Hi Jason,
I just wanted to take some time and tell you my thoughts on Sol. Just some noobish thoughts and ramblings from a novice TT guy.
In my limited experience, I think Sol is a fantastic turntable.... Conrad and Mike seem to have a pretty unique take and vision on what a turntable can be. This means, price, function, form, quality etc. Sol sounds fantastic with my baseline Grado cartridge. Once you get the hang of it, operation is very nice.
In regards to the motor, assisted start is A OK. How much does each pulley cost? Can you include them both? If you cant I'd say go with the original. Your goal was to produce a high fidelity turntable right?
What is your team's vision for Sol? Stick to that vision, believe in that vision.
I think you folks really have to ask yourselves - what kind of turntable do you want to manufacture and sell? You seem to have maybe lost your initial vision a bit on this. The initial reason for the beta seemed to be because Conrad's table wasn't exactly copied and put into production, plus some tolerance issues. (My Opinion). There seemed to be little oversights here and there that caused a bunch of unexpected issues. Thus the beta seemed to come about to understand and fix those issues (headshell, longer preamp leads, manufacturing tolerances, etc). Those legitimate problems seem to have been resolved, but now you seem to have wandered into an area where you are trying to appease as many of the beta testers as possible, but you cant appease them all, and the hardcore vinyl types are VERY particular and VERY opinionated. You seem to be stuck in a do we or don't we situation. You will never build a perfect TT that will satisfy the exacting particulars of all vinyl fanatics. With each change you look to make, you have to ask is this improving upon our vision, or drifting from it. Build your vision of Sol, refine your vision, and see if it sells.
How much time are you spending in crafting witty responses to all of the INEVITABLE opinions? You ought to have Conrad provide you a bullet point on every design function/feature, and have him explain why he went that route. Then you take his list & reasoning and paraphrase it in your schiity marketing speak for your website. You need to identify your position, on everything that vinyl nutjobs will debate, and say this is why we did X. Take it or leave it.
The fiddling is a fun aspect of vinyl. I love my Bifrost 2, and I'd never want to go solely vinyl, but it's fun to tweak with Sol over a glass of scotch while listening to music via Bifrost 2 and the rest of my Schiit stuff.
I love the idea of supplying a cartridge with the turntable. It automatically gives you a wider customer base. I would argue that you should go with a baseline Grado, in the 75-140 dollar range. Make that your base option. Is there another turntable option out there that starts with a Grado model in that price range?
I think inclusion of the Grado cartridge would be a great differentiator, most turntables out there come with Ortofon Red, or the AT 95E
I think what would work well is to offer the base turntable with a cartridge, and offer it without a cartridge as a physical choice the buyer has to select. Like how you have your Gen 5 USB advertised. The base is 150 for a Schiit install, but if you select self install the price drops to 100.
I think there are a great many folks who will buy your TT but want their own cartridge. It is this reason that I think you need a good baseline cartridge option, and a no cartridge option.
The other thing that I think would be good is to include a piece of paper to go underneath Sol, to act as a guide template for pod placement. You could include a folded, oversized piece of paper as a pattern/guide, showing Sols three feet, and the motor pod. This would allow folks to line up the motor with the guide, and it would also allow folks to use the paper as a template for creation of a base or slab for Sol to rest on.
In regards to the new tonearm - it is very nice. Lots of room to play with. Has anyone else complained about the black ground wire that attaches to the headshell? Would it be possible to NOT twist the ground wire up with the cartridge pickup wires? Having the ground float separately from the rest would be a nice option. My original ground wire was previously broken when I got Sol, it's hard to attach and move the cartridge when the ground wire can't move by itself.
It sounds like many folks are playing around with their own belts. Perhaps the manual could include some info such as desired belt length, and belt diameter.
I have a nice piece of butcher block set aside that would work well for this.... and I've also played around with the idea of Corian or Starion in the past as a base.
Anyway, if you read all of this, thanks, I hope it helped to give you the perspective of one vinyl noob.
Define and produce your vision, say this is how it is. "Time will tell if you like our vision"
Much appreciated, thanks for letting me participate in this.
One last thing on the topic of remotes, how about a double ended remote. The aluminum remote looks like it's Long enough to have both ends milled out and receive the remote inserts. It would solve many problems and allow you to make a nifty double entendre as a name for the new remote.
Also, I was reading an old review about OG Bifrost and it seemed to mention Gungnir being a tube dac.
Was Gungnir originally going to be a tube dac? Any chance you might revisit the idea of a tube dac again?
Happy Listening All.
