Vintage systems questions

I'm going to look at a 60's system tomorrow that some nice old chap has got for sale. It consists of a Leak ST20, varislope pre, troughline II with stereo decoder, and a Rotel RP3000 with SME 3009 S2/V15 III.

Right well I know the stereo 20, but I'm not familiar with the rest. Is the Troughline II any good? Anyone familiar with the Rotel deck and if so is that any good? What's an unserviced stereo 20 worth these days?

 

If it were me...

I'd leave the pre, and make a DIY passive.

buy the troughline II (if I listened to radio a lot and was prepared to get it modified - about £200 more).

buy the ST20, and upgrade the bits myself (piece of piss in this thing)

dont know the rotel deck.

YMMV

 

I think he wants to shift the lot, so if the ST20 is OK I'll make an offer based on that + the troughline. I probably won't want to keep the deck anyway as I have a nice Garrard 401, but if he accepts my offer (if I make one) I can sell it on to reduce the price .

I was pondering about updating components myself, have to see if I feel brave enough if I buy it.

Shouldn't really be thinking about buying anything seeing as I'm moving house on Friday, but when someone rings you up and says 'do you want to buy xxxxxxx' it's difficult not to at least consider it!

 

Hi la toilette

The pre is the weak link . The stereo 20 is good but can be made better . I would not do anything to the Troughline ,except see if it needs re-calibrated or any old resistors/capacitors are loosing their value. If the decoder is internal ,rather than external then getting a good outboard one will raise the performance bar a lot,(it will need re-calibrated if you do this). Only give it to someone who knows there way around radios as this is a specialist knowledge .

The Sme arm has value on e-bay but IMHO is not worth keeping as it will only work well with a very narrow range of carts . The Rotel deck is not ,i think up to much but i could be wrong about this .

The stars are the ST20 and the radio .

Regards D Louth

 

Thanks, that echoes Bottlenecks thoughts, good stuff.

I'm signing off now for a while as I'm about to unplug the PC ready for the house move tomorrow, and I might not be back online for a while. If I get hold of the Leak stuff I'll update when I'm sorted!

 

You'd have to listen to see if it's any good.

 

Cheers Markus.

Actually, in the new house I'll have a separate dining room so maybe I'll have room for two systems, so if the deck is vaguely alright I might get to keep it either way!