesuch.

Tonearm effective weight works against stylus compliance to set the resonance of the system.  Seems like most places say to put that in the 8-15Hz range.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Still geeking on this.  ADC QLM 34 MkIII stylus on it, looks like the body can accept almost any of the 'better' needles ADC made, and there's some aftermarket options as well.  Right now I'm leaning towards a Shibata-type and doing a wood glue 'peel' of the vinyl before attempting to play it.  Do it once, do it right, amiright?

Likely there will be a 'load box' between the turntable and interface, to give the cartridge the 47Kohm and 250pf load it wants to see.  Frequency correction (RIAA, ET.C) will be done digitally afterwards.

Hopefully I can find the system resonance in the digital studio program.  Might get a basic replacement needle and check that to calculate effective tonearm mass before blowing the better part of $Two-Hundo on a fancy stylus that might be totally incompatible.

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2 hours ago, DirtyErnie said:

and doing a wood glue 'peel' of the vinyl before attempting to play it. 

@DizRotus Neil had a more complete solution (pun intended). I don't know if he still has, but could point you in the right direction. The PVA works, though...

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On 2/28/2022 at 9:52 AM, DirtyErnie said:

Still geeking on this.  ADC QLM 34 MkIII stylus on it, looks like the body can accept almost any of the 'better' needles ADC made, and there's some aftermarket options as well.  Right now I'm leaning towards a Shibata-type and doing a wood glue 'peel' of the vinyl before attempting to play it.  Do it once, do it right, amiright?

Likely there will be a 'load box' between the turntable and interface, to give the cartridge the 47Kohm and 250pf load it wants to see.  Frequency correction (RIAA, ET.C) will be done digitally afterwards.

Hopefully I can find the system resonance in the digital studio program.  Might get a basic replacement needle and check that to calculate effective tonearm mass before blowing the better part of $Two-Hundo on a fancy stylus that might be totally incompatible.

https://www.lpgear.com/product/ADCSQLM34MKIII.html

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Budget is kinda 'up against it' as far as buying new cartridges is concerned, and there's a surprising amount of options available for the ADC QLM series.  Great threads are out there online, most agreeing tha tthe cartridge body itself can accept and work well with any of the 'better' ADC styli available.

 I think the limit may be more in what stylus compliance I can get away with on that turntable.  
My thought right now is to get a stylus like the one you linked to, do some measuring and listening, and maybe just roll with it.  I

If the system resonance works out, I might grab a Shibata-style higher-line ADC cartridge for ripping to digital.  All EQ and RIAA comp will be done digitally.

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  • 2 months later...

Moving Onward, it looks like I'll be sending out at least one original ADC QLM34 Mk.III stylus out to get rebuilt.  I tried the $40 'eliptical' option off ebay, but it's the allegedly swiss knock-off that gets a lot wrong.  It also has terrible hiss when the needle hits the groove, even after the groove was cleaned with wood glue peel (that Titebond 2 thing works!!).

The rig is:  PL530 straight into a Presonus Studio 24C desktop USB interface.  Would this be responsible for the hissing?  It doesn't happen when the table is turning and the needle is out of the groove.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Had a worn-out stylus re-tipped by Steve at VAS, nude Shibata.  Got a test LP, ripped it straight into the box at 192K.  There's some static to handle, 1KHz distortion was under 1% without applying the RIAA filter. Balance is ok, but i need to try again with the anti-skate set right, the turntable actually levelled, and I might have to tweek the cartridge in the headshell a bit.
(maybe I should use less than an 86KHz bandwidth for the spectrum plots, but the frequency sweep aliasing draws parabolas, and that's cool.)

AnalogTestRecord1a.png

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