Being a penniless nurse, I always had one of those all in one hi-fi systems. It was a good one though, but when I bought my first house I went down to Richer Sounds at Swiss Cottage and treated myself to a separate system. I took their advice and was very pleased with it. As I’d flogged most of my vinyl in the 90s and only had a small amount left that was to be shortly carted down to Notting Hill to flog, I didn’t get a turntable as part of the system. I got a tuner, even though the only radio I ever listened to was Sound of the Sixties, and later I got a minidisc player. There was this short period between Walkman and MP3 players where minidiscs were ace. You could shuffle them and even type in the names of the tracks.
When I was stuck in hospital for several months of rehab, post spinal cord surgery, my portable minidisc player kept me sane. Although if there was nobody around to help me I couldn’t always get the earpieces in my lughole. I perfected a technique of chucking the wire up towards my ear and once I managed to get it to stay over my ear I’d pull it round until the earpiece was as close as I could get it to my ear hole, and then I’d just turn the volume up. It sort of worked, until a nurse came by who could shove it in properly for me (mmm, I might have written an AW t-shirt phrase there!).
But I digress… The new system was great and…it barely got used for the next 16 years! I spent most of my time in the office, either working or messing on my computer. The living room tended to have the wife or kids (and me occasionally) sat in front of the TV. I did most of my listening on my old system and then when we moved and I got an iPod, I mainly listened via iTunes on my PC, through rubbish little speakers. That’s when I did that daft thing of listening to my entire iTunes from A to Z. The library is four times as big now, so I won’t be doing that again. It tells me it would take 484 days if I listened from end to end.
When my health deteriorated and I stopped working, about 6-7 years ago, I suddenly found myself in the living room a lot through the day. So I listened to a CD and was blown away by how good it sounded. Crazy isn’t it. I had hundreds of CDs that I’d never played, cos I just burned them into my PC and listened that way. Anyway, circumstances led me to start filling gaps in my collection, I bought To Pimp A Butterfly and I have spent 6-7 years listening to more new music than I listened to in the first 45. With little else to occupy my time it has become an obsession, just like it was when I was a teenager and first heard Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Tim Buckley, Van Morrison and so on.
My CD player, amp and speakers were hardly used. So whilst they were 15+ years old at this stage, they had not been subject to any wear and tear. I bought better speakers and got a better CD player (which sounds great, but is totally rubbish with slightly damaged discs, not playing some than my son’s £10 portable player will play – very annoying!). But I absolutely, definitely was never going to get back into vinyl. A well mastered CD will always sound better, or at least as good, as a well mastered LP. And LPs were expensive and I’m too clumsy now I can’t feel my hands. And young tossers with beards who drink ‘craft beer’ spouted all kinds of bollocks about vinyl. Nope, definitely not getting back into vinyl…
Yeah, right! So here I am, spending every spare quid I’ve got on my expanding vinyl collection. I’m still not sure it’s superior to CDs, although the Blocks and Escher album sounds brill, as does the remastered Swoon. And rap albums sound fab with the bass turned up, and I’m alone at home through the day in a detached house with double glazing. I did the reverse Ted Moult test, sending my daughter to the pavement outside whilst I turned something very noisy right up loud and it reached a level that I thought was too loud and she couldn’t hear a sausage, so I can have it as loud as I want. Apart from the pain and all that, I really enjoy my days!
Having to clean the records is a pain in the arse though, although it’s much easier with the set up that Mr Fenton recommended to me. I used to buy my records from markets, car boot sales and all over the place. They were not always well looked after. And my system was quite cheap when I was a teenager. I had a cloth that I’d sometimes wipe the records with, and I pulled the fluff off the stylus when it started resembling Jimmy Edwards. But I don’t remember ever moaning about the quality of the sound unless the stylus jumped, and even then there are songs where I now expect them to jump, because me original record was scratched. Now though, I can’t stand hearing one pop or crackle and if there is any surface noise the record gets sent back. I guess I’m too used to listening to CDs.
But here’s where I need help. I got there eventually! I bought a decent cheapish Sony record player, connected it via the phono sockets to the phono input in my Cambridge amp and it produced barely a sound. So I added a pre-amp. The volume knob on the amp seems to go up to 20 (in your face, Tufnel!). When I listen to a CD or connect an iPod to it, I tend to have the volume at not much higher than 4, but when I play an LP I have to turn it right up to about 14. I bought Bob Marley’s Legend, where everything is crammed on a single disc, and to get any volume from that I pretty much have to turn the volume to the max, whereby I get some interference, making the album unlistenable anyway.
The amp dates from the late 90s and has a phono input, so I would have thought it had been designed for use with a turntable attached. So why does it not want to give me any volume? Is it that modern record players are different to the type that were about 20-25 years ago? Or is it just a crap amp? Or a crap record player? I get a nice little bonus in my pay at the end of the year, where I get paid in lieu of all my annual leave, so I am thinking of getting a better record player, which gives me a few more options, and giving this one to my daughter, as it can be paired with Bluetooth speakers. That will also allow me to move the Billie Eilish and Harry Styles albums off my shelf!
But am I going to have the same problem, no matter what record player I try to attach to a 25 year old amp? In other words am I better off buying the nice looking Marantz amp to go with the CD player? I feel bad getting shut of a perfectly good amp that I’ve had for so long, but it’s stopping me from being able to listen to some records and it is only a matter of time before I put a CD in without remembering to turn the volume button down, blowing my speakers and my ears. Or is there something I am totally overlooking?
10 paragraphs to ask a question! Any help would be much appreciated though.
I always feel that these questions should be left for Mr Fenton…
However:
Would you know if the input you’re using is line level, but labelled phono – or an actual phono stage? Quick test – if you plug your turntable into the input you use for eg your tuner, do you get the same effect (ie, just about hear it when you turn it right up)?
If so, you might need a separate phono stage rather than a whole new amplifier…
Then again, you might actually fancy a new amp…
Assuming you’ve got a https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/audio-components/ps-lx310bt#product_details_default
I see it “supports phono *and* line output thanks to built-in Phono EQ”. You’d want to use the line out if you were going into your amp’s phono input or you’ll be getting twice the RIAA curve you need and then heaven only knows what you’ll hear (@Fentonsteve will be able to tell us though, I’m sure).
From the look of it that’s switchable on the back. I see there’s also a gain select next it, which I suspect might well be on low gain, which will make things ever quieter.
(Any of that look familiar? Or have I got the wrong turntable?)
Wow! Who knew?
This is what happens when one’s turntable knowledge dates from the 1880’s…
That is the right turntable. I shall clear a path to the back of it and have a fiddle…
I should also say that I must have been so excited to set this up and start playing records that this is the first time I have even seen those switches on the back. Note to self, actually look at the thing you are having trouble with before asking for help…
Okay, now it has gone extremely loud, but distorted. So loud that the Bob Marley LP in question reaches the adequate volume with the dial set to 1, considerably lower than the 19, when using the phono out! This is gonna take a bit of fiddling with…
Not much fiddling. I cut out the pre-amp and one of my new singles that arrived today, Airport by The Motors, is sounding perfect, with the dial just turned up a little higher than I have it for CDs, but not that high that accidentally putting a CD in at that volume would have ornaments falling off the mantelpiece*.
…and yet I still have to turn the Bob Marley album up to 14 to hear it properly. I only bought Legend cos I have all his proper albums on CD. I’d read about a few albums that I was considering buying being really quiet, so it put me off. Had I seen it written about this one I wouldn’t have bought it. It plays okay, but I really am risking speaker/ear damage having a record that I have to play at a volume that would be earsplitting for other records, so I reckon this one is getting flogged to be on the safe side….hang on though…just turned the gain from medium to high and now I only have to turn it up to 10 for Legend. But putting Airport on again and 10 would be extremely loud. That’ll teach me, for buying a compilation aimed at supermarket shoppers.
Does it have any negative effect, leaving gain set to high?
Anyway…
1 – Who needs Steve, you’ve sorted the problem out simply by, er, reading the instructions and, er, looking at the back of the machine, which was clearly beyond me! Actually, it’s a little more than that, because even if I’d read it I couldn’t confidently say I’d have understood it
2 – My new amp and record player shopping has ended, saving me quite a bit of money. Part of me wishes my amp would pack up so I could justify getting the Marantz one, which is stupid, cos there’s nothing wrong with this one
3 – The flip side of saving the money…During a FaceTime with my daughter, who’s in Tenerife with her mum, earlier this evening I said I was looking at getting a new record player and amp, and that she could have this one. Whoops! Need to choose my moment to tell the humorous story of how a technical adviser fixed my problems due to having the magical power that her old dad doesn’t seemingly have, of being able to read…
4 – Airport by The Motors is brill
*I don’t have any ornaments on my mantelpiece. I don’t really have ornaments. I have a load of Pop Vinyl figures, music and film memorabilia and things like that. Do these count as ornaments? Either way, they’re not on the mantelpiece. Just a few photos of the kids and a Father’s Day card that will come down in a few weeks when the daughter’s birthday cards go up. I would take it down now, but I will have forgotten it’s still up by the time I finish writing this sentence.
If the problem is only with the Bob Marley album, could it be that your hearing is being blocked by fruit based preserves…?
I.e. your ears have jammin’
You don’t want your preamp in there now you’ve selected the right input sensitivity. Take it out all together and report back.
That’s exactly what I did. By keeping the preamp in place it all sounded distorted. I wonder if that’s what Kevin Shields once did, that gave him a great idea? But when I bypassed it everything sounded great
The problem I have now is that I pulled all the boxed sets out, to get to the preamp and to be able to turn the record player and amp round. I’m now surrounded by them all, wishing I’d taken a photo of where they all were, as it’s now going to take ages trying to get everything to fit. I’ve spent the last 40 years never having quite enough room for things. At least it’s a benefit of being recently divorced. I have nobody to say “you’re not leaving that pile of boxed sets there”
Turntables produce less signal (this is in my terms not techy) so need an input spec’d to boost it. But a phono input should be ok for that. Could be the amp. A preamp will boost the signal so any other input should be ok (eg Aux) but in my experience they come with built in added hum.
I’d do a few tests to see if the amp is ok. Or get Fenton to look as the spec like an engineer.
I’ve done that thing of standing outside the front of my house when the music is playing, going back inside, turning it up a bit more etc. It may be that I ended up putting a sticker next to the 8 on my volume slider. I couldn’t possibly say
My ears are shite, what with the tinnitus, hence I had to use someone else’s ears for the test. I was comfortably able to play the records at a volume higher than I would normally have it, and I tend to have it loud. This is good, because by me playing the records lower that the level that passed the test, it allows a cushion for me joining in and singing along, which I really wouldn’t want any passers by being party to.
My vocal range is severely limited. I don’t know how singers find that pitch that most singers sing in. I can do some low bits, but then if I try taking it up a bit it just skips straight to Jimmy Summerville, missing out where everybody else sings. If I was on Stars In My Eyes I would have to be Ricky Nelson, Stephen Duffy or Ian Brown. I can manage to sing the songs of the first two without going wrong (of course, if I ever heard myself I might change my opinion), whereas if I tried a Stone Roses song and they said I was rubbish and all over the place I’d just produce a tape of their Reading show and they’d have to declare me winner.
Hello, I’m back from Norfolk. Have I missed anything?
Stop me if this gets dull (as if!)
A Moving Magnet cartridge puts out a maximum signal about 4 or 5 mv (milli-volts) or 0.005 Volts. And it has the opposite of RIAA EQ applied at mastering, which boosts the treble and cuts the bass, to avoid the stylus from jumping out of the groove.
A CD player puts out a signal of 2 Volts.
A 2 Volt (RMS) signal has peak to peak (from the bottom to the top) which are 5.6 Volts apart.
So the purpose of the RIAA stage is to apply corrective EQ (cut the treble & boost the bass) and to apply lots of gain (ideally about 400 times gain to make the signal the same as the CD player).
Many turntables with built-in RIAA stages have 5 Volt power supplies, to power the USB output. USB power is specified as 4.75 Volt to 5.25 Volt. You can see how getting 5.6 Volts peak-to-peak signal out might be a bit tricky.
And, as you have discovered, records are mastered at different levels. 12″ singles are cut at a much higher level than most and can overload low-power RIAA stages.
So, well done to Sony for fitting a gain switch. Not so well done for putting it round the back, though.
Other observations: the built-in RIAA stages are always a bit “functional”. Almost any phono input on a mains-powered amp will be better.
Routine use of the amplifier volume knob is a fact of life, just like it is with CDs mastered in the “brickwall” years.
Thanks Steve. My original post was really looking for confirmation that my amp was old and rubbish and the record player had no options to improve things, as a precursor to buying new ones, but the lesson I learned was to use my eyes a bit more!
I’ve just listened to the Legend album in full and it’s lifeless and flat, making exciting music sound dull. I’ll stick to the individual albums. I don’t like compilations anyway. It can go on the pile to be dropped off at the one record shop in town. I think I’m the only person who gives him records, rather than part-exchanging them. Usually it is records that have a bit of surface noise that I bought off Discogs as Near Mint. I complain to them every time, because it really irks me when people lie, hoping to get away with it.
I received one a few weeks ago that looked like someone had eaten their dinner off it. It was so dirty I didn’t even want to put it in the cleaner. Usually the seller just refunds me, as they knew they were trying it on and it’s not worth them paying for return postage. Often the faults are minor, but I have paid for a record that was listed as having no faults, so I don’t settle for it. As I have received a full refund, so I can buy another copy, it doesn’t feel right then selling the record, so I give it to the shop and tell him what grading to put on the price label. It’s the only record shop we have, so anything I can do to keep his business going will help, besides buying records off him of course. I got an original Band On The Run LP off him for £7 the other day that plays perfectly. It’s my favourite solo Beatle album.
But my record player and amp sound so much better today, now I have it set up right. It’s just in time too. I was waiting for payday, as I had a list of records I wanted, but then I did a monthly budget, just before, and realised I could buy one of them and then wait for next payday. But then I had a bit of bad luck/good luck.
I had horrendous stomach pains at 2am the Sunday before last, where I thought my time was up, as I was having cold sweats and couldn’t take anything more than shallow breaths. It came on so suddenly I was even wondering whether it was a dissecting aneurysm to start with. I have loads of medical problems and they affect my stomach and bowels…I won’t go into detail…but this felt like much more than my normal aches and pains. I only live a couple of hundred yards from the local hospital, but being a former A&E nurse I am always reluctant to call an ambulance. Imagine the embarrassment if I got wheeled in, did an enormous fart, got up and walked home. It got pretty bad though, so I wrote all my symptoms on the iPad, just in case I did pass out, to give the paramedics/coroner somewhere to start!
I eventually got through it, spent the Sunday in bed feeling awful, got downstairs on the Monday and fortunately got up off the settee just before the ex came to pick up the boy, cos had I not, things could have been very different. I was now having pain that felt like someone was squeezing my liver whenever I moved. I have a high pain threshold, after being in pain for over 20 years now. I even had root canal treatment with no anaesthetic once. Although had I known he was going that deep I might have reconsidered. I don’t ever have anaesthetic for dental work, cos the 30 seconds of pain is better than 8 hours of dribbling. So I let him crack on, but by heck, it hurt! Anyway, this stomach pain was just as painful, so the ex took one look at me and drove me to A&E…
…where I sat in a chair for 9 hours with no shoulder or neck support. The nurses kept doing my observations and I kept asking for somewhere to sit with neck support, because of my spinal cord issues, and they kept saying there was nowhere. After about 6 hours I decided that I was beginning to feel far worse for sitting in the chair, so decided to tell the nurse I was going home, but when I had to walk the 20 feet to get my blood pressure done, I only made it halfway because of the tummy pain, so I decided to stay. Still I was in the waiting room for another 3 hours, but I had called my daughter to fetch me my normal bedtime medication and that eased my neck off.
As soon as I saw a doctor she said my bloods were back and were all over the place, so I had cholecystitis, being told that by not coming in when I had the initial attack of pain, and certainly by nearly going home, I was lucky I didn’t end up with sepsis, which could have had a far more serious outcome. As it was, I had a pretty nasty infection.
Anyway, as luck would have it the only room available was a side room. I declined the offer of morphine and spent the next few days a bit tied down cos of the pain and getting pumped with the antibiotics and whatnot. I got through loads of magazines on Readly though, and listened to loads of music and it would have been a quite nice rest really, had it not been for the fact that the kids were going away with their mum the following week, so I was missing all the things I had planned to do with the boy. He came into hospital most days and we played games and watched stuff on the iPad.
So that’s the bad bit (I am now listed for the gallbladder to be removed, which won’t be as straightforward with me cos of all my other abdo problems), but what’s the good? Whilst on long-term sickness absence I am still technically employed by my company, who are now part of Willis Towers Watson. And as an employee I am still a member of the company medical scheme, which is the field in which the ex works. I could have got myself transferred to a private hospital and had a TV, lovely meals and what have you, but after experiencing this when I had my big op, I know that the trade off is poor nursing care and I didn’t feel great, so I preferred to stay where people knew what they were doing. I had my own room anyway, so why move? “In that case”, the ex says, “once you are discharged, get in touch with AXA and you get a cash benefit for every night you stay in the NHS hospital”.
Result! A few days of crippling pain = money to buy the LPs I wanted, but couldn’t afford, courtesy of an insurance company. When I was 11 my labourer dad had an accident at work that laid him up for a few months and the compensation he got enabled us to buy a video recorder we otherwise would never have been able to afford on his extremely low wage, so this felt similar. I then spent the next few days making plans of what to get, which had to be revised when the ex said that the 12 hours I spent in A&E overnight don’t count. So, whereas there are still records I want, I think I’d rather not have another attack like that before I have my op, cos it wasn’t nice, as I’m sure anyone else who’s had gallstones would confirm. A great benefit from a week of pain though. I won’t be as slow to seek medical help next time I’m poorly!
Wow. That sounds absolutely horrific. You are a good type to find a positive spin on it. Hope they sort you out soon
“Spent my compensation on records” – AW t-shirt.
Cholecystitis sounds nasty. Look after yourself.
I spent mine on guitars, @fentonsteve
“I declined the offer of morphine “……*shakes head*
You too, dude? I feel yer pain: literally, having had my first bout of the same, about 3 weeks ago. I accepted the morphine, I confess. For your dissecting aneurysm, which I remember considering, I feared pancreatitis, so quite relieved it was an inflamed gall bag full of angry stones. Signed off all the fatty foods that make food tasty, so much do I not want biliary colic again. On waiting list for surgery, black pudding, bacon and balti…….
There’s a reason for that though…
When I went for my spinal cord tumour removing I was in a bad way. I could hardly walk by this stage, couldn’t dress myself, use cutlery, it was grim. If I knew how to add photos to here I’d show you my scans. The tumour was a whopper, sat right in the middle of the spinal cord, around C2-C4.
I had no option but to have the surgery and the surgery came with mucho risk. My neurosurgeon said about a 5% chance of ending up totally dependant, relying on a machine to breathe for me, pretty much like Christopher Reeve. And then, of course, there was a higher chance of me coming out of it unable to use my limbs, etc. I have loads of tiny bald bits around my head where a lady stuck loads of probes to test my nerve functions. She would then be able to tell the surgeons if anything they were doing was heading down a catastrophic path. Had they reached a point whereby they couldn’t get the tumour out without causing me to lose limbs, etc, they would have woken me up, mid-surgery, to ask whether I wanted them to continue. As the other option was, I guess, die slowly over the coming months I just told them to crack on regardless, but they insisted that they would wake me up.
Anyway, they didn’t. I woke up in recovery to be told they had got it all out, that it wasn’t cancer and that I should make a good enough recovery to walk again, albeit it was a long road. I couldn’t move my legs at this stage, but I was able to move my arms, even though I couldn’t feel them and if I closed my eyes it felt like they were waving around in the air. My surgeon told me to expect this, but I didn’t quite believe him. It was weird and funny, to start with, driving me mad a few days later.
The surgery was 6 months before my wedding to the love of my life (the one who broke my heart after 20 years together a couple of years ago). As she came into intensive care I told her to stop, and then waved at her. It was quite a euphoric feeling. I would get better and walk again. I shouldn’t need pushing down the aisle. Actually, that the wedding was still on was cause for celebration itself, as I had told her that if the surgery didn’t got well I didn’t want her to become m6 carer, waiting for the inevitable chest infection that would finish me off. Thanks to my asthma, at least it wouldn’t have been long. But I’d told her not to even come and see me if things went pear shaped and to go and live her life. Of course, I’m now wishing the surgeon had gone out and told her it had gone wrong and to sling her hook…
So I had a couple of nights in intensive care, where I could hear the nurse snoring. I first held my breath, to make my apnoea monitor go off, to wake her up, but after doing that twice, she just went back to sleep again. So I decided to breathe nice and steady, let her sleep and then she’d get caught by the Night Sister…which she did. But the Night Sister just woke her up and sat gossiping with her!
Private hospitals are great for the comfort, the medical attention and the food, but the nursing care is abysmal! My first night back on the ward I got a pressure sore on my wrist, because my nurse never came to turn me all night. In fact, the next morning, before she went off, the nurse looking after me asked me what had happened and had I had an accident. Unbelievable! I was the only person in intensive care the day before, so I reckon I was one of the sickest in the whole hospital, but the nurse looking after me didn’t know what had happened to me!!
Anyway, the next night I was bored. The euphoria (it really is a side effect of medical treatment) was keeping me awake. There was nothing on the TV. I’d just watched a thriller so bad that I decided that I was going to write one when I could, you know, write again. But I had a morphine pump. I couldn’t really use my hands yet, but I could use the nurse buzzer by holding it and pressing it against my head, so I reckon I could use the morphine pump. I decided to get off my tits.
I don’t know if any of you have had a morphine pump, or similar, but I knew how they worked from my nursing days. It automatically gives you a boost every 6 hours, but if you felt you needed a bit more you can press to get an extra dose. There’s a safety mechanism within it, to stop patients overdosing, whereby after so much has been administered it won’t work any more until a certain amount of time has passed. So I could merrily keep pressing it until I had given myself the maximum dose, and then lay back and see where the trip took me…
It was fucking horrible! Like taking 20 speed bombs all at once. The night lasted three days on fast forward. My bed was surrounded by people talking at me at a hundred miles an hour whilst I got up and ran around the room. That night I felt what it was like to be in Aerosmith in the 70s. When the nurse came in the next morning the first thing I said was to remove the morphine pump, as I won’t be using it any more. And the nursing care being what it was, not one nurse asked about my pain levels, what with me pressing the morphine pump around 30 times the night before (it keeps a record of the doses/attempts at giving myself a dose, so surely someone should have been concerned.
But like I say, nice room, a TV, my own bathroom and the food was to die for. I have seriously never eaten as well as I did for that month in the Princess Grace. Even their omelettes were out of this world. Although they weren’t as nice cold. After several days of having the food put in front of me, only for nobody to come and feed me, the future ex-wife started coming to the hospital (near Baker Street) from work (in the City) every lunchtime to make sure I got fed.
It got even worse when I moved to the Wellington. I got these headaches post-op that were so bad, not even anaesthetic free root canal work or the pain from gallstones comes anywhere remotely near it. It was like my head was in a vice and Joe Pesci just wouldn’t stop tightening it. It was worse after I had travelled by car, and by now I was having weekends at home. These headaches went on for hours and at times I considered jumping out the window.
The pain made me vomit. There was a nice scene just after midnight on New Year’s Eve. We had thrown a bit of a party, with me home on leave, only for me to have to take to my bed with the headache. I threw up all over the bed at the same time that our friend’s (future Ivor Novello Award winning) baby did in the room next door. So as the parents were cleaning the baby and cot up next door, the missus and her mate were cleaning me and my bed up!
The ex, also an ex nurse, took my pulse during one of these episodes and told me it was 30 and irregular. I didn’t believe her. But when I had an episode upon returning to the Wellington they did my obs and my pulse was indeed 32 and irregular, whilst my blood pressure was 50/30. I had filled several bowls with vomit. The doctor gave me some IV morphine (he ignored my protestations) and everybody left me be. This was around 9pm. The missus had gone home, as a friend had driven us back to the hospital and was then driving her home. The pain settled with the morphine, although it kept me awake all night. So with pain at the level it was, with it making me vomit, with me having a crazy pulse and BP, with me having had as serious spinal cord surgery as you can have and with me having just been pumped with IV morphine it was incredible to see that not one member of staff set foot in my room between about 9:15pm and 7:15am, They didn’t even take away the three bowls of vomit, which I could smell all night! Nursing care in private hospitals leaves a lot to be desired. I believe Meat Loaf was a few rooms down from me, so. Maybe they were all in his room?
As it was, despite me not getting any sleep, the pain went away and I was very relaxed all night and enjoyed the peace and quiet. I don’t think my tinnitus had started yet. That was a week or so away. And through the day I got no peace, between the doctors, OTs and my overfriendly Greek physio, who wore Speedos when he took me into the hydrotherapy pool, I didn’t get a moment’s rest. I was lucky if I got to hear Popmaster.
But anyway, despite the morphine settling me down a few weeks after my trip, I still would rather not take it, given the chance. I’m on tramadol, pregablin and other stuff anyway, and the pain only really came on if I moved or breathed deeply, so I could sort of control it. Problem now is that my antibiotics ended yesterday and the pain has increased again today. I’m not sure the surgeon’s advice to eat what I want was a good idea, so I’m going to cut out fat until the pain or the gallbladder is gone.
“Like taking 20 speed bombs all at once.” I have no idea what that must be like, but Jeez.
I know we’ve had this conversation before, but I had a week on Tramadol following hernia surgery and that spaced me out so much that I ordered stuff online without knowing (Clint Eastwood DVD box set, as Dirty Harry had been on telly the previous day) and had cold turkey when I stopped taking it. I played a lot of Tetris that week.
Well I was supposed to be coming off Tramadol on the recommendation of a gastroenterologist that I saw a few weeks ago, as he says it might be at the root of the stomach problems I’ve been having for the past few years. I foolishly asked my GP for help in managing the withdrawal process, as I’ve been taking it for 6 years, but their incompetence (I’ll spare the detail, but it was a mixture of an incompetent doctor and stupid, obstructive reception staff – I put a formal complaint in 4 weeks ago, but never heard back from the Practice Manager) caused me so much stress that my pain levels increased to the point that starting the withdrawal was impossible. I was just getting to the point where I could start when the gallbladder issue started. Actually, the pain from the gallbladder is on the increase again, so I think I’m gonna have to park the withdrawal until the gallbladder has been removed.
I take two at bedtime and two at lunchtime. I used to take it morning and afternoon, but after taking it at bedtime once, because of increased pain, I woke up feeling much better and was able to get going much easier, whereas before I was always achy in the morning and crawled out of bed, feeling my best in the evening. It will be interesting to see how I am without it, and whether I am going to need to replace it with something. I was going through a very painful period when I was started on it, but for all I know all that might have settled down and I may not even need anything, just keeping some for ad hoc use, whenever I need it. If it might stop some of my stomach issues it’s definitely worth giving withdrawal a try.
Bloody hell, Paul, I’m impressed at your grit and your ability to find solace in the slim benefits of financial compensation. All the best for a decent and swift recovery.
I had a similar thing happen when I hooked up my Project tt. I was double amplifying. I was going to ask if the phono input on my amp (reasonably decent Denon) would be better than the one built into the record player.
Yes, the amp will be better. The RIAA stages built into turntables are “agricultural” at best. They’re usually of limited gain (amplification) due to the 5V USB power supplies. All of those circuit boards come from a single factory in China, regardless of TT brand, and they’re all of equal(ly bad) performance.
Any mains-powered amp will use split 9V (or 12V) power rails, meaning 4 or 5 times higher gain.
This thread was getting far too interesting so thank you to @fentonsteve for his contributions.
And what is with this I’m back from Norfolk @fentonsteve
1. IT support is expected to be 24 X 7
2. Is there no internet in Norfolk ?
@junior-wells
You’ve never been to Norfolk have you? It’s wild, wild I tell you. Especially North Norfolk, it’s full of cockneys.
It’s full of churches, that’s what it’s full of. You cannot move for flying buttresses.
Thank you Moose. Knew I could rely on you.
Well, we have been through hell and high tide.
Norfolk no, New Norfolk yes.
An unprepossessing place outside of Hobart
https://tasmania.com/points-of-interest/new-norfolk/
Hobart Tasmania?
That’s the one. Wonderful town.