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No seriously, why does my Rega SUCK?

65.93.157.134

Posted by Sylvian on September 10, 2006 at 12:36:54

No, SERIOUSLY! I keep reading about how much people LOOOVE Rega turntables and how great they are. Well, Ive owned everything but a Rega before, and when I recently took on the job of setting up a Rega Planar 2 for a friend, I was quite unimpressed by the Rega P2. This is despite me having installed a Reson Reca cartridge on it (same exact body as a Goldring 1042), which cost more than the tt (the cartidge was purchased new about $400 CDN, the tt was purchased secon hand, and cost a little less than that). The sound was detailed yes, musical, NO. It reminded me of a CD player, and you don't buy tt's to sound like a CD player.

For sheer musicality, the Connoisseur BD2's I had blow the Rega out of the water. Now, let me say a few words about the Thorens TD-150AB, which I have also spent a lot of time with recently, setting it up. It's got a gold Empire cartridge (approx $150, if I recall). A few years ago, I spent 6 months straight tweaking this thing, and throughout it all, it never sounded less than "unmusical". Again, the Connie blew it away (still does). I'm a lot better at tweaking now, so I managed to (finally) make the Thorens sound musical. It's not as detailed, as high rez or as "large" a soundstage as the Rega, but the point is, it is now more MUSICAL, no doubt about it.

The problem lies in the fact that the Thorens has higher resolution in timbre (whereas the Rega, its just higher resolution in general).
I've tweaked the bejeezus out of the Rega, striving to maintain its timbral qualities (its MUCH more impressive sounding now). But I could never get it to approach the Thorens in this area (if I could improve the Rega's timbre without having to pay for commercial tweaks, then it -would- blow the Thorens away).

So what I'm wondering is if the stock Rega is really supposed to sound like this (weak in timbre, not very engaging musically), or if there's something wrong with this set up? I've done the whole cartridge/arm set up thing best I can, with a 2 point alignment guide (of course, I cant adjust VTA, except to raise the arm. By the looks of things using a parallel ruler, the arm VTA is either perfectly fine as it is or perhaps might need to be lowered 1 mm, if anything). Anyway, I dont see the whole character of the table changing by a 1mm adjustment even if it were possible to lower the stock RB-250.

Unless I'm simply hearing what a Rega actually sounds like, the only things I can think of that might be wrong with the deck is the spindle bearing or the tonearm bearings. But if anyone thinks that could be the case, can I get a clue on how to check the spindle and tonearm bearings, and is it even possible for a user to adjust the bearings on the RB-250?

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