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Vintage Trio Turntable, very sweet

Robert

Robert

Tapehead
Arrived today and bought on impulse mainly due to the sweet looks and condition.

Came in the original box with accessories and looks almost new. Seller included a new belt and stylus for the Glanz sourced MM.

Flung a Grado Z1+ on it plus the fresh belt and it sounds very nice indeed.

I think it's a pretty little deck and it's quite solidly built where it counts. Really meaty 4 pole motor, none of this tiddly Philips stuff ;)

Could probably respond well to a few TD160 Super-like tweaks, top plate damping etc at minimal cost.

Trio's entry deck in the mid-late 70s at £70 but far better than much of the 80s junk which followed. Mind you, that £70 is now about £400.....


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Lovely. A classic entry-level deck of its time, I remember them well from back when I was a teenager. Typically ended up in a system with a nice 20 watt Pioneer or Marantz receiver and a pair of Ditton 15s or ARs. A really nice family audio system, nothing ostentatious, just a means of getting good sounding music into a living room. The PL12D was the obvious competition.

PS I've always been curious about the higher-end Trio/Kenwood DD with the white synthetic marble plinth. That could be rather good...
 
The whole top-plate was sprung wasn't it? I seem to recall you had to be a bit careful cueing it.
 
Tony L said:
The whole top-plate was sprung wasn't it? I seem to recall you had to be a bit careful cueing it.
Click to expand...

Yes it sits on 4 springs but the cuing system is a bit unusual.

The lever on the right is a three position rocker. Back is off, middle starts the motor, forward lowers the arm. Neat solution and I haven't noticed a problem since the slow damped drop means any handing shudder has stopped by the time stylus meets record.

The cue damping still works perfectly too. Nice smooth drop.

When I get round to clearing out my spare/TV room I'll probably use this with my Pioneer SX-737 receiver and restored AR4xa.

You can all stick your sound bars!
 
Measured the total wiring loom capacitance last night - from cart tags to phono plugs it comes in at 130pf which is a satisfactory figure for many cartridges.

I note the exposed phono cable is just over a metre in length and there is another 15cm or so looped inside the cabinet. You could therefore pull trough some more cable, snip off around 15cm and get that cap figure to a nice round, easy to remember 100pf.

Just saying for when some enquirer finds this on Google in a decade :)

Dismantled the main bearing for a clean and discovered its a grease bearing with a thick white gloop present. Whatever, it's silent as is the motor.
 
How does it sound? I'm pretty sure a lot of the issues we had with decks in the '70s would be largely fixed with a decent wall-shelf. I recall that Trio/Kenwood being well liked at the time. If you know what year it was released I'll have a look through my Gramophone mag collection and see if I can find a review.
 
Cheers Tony, I think it was released 76/77.
Unusually for a Japanese TT it seemed to last well into the 80s and became the 1033B (for black of course).

Sounds very good indeed. The two areas I'd say make it worth spending a lot more are grip/drive and cleanliness.

It certainly motors along and sounds musical but low bass doesn't have that solid note shape you get with better decks. Top end delicacy and transparency are also not top drawer, likely arm related. And yes it does rather read the surface on which it sits so a good shelf helps.

But if you take off the analytical hat and just flip vinyl on it, well t sounds pretty damn good. A good clean cartridge certainly helps and I think these decks can exploit the qualities of some better MMs, rather than the lowest cost carts they often were partnered with.

It appears to share many parts with the Pioneer 12D/15D and a few other units arounds at the time. It seems CEC were to turntables in the 70s what Jelco where to arms.
I think you could pop a Pl12 platter on this and it would work just fine!
 
Tony L said:
PS I've always been curious about the higher-end Trio/Kenwood DD with the white synthetic marble plinth. That could be rather good...
Click to expand...

Had a friend with one back in the mid 70's. It was a belt drive model, not a direct drive and it was not much more sophisticated than my entry level pioneer belt drive however it sounded so much better than my deck. Aesthetically it looked lovely and had real 'heft' to it. I have to say I have also been rather curious about them ever since.
 
Nice. Also wasn't there the Sansui SR222 and various Duals around too. Then the Regas started.

I've got a Kenwood KD550, the white resin marble thingy. The cheaper version of the KD650. Not particularly great. Not bad. I got mine for not much so that helps. Less open to damage than an ARO and Decca.
 
wylton said:
My first real Hi-Fi was a Trio KD1033/Alba UA900/Videoton Minimax.
Click to expand...

I remember the hoo haa over that amp back in the day.

Got amazing reviews in the comics then it turned out retail versions were not quite the same as the review model...
 
Had a look through all the '70s volumes of Gramophone (which are thankfully indexed to some degree) and sadly no KD-1033 review.

PS I also think it is early-mid-70s, 74 or so. IIRC it was Trio/Kenwood's answer to the PL12D and arrived very close on its heels. By 77-78 even the entry-level Japanese stuff was direct drive, and largely made out of plastic.
 
If I remember the hierarchy was
Trio 1033
Bettered by the
Pioneer PL12D
Bettered by the
Sansui SR 222
 
Bob McC said:
I remember the hoo haa over that amp back in the day.

Got amazing reviews in the comics then it turned out retail versions were not quite the same as the review model...
Click to expand...

There was another Alba receiver that reviewed well in the digest sized Choice. It looked good too. Sold in Comet. I got a Marantz instead.
 
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