I've had this combination for 3 weeks after buying the combination as a good deal like you to have a spare cartridge as a back up & I also find the ATVM95ML as being a great step up from stylus I had before ?? but I also have the ATVM95SH which is something else .. & well worth stepping up to when you feel free to doing so to then maybe have the full set of styli from Audio Technica which is good fun to have for when playing older albums which can sometimes sound better on the lower grade styli of the group.

Thanks for sharing. I plan to buy the VM95ML for my turntable, Technics SL-1500 mk1. I heard that the VM95ML requires precise VTA (vertical tracking allingment), which my turntable doesn't have. Will this be a problem?

Hi there, actually i ran into something very similar to your case: i've in a garbage/dump a Dual 1218 along with a Dual CV60 solid state amplifier (dated back around 1972-75); well the tonearm was a bit bent, the head sled and stylus missing, most of levers and mechanics were completly gummed and stuck; after cleaning it with WD40 and just by giving look on this site about various maintenance jobs, I got some spare parts on the net and now as a miracle it works pefectly from the start/stop up to the tonearm height and clear is the drop on the platter, rpm speed is ok and pitch control is working too. I really love it even if compared to my other hi-fi rigs wich include Thorens TD280 MKII, Technics SL-D3 and Luxman PD284, this Dual stack has it's own beautiful "voice". Sorry to say but I'll never think to give it away Bro...

Big mistake

Made the switch to to the AT-VML95ML and must thank you for your guidance in this video. So happy - WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!!!! 😁😌👍😊🤪

Steuerpimpel.

Big big Mistake! especially for that low price. I am the proud owner of a 1229.

Thank you. Made my mind up. The 1000 hours is exceptional.

Yep! A very big mistake. Pain servicing it, but once done nothing comes close! Even the very expensive ones!

This is the either the exact or very-similar model that I grew up using in the '70s-80s. It worked great, and the stacker-action was very smooth. Worst thing about it is that my parents didn't clean the needle off very often and that made me think it just sounded bad, but one day I brushed off the wad of dust and guess what, good playback happened.

How did you get the top base so clean? I'm restoring one, and although it has turned very rough it's also very dirty. How did you get yours so clean? Thanks!

The more I look at it, the more I am glad that I refurbished and kept it.

Hey, where did you get the pad from?

Your going deeper on the groove with also more contact More details and info being transported from the Micro Line stylus ❤

Have an XB with a hum. Can you share the source for those new cables. If you already have provided a link, just ignore the question.

Thanks for sharing, I use a 95E also because it was cheap and was wondering how much of an upgrade to the ML would be, I like to swap cartridges to learn the differences, and needle replacement is easy with this AT.

Yes, I think it was a big mistake to sell it. I have a Dual 1229 also, that I completely overhauled. I was the original owner, so my Dual was in better cosmetic condition than yours but it was not in working condition at all. I had to remove all the old grease, relube everything, replace steurpimple, refill silicone damper fluid and several other parts, but it works like new and sounds great with a new AT540ml cartridge! I will never sell this Dual, not after all the sweat I put into it.

VM95E causes a lot of sibilance in the vocals for me. Is it improved or removed here in the ML?

I had one years ago and it was a surprisingly great sounding deck. Mine had a nice aftermarket arm lift. Wish I hadn’t sold it.

In my experience the VM95ML is one of the best budget cartridges since its release some years ago. It needs relativly low load capacitance around 200pf tho,but it is not overly picky about the tonearm (mass) as long as its not a ultra light or ultra heavy one. Imho a ideal replacement cartridge for many vintage turntables with medium mass S-tonearms. But it also works fine for example in lighter pre ULM straight Dual tonearms from the seventies. Soundwise its a tonally balanced cartridge with a slight tendency to the analytical side.

I still use my older turntables when I upgrade and keep them in my main system. My new Linn has an expensive cartridge so I use an older one with the K9 cartridge for older worn records. This cartridge accepts the ATVM95 series stylus’s so is cheap to replace. A third turntable a Rega P3 has a dedicated mono cartridge.

Nice review! Looks like a nice example of the original AR turntable you have there!👍🏻

I agree absolutely brilliant cartridge and stylus. I love it

The most fun thing about my new hobby of playing with hi-fi equipment is luck and serendipity of finding valuable things that other people didn't want. The other day I hadn't planned on stopping by a Goodwill outlet but I really had to pee and I knew they would have a bathroom. , had a pair of JBL 100 speakers for sale for $40 for the pair. They probably hadn't worked for a long time because the pots needed to be cleaned and the speakers weren't playing. After about 15 minutes of TLC they work perfectly. I have also rescued several turntables from the Goodwill bins. Somewhat would require a lot of labor to get them going again but others just needed a belt and a little bit cleaning of the pots. I enjoy seeing what other people find as well... like your turntable.

Great cartridge. It’s worth sourcing an alignment protractor which has two sets of parallel lines marked on the sweep across the record. It will help optimise the tracking across the whole record, not just the inner grooves. By the way, the AR turntable is fine with this level of cartridge. It’s simple looks disguise its quality.

Those aiwa must go ( It’s plastic )

Nice turntable but that blue and silver plastic component on the floor must go it doesn’t belong there it’s ruining the vintage looks but over all good video

Nice video May I suggest that you place your amplifier in an area where it can breathe with better ventilation

"Under $30"?! Wow, great score! Even finding an XA dustcover alone (in good shape) at that price is a deal! In the very early ones the 2nd motor had only one purpose: to bias the main motor to start spinning in the proper clockwise direction. This was because the best (i.e. quietest) drive motor AR could buy at the time spun in whichever direction it was initially nudged to do so and the various direction biasing mechanisms to solve this, at the time, also generated their own noise so were still objectionable. The second motor provided this initial direction "nudge" to the main motor via a tiny rubber belt to it. Later a single motor was found which was also equally quiet yet consistently only spun clockwise, so the "direction to start" motor was dropped. I know it seems odd but the failure to start spinning on its own with yours is possibly due to a failure to talc the belt annually. I know, you'd think: "But wouldn't the talc make it slip more and have an even HARDER time coming up to speed?" Yes, intuitively that would seem to make sense to me also, but for some odd reason it doesn't work that way. Another reason startup can be is slow (over 5 seconds) might be either that the bearing isn't clean and oiled or the thrust plate (the small, hard plastic disc at the bottom of the bearing hole) is worn out. After years/decades of use the spinning shaft drills a divot into this hard plastic so rather than a teeny tiny contact area (with almost no friction) the contact point turns into a larger bowl shaped depression with lots of friction on the shaft. If you are lucky the other side of this existing thrust plate disc is unused, unworn, so simply flipping the thrust plate disc over will get you back to the proper flat surface it should be. Otherwise you'd need to buy/fabricate a new one. [On a side note: XA tonearms that don't rotate freely might be missing their ball bearing under that shaft but the platter shaft has no ball bearing]. Good luck.

Great video, I’m guessing you seen the M. Zillch required watching for anyone who owns or plans to get one.

You want to be interesting? Be distinctive from the others who came before you. Be different. You want to talk about the ARXA? What do you have to say that hasn't been said hundreds of times before. Anecdotal or stories of how you came to own average equipment, mmmmm, aaaaah, not that interesting unless it's some uber cool product. Try to be distinctive like an AT ML cart on a ARXA, that was different. Dump the 482 CD player and the dual cassette deck. They're junk. Look for early CD players utilizing the Philips TDA 1541 DAC or Sonys with BUI laser transports(made of metal). You might find one in mint condition for a hundred bucks. Sites like Dutch Audio Classics lists all the decks with 1541vDACs. Mechanical devices like tape decks are expensive. No way around it. Avoid being like 99% of the doofuses on the web; Cheapaudio man, Jay's iyagi and their ilk who review the latest junk from China every week, with another "is this best thing or what" videos. Also making comparison videos where we're supposed to glean sonic differences over the internet. So, go forth and conquer or as a physics Professor I had in college used to say, "Or Someting Like Dat".

Okay, so I have watched, perused I think all of your videos and I appreciate that they're not vey long. Since I'm on the AT ML cart review, it is an excellent cartridge and honestly wonder if it's not too good for that turntable. The ARXA is a nice turntable. It's just not that special anymore. Yes, it might be better than the tables you have owned, but that's not saying much. I'm still amazed that you found your path to that cartridge because that cartridge and the entire Audio Technica line I think represents about the best bang for the buck at most price points. The contact line stylus is press fitted(nude) to the cantilever without a shank with fewer resonating parts, lower tip mass equals improved sound not to mention the superior polish on the stylus and better than say any offering from someone like Ortofon which I think are overrated. Simply put, this cartridge will work on a ten, fifteen, twenty grand turntable setup and just as important a better phono preamp. In other words, it will sound better and better on better equipment, it's that good. I don't think you ever see a cartridge like that on a table like that. So kudos to you.

Was the cartridge new when you bought it?

I've owned four over the last forty years from just cleaning one up, to modifications and complete restorations of others. The last and prettiest ARXA I owned I rebuilt motor with new lighted motor switch. All bearings redone with main platter bearing given a Lap polish plus the platter was brought to a mirror finish at a local machine shop that I have used for years, plus rewiring arm with a magnesium headshell that removes any breaks in the signal from the cartridge tabs to the RCA cables using a cotton wrapped wire(expensive). A couple of things about the table; Did you check the cartridge geometry is correct? The connections between the tonearm wire and the RCA leads out are attached poorly to that tin metal strap. It's better to solder the tonearm leads directly to the RCA cables and bypassing that tin strap. Why they did that I guess is for convenience at the expense of performance. Make sure the platter is level to the plinth and that the whole turntable is perfectly level. You can use a 4mm hex wrench as a guide to level the platter by placing it between the platter and base at the three points where the springs are. Adjust the platter height until it just clears the 4mm wrench at all three points. if you're feeling adventurous you could rewire the arm. I think why this turntable makes all these lists is Edgar Villchur's three point sprung sub chassis design set the trend for most highend turntables in the ensuing decades. I'll add the 1957 Quad ESL's and Futterman's OTL amp designs. from the fifties. Add a modern high end phono preamp to the three components and in a lot of ways you're making music few systems can muster today.

01:15 it is pronounced "Stoiarpimpel". you got the "Pimpel" right. "eu" is pronounced like "oi" in 'oi mate' or like the oi that oi-punks keep saying. "er" is pronounced as "ar" with a soft r. kind of like in the word 'car'. you could get away with just using "a" and just dropping the r. "a" pronounced as in 'car' not as in 'had' i've been watching a couple of 1229 vids this afternoon and noticed the common weird pronounciation of the Steuerpimpel. Just like your 1229 you were 90% there ;)

I like your presentation of this vid, I'm a born again vinyl listener, I gave my vinyl to a charity shop in the 90s, my wife bought me a audio-technica turntable for Christmas just gone and I love it since then I've amassed about 70 albums, I'm addicted I'm loving the listening experience again. Subscribed

i have used the shibata version of this cartridge for a couple of years and its a keeper, also they are very easy to fit and set up.

Of these, the shibita brown cartridge is the best,.Get a decent head on the arm.!This is catastrophic!

I just got one, solid turntable 👍🏻

I found one on the curb awaiting the garbage pickup back in the early 80's, fixed it up and gifted it to a coworker along with some KLH -9 (?) found in the dumpster, I really enjoyed the pre-internet research, and used it until I bought a Thorens TD-146. The arm bearings were a bit of a mystery - and hum with a Grado cartridge can be an issue. The suspension works best on a rigid base - not happy with floors that bounce - I wall-mounted a shelf. Rest of my system at college (UIUC, mid-70's) was an early AR table w/ Grado F3E cartridge, Dynaco SCA-35 integrated (kit-built), and custom speakers I designed/built with parts from CTS (KY) and McGee of Kansas City. I usually crafted 2-way sealed box, but then discovered 10" passive radiator / 8" woofer that were matched by mfr.

the 1229 was my first turntable back in 1973 when I was in the Marines at 29 Palms. Played like a dream

I like the idea of following someone's system building journey from scratch. Everybody on KZbin likes to pretend they are an expert. A warning, though, once you start it's hard to stop. My wife describes it as a form of mental illness. An incurable one. The symptoms can only be controlled by buying more kit, though I see you have young kids, so that should keep the worst of the obsession at bay..

The big mistake was starting to use misleading, click bait titles when you only have 57 subs. It puts people off. I expected a juicy tale of fixing woe and instead got a predictable yawn. What I would have liked was to see some of the work you put into it. Despite that massive, and frankly hurtful, betrayal of trust I have subbed. Call me a glutton for punishment. I have recently got into vintage tables, particularly the Technics fully automatic linear tracking tables of the early tables and have discovered the first rule of vintage table buying. It doesn't matter how perfect the seller says it works, there is always something wrong with it. With amps. 50% of sold as faulty amps just need Deoxit on the pots, and the rest take weeks. Good luck with the channel, but mend thy click bait ways, my son.

Yes, you did make a big Mistake, selling it! I still got mine, that i bought for 15€ at eBay. It is up and running, and it is a lot of fun!

Molte persone si liberano di apparecchi fantastici a causa della mancanza di spazio. Ma con piccoli suggerimenti si può eliminare qualsiasi problema. Basta comprare alcuni trasmettitori/ricevitori bluetooth e collegarli ai connettori di uscita dal giradischi, dal lettore CD, dal sintonizzatore etc...etc...ai connettori degli ingressi dell'amplificatore. Io ho posizionato il giradischi e i dischi in libreria e da 4 metri di distanza ricevo il segnale nell'amplificatore. Mai nessuna perdita di segnale, Il costo dei trasmettitori/ricevitori complessivo di trasporto e consegna può essere 4/5 euro l'uno, comprandoli nei negozi cinesi tipo Wish,Temu etc...etc.... Funzionano perfettamente per tutti gli apparecchi. Saluti da Roma.

I had a Dual 1229 for about twenty years from the mid 1970's until the 1990's. I wish I still had it. I had it paired with some nice Dynaco components. I miss those too!

Twist the cartridge when you mount it. twist it in a little bit up to probably 2 mm start off at 1mm that will help with your inner groove distortion plus the arm is too high designed to be lower the pivot point is meant to be at the height of the mat

Yes, you made a big mistake. Most of us would kill for that Dual.

I have a Dual 1229 I got from my Dad. Bought it through PACEX while in the army. Circa 1973. It has a nicer case than the one you have. Works extremely well. (I too was buying stereo gear while overseas - I was in high school & went through 3). Who would have thought I would end up with the single turntable my dad would own for the rest of his life.

I love it too! It was a big noise in the late 60's early 70's, great buy.