If you are looking for a low cost tonearm cable, I would think the Jelco would be very tough to beat, even at four or five times the price. I did end up having mine cryoed and burned in on an Audiodharma cable cooker (the Cardas cable I had also had been treated that way). The Jelco is an absolute steal and also noticeably better than the Cardas I linked to above. Mine is the balanced version so a bit more money around $140 but the single ended (either straight or 90 degree din-mine is straight and works fine with my Gyro) is availabable around $100.
On a lark a couple of months ago I bought the Jelco tonearm cable just as a cheap experiment. The Van den Hul MCD 502 phono cable that I have that dates back to the late 80's is indeed an absolute piece of crap.īuilt by Gene at Takefiveaudio a few years ago and the Takefive Cardas cable was significantly better. It's amazing to me how difference good cabling makes, particularly from the tonearm to the phono stage! I beginning to think David Salz of Wireworld is right, a number of the problems we think we hear with our stereo components are due to colorations and distortions caused by the cables/interfaces. The mids are dark and the highs are bright, the bass is wooly and loose, and there isn't much openness, clarity or soundstage depth. I didn't think it was possible for a cable to be dark AND bright, but it is. Well, I got as far as about 1 LP this stock cable is dreadful. I remember it being unimpressive, but I wanted to be able to listen to LPs. Jelco is now unable to accept new orders from April 2nd, 2020, due to the availability of transportation and delays in production due to the spread of the serious infectious disease COVID-19. In meantime, I dug out the SME V stock Van den Hul tonearm cable from the arm box and hooked it up tonight, spun up an LP and listened. The tonearm serves as the second cartridge. The Grover's phono cable I use for my late 80s-vintage SME V tonearm recently developed developed a nasty hum due to a short or break in the ground lead near the tonearm DIN plug end (more on that later) I will have to send it back to Grover for repair. Discover record players from trusted brands including Thorns, Rega and SME. To my surprise, I found that he lives in the remote village in Kerala and they are farmers and has a small business selling Fertilizers! I looked in the net and this arm appears to be one of the earliest models of SME 3012. Vintage Philips Stella Type ST314A Radiogram Stereogram Turntable Record. I told him that i was looking for one for my Lenco L-75 and made a bee-line to his place to grab it. He saw all the arm pods and other players I had and told me that I was not planning to sell the spare tone arm but thought I can have better use of it and asked if I was interested in buying it. When he came here to buy the Dual, he surprised me by telling that he has a Thorens 124 model 2 with a SME 3012 which he has been using for several years.In fact, it was his father who bought it 20 odd years ago and during the course of time replaced the original SME 3012 arm with a later model. Out of the blue a gentlemen called me wanting to buy a Dual 704 DD from me. I had purchased an excellent L-75 recently and going through number of posts about an effective plinth modification and wished in my heart about getting a good tone arm for it. Now for some pics of the vintage tonearm and his venerable Thorens TD 124 Mark 2 To my surprise, I found that he lives in the remote village in Kerala and they are farmers and has a small business selling Fertilizers! I looked in the net and this arm appears to be one of the earliest models of SME 3012.