Harman Kardon T25 Turntable

We've had lots of Harman Kardon products and each one of them are excellent pieces. However, this little guy has a few tricks up its sleeves. There's quite a bit of features packed into this tiny compact turntable. For one, it offers pitch control that many Japanese belt drive turntables don't have and second, there is a tiny set screw at the back of the base of the tone arm that offers a bit of height adjustment for the tone arm. That means, it has VTA but, it is fairly limited. But, nonetheless functional.

It has nice clean look with an angled dustcover and the tone arm looks as if it is a stipped down version of the T65, Japanese made of course. Not to mention, they both use the same headshell. It is a well made table with a low mass tone arm, which is nice for the Shure Me95ED cartridge mounted on it.

Internally, it is well designed and well layed out. Unlike the upper end HK turntables, this is not suspended. But, originally, sat on sprung feet. However, they have deteriorated over the years and we've replaced them. Think, Pioneer PL-518 feet, they don't age well.

Aesthetically, it is in nice shape. Sonically, it sounds really good. Shure cartridges tend to like the low mass tone arms and the Me95, which is a M95 variant, is a great cartridge. The best feature of all, and I am sure many would disagree with me, is the fact the arm returns at the end.

This is a very nice 2-speed, belt drive, semi-automatic turntable. It makes a great starter table, especially if one isn't looking for something large. The base is slightly larger than 14" x 15".

It also has a nifty strobe disc that sits on the mat. As always, all our turntables have been completely gone through.

For more information:
http://www.vinylengine.com/library/harman-kardon/t25.shtml

Energy Encore 2 Speakers

My family were the original owners of these speakers. We actually had the entire Energy Encore 5.1 surround set, minus the integrated stands. Slowly, the rear speakers were sold. I kept the subwoofer to use with my sound bar, and the center channel broke. All that remained were these little guys sitting on the same shelving unit for the past 15ish years. I used them for a bit for my computer setup but, opted to use my Mirage Omni 350 instead. While these are considered "big box store" speakers, they are still great little speakers. These were made in Canada. Used their hyperdome aluminum tweeter that made Energy famous from the Pro22 days (thank you Burhoe!). A super nice black piano finish and sealed box, with a 4" long throw woofer. Some Specifications that I took from the web: System Type: Magnetically shielded acoustic suspension satellite Tweeter: 1" (28mm) Aluminum dome with cloth suspension Woofers: 4" (112mm) Multi-laminated aluminum polycarbonate c

Yamaha YP-66 Turntable

The rosewood vinyl wrapped twin sibling of the Yamaha YP-221, they are the exactly the same other than the colour of the plinth and instead of silver plastic bits on the YP-221 the YP-66 has black bits. This is your typical belt drive turntable of the mid to late 70s. It's a 2-speed with automatic return (semi-automatic). It's a nice entry level turntable with all the decent built quality that you find on majority of the Japanese made tables of that era. It has a good sized motor and a decent weight. Yamaha tables are like Sony tables, they always have decent quality components and they always look nice to the eyes. The slight smoked dustcover and the rosewood plinth makes it quite unique to look at. Sadly, the antiskate weight on our isn't original. It was missing when we got it. After a bit of research we found the appropriate weight and found an appropriate weight to retrofit into our table. We found a nice brass weight to fit with the design. And, as usual,

Dual CS-616Q Turntable

Finally doing a write up for a couple of turntables. So, let's start with the Dual CS-616Q. Made around the mid 80s when wood-grain design were no longer in fashion and the new sleek grey and black were in. This Dual is in really nice shape, and I mean real nice shape. While it's not from the 70s, it doesn't mean it's not quality. In comparison to other companies of the time that still made entry level turntables, this Dual is really well made. It has decent heft and it is German made so a lot of precision was still put into it. It is a direct drive, a true semi-automatic and quartz lock turntable. Why do I mean true semi-automatic? Well, before some of their earlier turntables had an auto-lift off at the end but the tonearm never returned to the rest post. So, having it returning is a nice feature to have! It also features Dual's ULM (ultra low mass) tonearm and their EDS motor. These tonearms are especially nice for higher compliant cartridges as

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