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After some research from the web, happen to come across this Cartridge Alignment Protractors as shown below. It was used for alignment of the cartridge to the turntable tonearm. This protractor could be downloaded for free from the web. However, after the cartridge setup using the downloaded protractor, the sound seem to improve without much distortion at the inner tracks. However, it depends on the vinyl itself, some of the vinyl still encountered slight distortion near to the inner groove. Continue to do some fine adjustment on the anti-skating and the tracking force does help a little but for some vinyl, it just cannot totally eliminated the distortion.  I guess I got to live with the slight distortion at the mean time and enjoys my newly found music.  Cheers!

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This is my first time of setting up a cartridge on the turntable. The AT95E came with 2 sets of screws of different length. The screw thread size is 3mm I think. However, the Thorens headshell uses a 2mm threaded screw. So, it will not fit the Thorens headshell. Fortunately, I have a set of 2mm threaded screw on hand. So, installing the AT95E cartridge became not much of a problem. In the installation process, I learnt that I need to measure the resistance of the left/right channel using a multimeter. It reads 411 ohms and  418 ohms respectively for each channels. I presumed it was pretty chose and thus both channels should be balanced.

The sound produces by the Audio Technica AT95E is pretty good in my opinion. The tracking was not really good for the inner groove, but I think it could be due to my lack of experience as it was my first time installing cartridge. So some fine turning maybe needed. Anyway, I will read up more from the web to learn more so that I could improve the sound further. At the mean time, enjoys some of the pictures for the AT95E as below. Cheers!

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Initially, I started looking out for used turntable. Brands like Sony, Technics, Sansui, Kenwood etc were among some of the very common brands at the used HiFi shops. Nothing really catch my eyes. I nearly gave up and wanted to go for new turntable instead as the used ones were of very poor conditions. However, the decent new ones are very expensive. The high price forced me to hunt for the used again. After some search in the forum and managed to get the pretty decent one, the brand is Thorens and the model is TD160. This Thorens TD-160 is one of the popular turntable in the used market. However, it does not come with any cartridge and stylus. So, I need to get one for my newly purchased turntable. After some research, I end up purchased a Audio Technica AT95e cartridge for it. The sound is very awesome and I really enjoys every moment with it. Thanks for viewing. Cheers!

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After a few week of casual searching; those rack which suit for my use are really expensive. As usual, I am not ready to spend too much on a rack; thus I decided to DIY if possible. After some quick google search, I had managed to get hold of a design by the named TNT FleXy table from TNT-audio site. The first look at those FleXy table already make me confirm that this is the rack I will be making.

After some searching,  finally managed to sort out all the necessary material to assemble the whole rack as shown in the pictures as below. To date, this is one of the most flexible rack I had ever seen. I am sure it will last a long time to come. Thanks for viewing and Enjoys.

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On 12th June 2010 saturday morning, I started fixing it up. Upon turning on the amp, I noticed the 6418 tubes started to grow a little. The dim light of the filaments cannot be seen clearly; it has to be in a very dark room inorder to see the grow of the filaments.

Excited moment came…I plugged in the headphone. But, to my disappointment, I noticed pretty loud ‘hiss’ noise. I thought it was due to my soldering faults or connection faults. But, after some query from the forum and understand that it seem to be normal for this amp. Anyway, for me, I noticed that by changing the headphone to a higher impedance does help to ‘reduce’ the hiss noise. So now, I am using the 60 ohms headphone to reduce the hiss nosie. The hiss does not actually disappear; it is still there but the impedance of the headphone just covered the noise up.

Anyway, beside the hiss noise, this can be considered as a fine sounding amp in my opinion. For just about AU30. I think it is a good buy. At the mean time, I am not going to let the hiss problem bother me. I just enjoy the music for now. Cheers!

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Remember that time before 1995, I do not have any interest in DIY audio. But, after witnessed a shop displaying an internal layout of a tube amplifier change all that. I became very keen in the layout of such tube amp. Not long after that, around 1996, I decided to build one for myself. After some shopping, I chose Audio Note Kit4 as a starter. Till today, I am very glad that I had picked up this Audio Note’s tube amp as it really sounded good and musical. Until now, it still in my bed room. This amp will be always in my mind as we had very great moment together as a family listening to this amp in our bed room every night before we go to sleep. I really enjoys every moment with it. Thus, I will keep it forever. Cheers!

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For this amp, I had put in a lot of efforts and time. To date, this is the only amp which I had spend the most time and efforts. The time I spend most was the troubleshooting of the humming noise. I had redo the wiring and re-soldered few times just to get it right. Components had changed from the initial designed. I planned to use the toroidal transformer but due to the “magnetic interference”; which cause noise to the surrounding circuits, I was forced to drop the idea of using the toroidal. I guess I trusted the toroidal so much that I believe it will not cause interference even my circuit is very near to it. Thus, I never take extra precaution while planning the components layout. I was wrong; therefore, I had to replace the toroidal with a Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS). I know, in the audio world, SMPS is not very popular. Well, I had no choice for now unless I want to redo everything again; such as getting another bigger chassis, change the components layout or solder on PCB … etc. For now, I choose to leave everything as it is and enjoys. Cheers!

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