Playing mono records

I know this doesnt directly answer your question, but for best results, you should get a mono cartridge. Rega does one which is cheap around 70 pounds but has a 78rpm stylus profile which might well be just fine. And there is a Dynavector XV1S Mono cartridge at around 5 grand... from the sublime to the ridiculous...

If you use a splitter cable to send (for example) right channel to both right and left, then thats not quite the same thing as extracting the vertical component only. I think... but i need more coffee

Thanks Jon, I had thought about a second turntable, but apart from cost my wife might freak out at 2 turntables bolted to our sitting room wall!

cheers, Ewen

you could argue that a basic rega with the mono cartridge is entirely appropriate for what must be pretty old vinyl? And a record cleaner machine would be handy too

Can you simply claim that two turntables is "stereo"? I tried that with my husband and he gave me a hard stare... so maybe not a good idea... :-)

jon honeyball posted:

I know this doesnt directly answer your question, but for best results, you should get a mono cartridge. Rega does one which is cheap around 70 pounds but has a 78rpm stylus profile which might well be just fine. And there is a Dynavector XV1S Mono cartridge at around 5 grand... from the sublime to the ridiculous...

If you use a splitter cable to send (for example) right channel to both right and left, then thats not quite the same thing as extracting the vertical component only. I think... but i need more coffee

IIRC the grooves of LPs are much finer than 78s, but with LPs not a lot of difference between mono and stereo in terms of dimensions, an I think a 78 profile stylus was quite a bit larger, which would be inappropriate. Whether a spherical rather than elliptical stylus would be better than a normal cartidge is another matter -its certainly what they were played with at the time of release, so might give closer to the sound of the day, but if the cutter was close to elliptical, as I imagine it would have been, then elliptical would still be expected to give closest to what was laid in the grooves.

However, because with early disks the grooves wiggled rather than having up and down motion (twin at 45°) for stereo, the compliance of cartridges was different, so that might be where the biggest difference occurs, the stylus having to wiggle from side to side readily, for which a stereo cartridge isn't designed. 

All that said, once stereo was introduced, I presume there came a point where mono might have been recorded with vertical rather than horizontal modulation, using the same cutters as stereo disks but fed with an identical signal to each channel - if so, surely those would be best with a stereo cartidge with outputs paralelled, though possibly needing a tweak to amp input impedance matching.

If a second TT, arm or arm top aren't options a mono button is the next best bet, all the excuse you need for that 282  but probably only necessary for pre stereo era mono recordings where the background noise is like frying bacon because vertical motion wasn't controlled.

If you made a switch box to run the cartridge coils in series with the output split to the 2 channels of the phono stage input you'd mess up the loading and it would likely sound worse than running it in stereo without such a box. Put one after the phono stage you'll most likely fry something other than bacon.

or 52 :-)

Ewen posted:

Hello, this is my first post.  I want to get the most out of some early mono Stones records, but no mono button on my NAC202. I read on Steve Hoffman's forum about placing y splitter cables between turntable and phono stage; anyone tried this? If so where to buy decent cables, I've only found cheap ones for a few quid on eBay. Many thanks.

When you play the mono records on your stereo rig, what don't you like about the result? My understanding is that stereo effectively uses the vertical modulation to describe the DIFFERENCE between left and right channels. A mono recording would ideally have no vertical modulation so even a stereo cartridge would therefore play both channels almost identically. I don't use a TT anymore, but when I did I found that mono recordings played just fine. However a cartridge that is designed only for mono has no vertical capability and will therefore output an identical signal to both left and right channels.

Electronically combining left and right channels does not "properly" correct any issues that may arise from playing a mono record with a stereo cartridge, but may improve the listening experience nonetheless. (It is perhaps an even worse idea if the record is actually stereo)

Ewen posted:

Thanks Jon, I had thought about a second turntable, but apart from cost my wife might freak out at 2 turntables bolted to our sitting room wall!

cheers, Ewen

 

The fans of the vintage Garrad and Thorens TTs have extra arm boards for different arm cartridge combinations. A few screws and you have a different cartridge setup the way you want and ready to go. 

Phil

The mono button on my preamp has only minimal effect on the sound quality of my mono vinyls - little bit reduced noise floor but still lot of surface noise.

I would assume a mono cartridge is the way to go. 

Or buy your music again on stereo vinyl, this is what I did ;-) 

I find that a mono button is pretty much essential when replaying mono LPs with a stereo cartridge.  I find that it dramatically reduces noise.  I have found that the Denon DL103 is an excellent stereo cartridge to use on mono LPs.  I wonder whether this may be down to its low compliance.  

plus one.

I use a DL103, it plays mono very well, I have a mint mono pepper re-issue that plays with plenty of prat and no noise, in fact all of my beatles mono’s play fine. Although it does struggle with a Maria Callas Mono record I have.

 If you’re not enjoying the early stones albums, it’s probably down to the fact they’re not very good, rather than the fact they’re mono.

fatcat posted:

If you’re not enjoying the early stones albums, it’s probably down to the fact they’re not very good, rather than the fact they’re mono.

Blasphemy!  

The only difference I've ever noticed is a definite reduction in rumble when the mono button is engaged.