Any Realistic Lab-500 owners out there?

Posted by Roypercy (A) on May 5, 2022 at 09:22:40

I just picked up one of these in near pristine condition for $25 dollars. It's missing the original integrated headshell and Shure cartridge, but came loaded with an Ortofon Concorde STD, which was a hi-fi version of the COncorde with an elliptical stylus. It sounds pretty good and looks great, but I'd like to see what kind of performance I can squeeze out of it. A few questions:

1) The Ortofon has what seems to be the original stylus in decent condition. I can order a new STD stylus from a place in the UK, or (I hear) I can use an Ortofon OM stylus (with perhaps a little modification to make it fit properly). Anybody have experience with either option?

2) One drawback of this table is that it's designed to accommodate a very light headshell/cartridge combination. AS best I can tell it will only accommodate something that is 10g total or less, given the limited amount of play in the counterweight. Any suggestions that would beat the Concorde cartridge and still be light enough? The Concorde is listed at 15 grams, but most of its weight is at the back where it connects to the tonearm, and the previous owner removed the integrated finger lift; between these two facts I think the Concorde manages to get most of its weight close enough to the tonearm pivot to "read" as less than 10 grams. It's pretty well balanced ad alignment is spot-on.

3) Will I see much improvement replacing the RCA cables on this model? I guess what I'm asking is, how good are the original RCAs?

Thanks!

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Topic - Any Realistic Lab-500 owners out there? - Roypercy 09:22:40 05/05/22 (0)

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