I've Made an Amazing Discovery...

I've made an amazing discovery. Yesterday, I removed Bosco's cartridge from my 45EY4 and replaced it with an Astatic 89T power point cartridge. The result is simply amazing... you can crank up the 45EY4 to around 70 percent volume level with no distortion and amazing bass and treble. Having listened to my three best RCA 45 players on a rotating basis this weekend, I can tell you the 45EY4 is clearly the best, and I think it's because the set uses the older GT tubes, and a pair of 35L6GT tubes, for output. When you combine that with a power point cartridge, the sound difference is unbelievable. This player was just so-so with Bosco's cartridge installed.

My 45HY4 is terrific too, but I'm sure it has miniature tubes and you can't crank it way up without distortion. Now, the HY4 sounds terrific, and it has a sense of "presence" that the EY4 doesn't have. But it can't be played at the high volume levels that the EY4 can.

I'm going to replace the cartridge in the 8EY4 Deluxe (it has a Bosco cartridge too) with my last Astatic powerpoint cartridge to see what difference there is in that one. It may sound almost as good as the HY4 when I replace the cartridge.

It's interesting to compare the three players. They all sound terrific, but in different ways. Actually, I believe the bakelite high-fi players sound much better than the New Orthophonic 7HF45 players. The bakelite sets have large magnet 8-inch speakers, whereas the Orthophonics have a 6-inch woofer and a 3-inch tweeter.