Dan Dare

Good advice. To isolate my subs from floors and stages, I use semi-hard rubber tiles that I bought from a company that supplies them to schools, playgrounds and similar to place around swings and slides to prevent kids from injuring themselves if they fall. They're half a metre square, quite heavy and do a good job. The material is grippy, so cabs don't slide or move. Being intended for outdoor use, they're tough, too. Google "playground rubber tiles" and you'll find plenty.

Your bass and treble controls will each have a centre frequency and those frequencies will be most heavily cut or boosted. Depending on the slope of the filters, there will be a gradually lessening effect above and below the centre frequencies (probably stretching over approximately an octave, maybe a little more). Two frequencies of "bass" and "treble" adjustment, as found on most domestic amps, are crude and inadequate to cover the entire audio frequency range. They're really only put there as sales aids by manufacturers. If you really want to tweak eq properly, you need something like a 31 band or 1/3 octave graphic or a decent multi-frequency parametric eq.

And here. A Planar 2 is a great inexpensive TT, but adding a cartridge (the Rega ND3 is ideal) will take it quite a bit over your £500 budget. Pro-Jects are decent. For your budget, I'd steer clear of real vintage items. Any suspended sub-chassis designs, such as Linn, that you can get for £500 are almost certainly going to need you to spend money to bring them up to snuff. However, something like a used but fairly recent Planar 2 or 3 (or Pro-Ject equivalent) would fit the bill and come in around budget. At that level, people upgrade quite quickly, so you can pick things up that aren't too old or heavily used. I'm a Rega fan because they're made in England, spares/parts are readily available and they sound excellent for the price. They're also a nice to deal with smaller independent company and not part of a faceless corporation, which is important to me. Re siting a TT, unless your floors are flimsy and you jump around whilst listening to music, you'll be fine and won't need trick isolation devices. Purpose built hi-fi racks and shelving from the likes of Atacama are ridiculously over-priced. High mass shelves are often counter-productive, because they store low frequency resonance. A good inexpensive hack is to buy a laminated bamboo cutting board (they're light, rigid and non-resonant) of suitable size and add adjustable spikes at each corner so it can be levelled. Put it on top of your sideboard or wherever and stand the TT on it. I've done that with my Planar 6 and it works very well. I can tap the rack it sits on firmly whilst a record is playing and no sound comes through my speakers.

Try it with no instrument connected. Single coil pickups are prone to picking up RF noise. If the amp is fine with no instrument connected, you may benefit from adding some screening tape to the control cavities.

Is that with or without an instrument plugged into it? If not, the hiss isn't coming from the amp.

It's that time of year. People have loaded the credit cards to the max for Xmas and won't be making large purchases until they've made a bit of a dent in the debt. It's always that way at this time. A good time to buy if you have money burning a hole in your pocket as sellers know it will be March-April before things pick up, so you can make cheeky offers.

The D4 will be far superior sounding, but I think it might lack the weight you need in situations where there is no PA support. I'm a PJB user and love them, but I'm under no illusions about their abilities. The volume they produce is remarkable for their size, but two 4" drivers aren't going to blow the bloody doors off, although they will sound lovely.

As a PJB user, I can assure you it's simple. Unbolt the grille and you can remove the bolts that hold the drivers in place. Just make sure you note the way connections are made to the drivers (the C8, like my C4s, has them wired series/parallel). There is stuffing in the cab, which will have absorbed the smoke and will not respond to leaving vinegar nearby or similar.

The paper driver cones and acoustic stuffing will have absorbed the fag smoke, so you'll probably have to take them out, let the drivers air for a while and wash and thoroughly dry the stuffing before putting it all back together. Worth trying the baking soda trick in the empty cab at the same time. Just ensure you hoover it all out before re-assembly.

One is silver with black writing. The other is black with yellow writing.

Stock VVT for me. I've tried alternatives, including an active East pre', but only the stock set-up gives me the classic J bass sound - neck on full, bridge and tone backed off a smidge. Ymmv of course.

Yep. You can't take it with you. I would add that expensive doesn't always equal better, depending on what you want/need. In terms of function, the law of diminishing returns kicks in once you get towards £2k and upwards. However, pride of ownership is important. A nicer instrument will make you happier than a giant telly.

The Poxies

You can't adjust/straighten a damaged stylus. A replacement OE stylus for that cart' is around £60. I'd be leery of no-name or knock-off ones, but it's your choice. Google it and you'll find plenty. It goes without saying that you shouldn't play your vinyl if the stylus is as badly out of alignment as you state. You'll do serious damage. It's worth replacing very old belts on turntables as they do stretch and even perish. If it's 40 years old, it could probably do with a drop of oil for the bearing, but enquire of the everything Dual website you refer to.

I'd still have a look inside the plugs to check the connections. Even if they're Eich and genuine Neutrik, mistakes can still happen at the factory. Has to be worth taking a couple of minutes to make sure. Combo jack/Speakon sockets use different connections internally for each type of plug. I'd ask a tech' to check over the amp if nothing solves the issue. We can't really offer anything other than suggestions.