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Rega RB300 - OL Upgrades Worth It?

Generally, I'm not a big fan of silver cable either. When I was going to get my RB300 rewired I borrowed two arms off Johnnie, one with silver and one with copper rewires. I liked the extra detail of the silver but thought it was a bit thin and bright, typical silver. The copper was fuller and nicer but not a huge leap over stock I felt. I decided to get silver internal and copper external, a risk but it seemed to work. With the rewire and the paint off there was nothing about my Ittok that I missed. Apart from the beautiful aesthetics, what a hansom arm the Ittok is.

I think that its because he uses cheap Van Damme cable, which isn't really suitable for tone arms. The Incognito stuff uses Cardas cable specifically made for tone arms, and as many know. Cardas copper is made by Cardas in the US, not a chinese import.

Totally agree in the RB300, its just a damn good arm. My step up to an SME309 wasn't as big as I expected from my well modded RB300.
 
Many moons go I bought an OL modded RB250 from OL. It was supposed to be better than an RB300.
Like Jason P, I found it sounded dull as ditchwater on my LP12. I went back to my Grace 707, which with a Supex 901 or AT-OC7 sounded so much better than the OL.

I also bought a Premotec DC motor which OL used to offer as an upgrade for LP12s. Also not good, Anemic sound which didn't balance out the dull sounding OL250.

IME OL is best avoided.
 
OK - more food for thought I suppose!
I have a 12 inch arm which I will soon re-wire and using some wire recommended to me on another forum - might order some more (from the states) and use this in the RB300 if it works well on the 12 inch arm.
It is "KAB SuperFlex Tonearm Wire"
From the website :

Each 34 gauge wire is made up of 40 strands of 50 gauge pure copper litz conductors enveloped in a very thin film of super flexible silicone. Our new tonearm wire lays as limp as a wet noodle! It will not interfere with tonearm motion in any way. It will not resonate in the audio band. It will not develop a static charge nor create microphonics with motion. KAB SuperFlex is the definition of tonearm wire. Sold in sets of 4 colors Red, Green, Blue and White.
 
Many moons go I bought an OL modded RB250 from OL. It was supposed to be better than an RB300. Like Jason P, I found it sounded dull as ditchwater on my LP12.

Yeah, it's something you used to hear often, that the 250 is better than the 300. Mostly from people who mod them! The 250 is cheaper and easier to take apart. If that configuration was better do you really think Rega would only use it on their cheapest arm? That would be a special kind of stupid.
 
Never found any upgrades to the RB250/300 that I thought was worth the effort - a great budget arm but can't really be improved on either by counterweight or wiring, always found them too 'grey'
Did build an Audiomods later and that was a vast improvement.

That's quite strange, since even with RB300, which I upgraded at one point to a tecnoweight (on a Rega P3-24 table with TTPSU), the tecnoweight brought a very nice improvement in the bass region. On RB250 this upgrade should be even bigger because of the cheap plastic default stuf/counterweight on that arm. Can't talk about other upgrades because I've made more than one upgrade at a time, so I can't be sure what to attribute the better sound to. But this counterweight thing was clearly tested.

Many moons go I bought an OL modded RB250 from OL. It was supposed to be better than an RB300.
Like Jason P, I found it sounded dull as ditchwater on my LP12. I went back to my Grace 707, which with a Supex 901 or AT-OC7 sounded so much better than the OL.

I also bought a Premotec DC motor which OL used to offer as an upgrade for LP12s. Also not good, Anemic sound which didn't balance out the dull sounding OL250.

IME OL is best avoided.

I wouldn't say OL is best avoided. It could be that it's the LP12/RB250/300 synergy thing. My stock RB300 sounded anything but anemic on Rega P3-24 and also AO modded RB250 sounded anything but anemic on my Gyrodec.
 


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