Grado DJ100i

Man of man, after a long time debating (2 years enough?lol) I deiced to give these a go...thought I would go for the 100i just incase they are shit, the 200i is more expensive.

Not for hip-hop scratching but these are the bomb for mixing..sound like a good hi-fi cart!

I wrote my initial thoughts here if any one is interested about them...to answer MPC heads question on what is it like for sampling? Great! Better than ANY other DJ cart on the market sound wise for sure and I have had a few.
http://wavemusic.com/community/showthread.php?t=10652

Also worth noting is you can use ANY of the Prestige styluses on this body, that is ANY from the DJ range AND Hi-Fi range BUT I am told the DJ-200i's have better magnetics in the cart also.

Hey junkie, 53 quid is fair enough for those! I deal loads with hifi turntables and the Grado cartridges are very good in the low and medium price range. Would love to know how they compare to the Ortfon Gold concorde systems?!

As for sampling, I just got my second Dual CS 601 off eBay for like 36,- Euros (hope the fella does proper packing). Need to add another 39,- Euros for a Shure M70 Bx and I'm good to go! No back cueing and ish though with this one.

Ahh, what I wanted to say: Man I really love your Urei Mixer. Your whole DJ setup is such a boutique one with the mixer, tables, cartridges and B&W speakers! When are you gonna exchange the standard tonearm to a REGA or even used SME??? I've seen some people do this and it's supposed to boooooost the audio quality enormously!

I can tell you how they compare to the Gold because Ortofon's Gold is actually just a Night Club E mk1 that is gold plated and these wipe the floor with it, I have had almost every pro-dj needle from every brand; Stanton, Shure, Audio Technica, Pickering and Ortofon
These are by far the sweetest, the DJ200i is even better but hey ho, I find Ortofon's too bright and sibilant..I have always preffered a American sound..full bodied, warm and lots of energy...Hence why most of my fave needles are American lol Stanton, Shure and Grado

A friend on this forum (Mark Andrews) had his 1200's moded with Rega RB-301's and DJ200i's, to be honest I don't mid what it sounds like at the moment, thing with high-end audio is you can get very anal and loose the plot spending a lot of money and not enjoying it (I think we all have been there me included lol)
Only thing I will do is get separate phono pre-amps for each deck as the Urei don't like the low output of the Grado's
They are actually 4mv not 5, the Urei works optimally with carts at 5 to 5.5MV
I would like a vintage Thorens deck for playback but have no space

PS what I love about the Urei other than it's sound is this...the way it mixes, no other mixer I have played gives you so much feeling and freedom, mixing is fun and those blends sound tight...turn brain off and mix...it's a sub conscious thing with it
From old disco cuts to house to classical...At first the mixer works you making you think then it's the other way round lol

My fave carts were the classic Stanton 680SE and 680EL mk1 as used by Richard Long in all the classic NY night clubs such as Paradise Garage

I used up most of the old new remaining stock of them, SE great Disco cart for spinning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxMhCiKtMHg

vinyl_junkie_1620 wrote:thing with high-end audio is you can get very anal and loose the plot spending a lot of money and not enjoying it

Yeah you're right! I was about to fall for that stuff, too! Wanted to start saving up money for a 10,000+ stereo and then I just realised "WTF are you doing?"

But honestly my new approach isn't less crazy: I want to build everything myself (or at least design it and have some others built components for me like woodwork etc. and I'm gonna do the electronics part). First thing will be speakers! My dad is coming for a visit next week and he's a handy man so we're gonna build two cabinets. The speakers (or the speaker chassis) I'll use are vintage Grundig widerange speakers from 1964. Some idiot threw a stereo vintage tube radio away so I only needed to disassemble the speakers. So, I'll pay maybe 30,-€ for the cabinet material and I'll have speakers better than alot of commercial available ones. I had a testrun with them mounted in a cardboard box and IT BLEW MY MIND!!! Probably not the best speakers for house and stuff, but I love to listen to loads of jazz and brazilian stuff. So lovely! Gonna post a thread in the off topic section, when they are finished!

Next is a Bottlehead tube amp kit. They're okay in price and supposed to sound good....and easy to built! Let's see!

You already know what kind of phono pre you'll be getting? I'm using THIS one and I think, for that is an entry level unit, it sounds good!

But I don't know, if you'd rather get something mor high-endish?

lol I was looking at this one

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/summary.php?PID=29

Thing is and this is very funny, a friend spent a lot of money on a Creek phono stage (He had a Rane Empath) and yea ok it sounded better than the manky Empath BUT here is the funny part, do you remember those Electix studio boxes like their filters, eq and ish?
Well he had a Electrix EQ killer and those have phono inputs.....here is the good bit the phono stage on it sounded better than the Rane and high end expensive Creek phono stage LOL

I'm with you on building ish...I like to listen to a lot of Jazz too
I wanted to build a external regulated PSU for my Urei as the stock Urei one is shite although the LE one is still miles better than the original one where the power regulators got so hot they would scorch the filter caps.
I have a friend who makes them but he charges a lot of money lol

Here is a pic of the filter caps from a original 1620

The LE's PSU is re-designed and has placed the power reg's in a better place and also used upgraded heat-sinks + bigger filter caps.
It's still a very crude crappy design though and the mixer could be a lot quieter with a better PSU..SNR is it's one big downfall imo

I got a friend who is into building high end tube amps himself and stuff and he says the most important part of any amp is the power supply cause it lies IN (!!!) the signal path. And good transformers are most of the times hand made by experts and that costs it's money. It's really what you pay for good material and good craftsmanship! It's nothing to do with the vodoo shizzle of let's say high end cable for 1,000 quid or stuff.

I think the Cambridge unit is not too bad either . Nice one with Electix thing! Yeah I know their units. Their kinda cheap, aren't they? Well, with the knowledge I'm slowly gaining I must say: never believe anything mags write or hifi retailers say. Listen to the stuff yourself! I'm gonna build my shit myself from now on....will take some time cause I'm not too experienced, but it would take the same time to save money for the high end stuff! So anyway!

NguoiDuc wrote:I got a friend who is into building high end tube amps himself and stuff and he says the most important part of any amp is the power supply cause it lies IN (!!!) the signal path. And good transformers are most of the times hand made by experts and that costs it's money. It's really what you pay for good material and good craftsmanship! It's nothing to do with the vodoo shizzle of let's say high end cable for 1,000 quid or stuff.

I think the Cambridge unit is not too bad either . Nice one with Electix thing! Yeah I know their units. Their kinda cheap, aren't they? Well, with the knowledge I'm slowly gaining I must say: never believe anything mags write or hifi retailers say. Listen to the stuff yourself! I'm gonna build my **** myself from now on....will take some time cause I'm not too experienced, but it would take the same time to save money for the high end stuff! So anyway!

Exactly spot on man and don't believe in audio voodoo, I am friends with quite a good engineer who does a lot of work in studios and also makes his own products and he always puts things into perspective for me.
Yes PSU's are very important, usually an indication some thought has been put into a piece of gear is if they use a torodial transformer, these are much more efficient and also don't suffer from buzzing as plates get loose with age, the one mixer brand I know that really puts thought into all this is Formula Sound..I had one of their mixers and as high quality as it was I didn't like it one bit lol
Yep Electrix cheap things but it was very surprising how good it sounded...he sold the Creek pre-amp lol
You got the right attitude...use your ears

Hey junkie! I invite you to visit the off topic section! You'll know what thread to read there!

vinyl_junkie_1620 wrote:...a friend spent a lot of money on a Creek phono stage (He had a Rane Empath) and yea ok it sounded better than the manky Empath...

Are the Rane mixers not as great sounding in your opinion as people claim?

Coz wrote:

vinyl_junkie_1620 wrote:...a friend spent a lot of money on a Creek phono stage (He had a Rane Empath) and yea ok it sounded better than the manky Empath...

Are the Rane mixers not as great sounding in your opinion as people claim?

Didn't think the Empath was all that imo, the MP-44 and 2016A sound nice though..Can't really comment on sound but I played a good ol' old skool original MP24 in a club and it sounded good.
Don't get me wrong I love Rane gear, well made American stuff but I didn't get the hype with that mixer. I have the sound recordings from the comparison here somewhere still..should upload them at one point, we used a Shure shure m97xe cart

What about their scratch mixers? Similar sound to the Empath?

I definitely want to look at getting at a top sounding mixer at some point.

Coz wrote:What about their scratch mixers? Similar sound to the Empath?

I definitely want to look at getting at a top sounding mixer at some point.

I never tried their scratch mixers but imo there is nothing out there for that kind of use that would come close sound wise to the Rane or Rodec Scratch Box just at a guess...Another would be the Allen & Heath Xone 02 which I have used and sounded really clean and nice but for some reason found them really bland lol U gona' battle me on that oh mr fancy then some kid would rip it out on a shitty PMC 05 and win...ok I'm gettin carried away hahah

Vestax is rubbish but the funny things is as awful as it is it's a great scratch mixer imo and was very popular..I'm talking about the 05 Pro 2
Cheap nasty components and crappy sound BUT nice x-fader and that hard kinda lo-fi sound works with the style of music played...I know I'm crazy right lol

Eclere seem to be getting really popular now too and they always made solid stuff...never used them though