Thorens turntable to play CD4

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M

moeszizlak69

Guest
Hi everyone,
My HDD died about 5 weeks ago, so Im happy to be back online.

I've purchased thorens TD165, and have been offered a pickering 625 DJ cartridge, I've seen a 2400Q quad stylus for around A$200, to suit the 625 DJ cartridge.
I am unsure of the association of moving coil and moving magnet and their relation to playing back CD4. Can anyone offer some advice that can determine what combination I need for CD4.

Also Does anyone know of an aftermarket headshell that suits the Thorens. I believe its the TP 11 tonearm. It has the small weights for anti-skate adjustment.

atm the moment the thorens has a shure M91ED cart/styli.

thankyou from
moe
 
moeszizlak69 said:
Hi everyone,
My HDD died about 5 weeks ago, so Im happy to be back online.

I've purchased thorens TD165, and have been offered a pickering 625 DJ cartridge, I've seen a 2400Q quad stylus for around A$200, to suit the 625 DJ cartridge.
I am unsure of the association of moving coil and moving magnet and their relation to playing back CD4. Can anyone offer some advice that can determine what combination I need for CD4.

Also Does anyone know of an aftermarket headshell that suits the Thorens. I believe its the TP 11 tonearm. It has the small weights for anti-skate adjustment.

atm the moment the thorens has a shure M91ED cart/styli.

thankyou from
moe
Click to expand...

Hi Moe. I am afraid that you are out of luck for an aftermarket Thorens headshell. They are proprietary, and pretty hard to find. eBay is your best bet, but they are usually quite expensive. Don't bother with a moving coil cartridge. I love moving coils for CD-4, but they need the right tonearm and a TP-11 is just not suitable for an MC pickup. I don't know much about the Pickering for CD-4, but the Audio Technica designs are the most popular. The stylus seems a bit pricy too. I realize that you are in Australia, but you should still be able to do better. Good luck, Mike.
 
A moving magnet cartridge is required to drive a CD-4 demodulator. To do it with a moving coil cart would require a flat preamp that has a frequency response out to 45 khz. I am not familiar with the Thorenz turntable, so I will let others handle that one. Good Luck!

The Quadfather
 
Thanks for the tips people,

I checked garage a records, they have th AT440ML @ US$89.95 + $6.00 shipping. It seems like I might go for this cart/styli. I understand it reads a signal upto 32KHz is this enough for CD4 or would I be better off saving for the AT ?C09? ML that reads signals to 50KHz? Although the price of these cart/styli are US$499.00.

I am a novice CD4 enthusiast, so I could hold off on the AT ?C09? ML until I gain a greater understanding of CD4.

Would anyone like to offer their advice as to what they would do?

p.s I dont earn much money, so it would take considerable time to save US$500.00

Thanks again
from Moe
 
Hi .

I own a THORENS TD-190-1 , and I like the sound I am getting for cd4 playback . The sound from my thorens turntable very good for quad and I have no problems at all. I no that its not the best thorens turntable that they make , but for a fully automatic turntable and for the price is not bad .I no that they make a better one but I did not want to spend the extra money on that .

So if you want to buy a new turntable and want to no if quad wil work on this turntable , yes it will and I get great sound from it . Also you need to upgrade the mm cartridge with it , to audio techina at440mml . Thats the one I have and I like It very well . So if you want a new turntable and want to no if it will work with quad I no it will, I own it and it works fine for me .

dave
 
moeszizlak69 said:
Thanks for the tips people,

I checked garage a records, they have th AT440ML @ US$89.95 + $6.00 shipping. It seems like I might go for this cart/styli. I understand it reads a signal upto 32KHz is this enough for CD4 or would I be better off saving for the AT ?C09? ML that reads signals to 50KHz? Although the price of these cart/styli are US$499.00.

I am a novice CD4 enthusiast, so I could hold off on the AT ?C09? ML until I gain a greater understanding of CD4.

Would anyone like to offer their advice as to what they would do?

p.s I dont earn much money, so it would take considerable time to save US$500.00

Thanks again
from Moe
Click to expand...

Hi Moe!

My suggestion would be to look back at some old threads here about cd-4, there are issues like low cap wirering that was built into all vintage cd-4 tables that the gear makers back when felt had to be for proper cd-4 reproduction. I'm doubt that the Thorens tables have that. For the demod to work correctly the cart needs to pass 45-50 khz. So dig deep in the past threads and be informed before you leap! Nice cd-4 carts come up regular on ebay. Enjoy!!
 
Last edited:
As long as this thread is alive again....

I use a Technics 1200 MKII to play my CD-4 vinyl with an Audio Technica AT15Sa cartridge. I had read about the low cap wiring and wondered if it would make any difference to my setup or if it something that is even possible with my turntable. Is there some sort of adapter that would make the wiring low cap? I have the Marantz CD-400 demod with it if that matters.
 
Bob Romano said:
As long as this thread is alive again....

I use a Technics 1200 MKII to play my CD-4 vinyl with an Audio Technica AT15Sa cartridge. I had read about the low cap wiring and wondered if it would make any difference to my setup or if it something that is even possible with my turntable. Is there some sort of adapter that would make the wiring low cap? I have the Marantz CD-400 demod with it if that matters.
Click to expand...

That's a good question that I don't have an answer for, maybe an SME? You table experts. does some one make a low cap replacment tone arm?
 
For the records, i play cd4 on a Thorens 166 mk2 just fine, with audiotechnica cart.
 
Hey Bob,
I'm not sure how much difference the tonearm/turntable wiring makes because I'm not sure about the specs of my turntable's wiring but I can tell you that I've got a 20+ year old Technics 1200MkII Turntable and a Marantz CD-400B CD-4 decoder (The B is the fully automatic 30kHz carrier adjust version) and after struggling with the Ebay Ed Saunders Audio Technica cartridge off and on for quite a while on several different makes/models/types of turntables I finally ordered a AT 440MLa cartridge last month to see if CD-4 would really work with the equipment I have and I'm extremely happy with the end results I'm getting from the 440MLa cartridge. Clean sound with amazing separation on all four channels, even from some of my CD-4 records that would make you cringe in anything but regular stereo mode no matter what I tried and no matter what protractor I tried or how much I tweaked and tweaked the turntable.
From the Ed Saunders cartridge I got decent right front/rear separation with clean audio most of the time but the left channels were always a mess. I could swap headshell wiring and the problems would actually swap to the right side with the same results if I wired the headshell correctly and swapped the turntable connectors at the decoder's phono input so I knew that my used decoder was working properly.
So I don't know if the cartridge I got from Ed Saunders was possibly defective and maybe has an internal problem or if it's just very picky about the equipment you try to use it with and nothing of mine met its' standards or what exactly. Also, it took me a very long time (years) to piece together everything, isolate the problem and eliminate it.
Kudos to Ed for trying to find a modern workable CD-4 solution but the results I experienced from it proved mildly enticing but mostly frustrating and I almost gave up on CD-4 because of it. After simply making one last effort by buying the 440MLa to try instead, I'm so glad I didn't give up!

I'm sure there are other cartridges that will work and I would like to find a new P-Mount cartridge that works as well as the 440MLa but for now I definitely give a big thumbs up to the 440MLa cartridge and say thank you to Audio Technica for the simple and excellent CD-4 results I'm now getting!

Plus I've read that the CD-400B decoder doesn't necessarily get along with certain artist/label quadradiscs, although I can't find that post anymore, and that having a decoder with manual carrier adjustment eliminates that issue but so far I like my CD-400B since it eliminated one step from my CD-4 learning curve and I haven't come across any album in my 30+ CD-4 LP collection that my decoder doesn't like now that I have a good cartridge to play them with.

I hope this helps someone else in the future with their first time CD-4 setup experience...

Now I'm off to try and figure out what I need (and where I can get it) to properly decode my three very clean Command Quadraphonic format Steely Dan LP's next... :)

Happy New Year y'all !
 
It was interesting to me that the thread you linked says the 440ML (replaced by the 440MLa, the difference being?) is a poor choice for SQ and Matrixed decoding yet it seems to work well for CD-4 from what I'm hearing so far. I doubt I'd want to use a CD-4 compliant stylus for QS, SQ, and stereo playback primarily for stylus wear reasons anyway, granted it's been proven that new models of cartridges and styli are capable of successful CD-4 decoding and having to keep 2 tables set up can be inconvenient for sure but there are other cartridges I still like for stereo playback that ought to do SQ and QS just fine anyway (I hope).

Thomas
 
At the time when CD-4 was around in the 1970's SME produced as an accessory to the famous 3009 pick-up arm an ultra low capacitance down lead with RCA phono or five pin DIN connection. The physical appearance was that of a double connection lead, one cable to each stereo channel with cable of the same thickness as that of the ordinary stereo lead, which would of course have had to conduct for both left and right. Very heavy and relatively short in length. This may give some idea why it was that supplied leads where also quite thick by comparison to their stereo counterparts in the same era. Technics SH400 SE405H and so on. Hope that this helps.
 
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