Greetings music lovers, and welcome to Jeff's Place! I hope you are doing well, and that life is treating you kindly. I can't believe it is March 2022 already. The days seem to be racing past right now. I'm finding it challenging to keep up with everything going on that I want to do, and to... Read More »

It's time for some system maintenance, with my Classic 301 turntable off to visit Ray Clark in the UK for a little tune-up, and my vintage McIntosh MX110Z's volume pot finally died, so it's getting a new volume pot installed. So in the interim I've put together a really sweet combination of hifi gear for... Read More »

I'm nearing the point of finishing up my Soundsmith Zephyr Mk III photograph cartridge review for Positive Feedback, and as is my custom I thought I'd give you a sneak peek before I send it off to ye olde editors Dave and David for review and publication! I hope you enjoy it! ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪... Read More »

It's been an incredibly hectic week on all fronts, and I feel like I've been sprinting to keep up! I've been writing up my listening impressions for the Positive Feedback review of the new Soundsmith Zephyr Mk III phonograph cartridge from Peter Ledermann, and you should see that review published in the next week or... Read More »

I'm working on Part 2 of my Soundsmith review series for Positive Feedback right now, the Zephyr Mk III phonograph cartridge, and hope to have it published in the next few weeks. In my Part 1 Soundsmith review for Positive Feedback I reviewed the Soundsmith Carmen Mk II phonograph cartridge (HERE). I found the Carmen Mk II to... Read More »

I didn't think I was going to be able to get the Soundsmith Carmen Mk II phonograph cartridge review finished up over the weekend, but I was able to put in some long hours and get it finished up! The Positive Feedback review of the Soundsmith Carmen Mk II phono cartridge is now live HERE!... Read More »

I am hoping to finish up writing my Positive Feedback review of the new Soundsmith Carmen Mk II phonograph cartridge next week, with the reviews of the Soundsmith Zephyr Mk III phonograph cartridge and MMP3 Mk II phono preamp to follow in separate articles in due time. I thought you would enjoy reading a little "sneak peek"... Read More »

An old high-school buddy that I reconnected with recently, Mark, asked me for a recommendation for a HiFi system for $10K or under. Mark is actually the person who introduced me to enthusiast audio way back when we were in high-school together, but he's been out of enthusiast audio for quite a long while. As... Read More »

I'm into my fifth month of retirement from the day job now. My internal clock is still mostly geared to the hours that I worked, up at 4:30AM, arriving at the lab at 6AM, and getting home by 4PM. I'm sleeping in later and staying up later every day, but not by much. Even though... Read More »

There was a knock at the door just a moment ago, and it was the man in the Big Brown Truck dropping off a package from Peter Ledermann of Soundsmith fame. As I mentioned in a previous post, I get quite a few emails asking for a recommendation of a relatively affordable phonograph cartridge that is... Read More »

In the last six decades I haven't broken a single phonograph cartridge, but in the last two weeks I've broken two, and the crazy thing about it is I don't even know how I did it in either case. The first cartridge fatality was the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 phonograph cartridge Guy Pelletier sent me. I... Read More »

I've been enjoying listening to and experimenting with the voicing of Guy Pelletier's "tunable" Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 phonograph cartridge on my restored and "hot-rodded" vintage Thorens TD-124. As is my custom, I like to blog about my "getting acquainted" stage with new audio products, offering first impressions about the quality, ease of use, sonic... Read More »

I've really been looking forward to listening to and experimenting with the voicing of the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 tunable phonograph cartridge from Guy Pelletier. The idea behind the Audio MusiKraft tunable Denon DL-103 is that it offers a Denon DL-103 enthusiast, like myself, the potential of an almost unlimited amount of voicing options through... Read More »

It's been quite a while since I've given my Denon DL-103 MC phonograph cartridge a good listen, so I thought I'd get the Denon out, mount it up, and play some music. The arrival of the hot-rodded Denon DL-103 from Audio MusiKraft, which I've been listening to for a while now, got me to thinking... Read More »

This weekend I've been hard at work on the Positive Feedback article about the impressive Murasakino Musique Analogue ‘Sumile’ MC phonograph cartridge. Over the last few weeks I've got a lot of the writing done for the article, and I'm hoping to wrap it up today, but if not, in the next few days, if... Read More »

Back when Yazaki-san sent me a set of headshell leads made of vintage Western Electric WE24GA wire to try, it came as a bit of a surprise to me that headshell leads made such a substantial contribution to overall musical & sonic performance. The difference in sound & musicality between the stock & WE24GA headshell... Read More »

While it'll be a while before I get a full formal review written for Positive Feedback about the Audio MusiKraft ‘Tunable’ Denon DL-103 phono cartridge I received from Guy Pelletier (it's a ways down the review queue), I want to keep you appraised of developments along the way about this interesting phono cartridge here at Jeff's... Read More »

A while back as I was fine tuning the voicing of the Sumile MC phono cartridge that's in for review, I noticed the stock headshell wires on my Schick headshell were looking a little ragged from swapping cartridges in and out a lot, so I thought I'd replace them. My first thought was to replace... Read More »

The Murasakino Musique Analogue ‘Sumile’ MC phonograph cartridge makes me smile while I'm listening to music! The Sumile reminds me of the exotic Lefson Ultra resistors from France, and like the Ultra's, the Sumile is astonishingly transparent & resolving, while being rich, natural, and exceedingly musical at the same time - a very nice magic trick! With the wirewound resistors... Read More »

I've mentioned before that I get pretty excited whenever I hear from Yoshi-san & Elia-san (father & son) of the MuSon Project in Osaka, Japan, who export Japanese audio exotica to The World, because it means that something exciting is about to happen audio-wise! Yoshi-san told me that he had a new phonograph cartridge that he... Read More »