[Black Stuart]

Here we go,
on another forum there is a whole crowd of lemmings who have bought into the Idler thing (Garrard, Lenco).

The performance this lot have gone through to get these agricultural looking dated decks to work is hilarious.

Some are spending £2000 - yes that's right, $4000 for two layer slate plinths, which they rave about - well you would have to after spending that kind of money.

The bearings on the Garrards are crap and on some Lencos they cut the corner off the plinth so that they can use a decent arm!

I almost bought into this BS but hung back and instead listened to an industry professional, James Doddington who supplied a list of Japanese DD superdecks to think about. I bought into the Kenwood KD series, which come with a gimbal arm which James said 'was he best of all the gimbal arms' - having used this deck/arm combo for over 18 months now I agree entirely, having used crappy Rega arms for far too long.

Memepool put me right about modern belt drive decks and for what those idiots paid for two pieces of slate will buy you a belt drive deck and arm that are far better than the antique variety in every way - VPI Scout $3000.

Interestingly I don't think any of the new generation of belt drives uses a suspended platter, if they do, don't buy. Why - time smearing is why.

Direct drive TTs - there was so much hostility when the retail versions came along, totally unfounded and the basis of which was xenophobia. Don't forget that most radio stations dumped their Garrards when the Technics SP10s came along.

There simply is no comparison between the engineering of the Japanese DDs' and Brit/Swiss Idlers.

The Idler crowd kept talking about problems with DDs and used the fear thing about unavailable components. When challenged to say exactly how many DDs packed up - they shut up! There are DDs to avoid, mostly Denons. Technics SP10s and the fabulous Trio LO-7 both have components that can be sourced today.

I know there are many who love their Garrards and Lencos but be aware they are far from neutral and without using a CLP or stone plinth, the bass is lousy and the treble without definition.

I have challenged the Idler crowd to a straight shootout between a Kenwood KD series/Technics SP10 v any Idler, even one equipped with a $4000 plinth. Same cartridge, same phonostage, same power amp -THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING.

Had I known what I know now and made an offer to Kenwood/Trio for all the tooling which was undoubtedy scrapped for recycling, what a good income I would now have. It is the cost of tooling up that will stop the re-introduction of top quality DDs, though I hear that maybe the Chinese are contemplating getting into them.

My Kenwood was badly packed for shipping from Germany to Spain. There was damage to a corner of the plinth and both the cover hinges were smashed to pieces. No transport screws were used either for the motor or the arm - it plays superbly even though I can see it has not been treated well in it's long life. In operation it is silent, quite shocking really after the other decks I have used - it cost me £120($240) and that includes an arm that is so simple to set-up, it's a dream. This arm also debunks the myth about one piece arms.

A good condition Japanese DD should cost around E350-450. Some are fully automatic and some semi. Don't under-rate what an absolute boon it is to have a TT that lifts the arm and switches itself off at end-of-side.

So, if you know what to look for and what to avoid, an 80s' Japanese DD will shock you. Some come with arms that do them no favours but that applies to the Lenco idlers as well and most Garrards are sold without an arm.

As others have said - go down the Idler road and be prepared to spend a lot of time and money, dumping the original plinth is mandatory.

The old belt drives with their suspended chassis should be avoided. Lin Sondeks and the Ittok arm are a perfect example of the power of good advertising and the lemming factor - avoid.

The best of the new belt drives are very good and totally outclass the old ones.

Let's be clear about the function of a TT - it has only one function - to rotate LPs at a very precise speed (some DDs let you adjust the speed). It should not introduce motor noise or any other artifacts into the playback. It should not colour either the bass or treble - in short, it should not be heard in any way at all.

Having used old style suspended belt drives, Rega 2&3s, a DD Technics SL120 (1200 comes with an arm) and the DD Kenwood KD990, I would never contemplate using other than a DD deck. I should be buying another KD series deck, then I will go skeletal with one of them, done properly, visually they blow everything else away.

Arm and cartridge are another matter entirely and this is where personal sonic taste should come into play.

 

[shplorgh]

So which one would you recommend?

 

[Black Stuart]

Hungrych,
this is a list of DDs' compiled by JamesD. These are by no means the only good DDs available, there are others. Also the best place to source these is German ebay why, because the Germans have never lost their engineering prowess and as soon as these completely new designs came onto the retail scene, they jumped in.

Micro Seki 5000/8000
Sansui SR929
Sony PS-X9/TTS6000 & 8000/2250
JVC TT-100
Pioneer PLC590
Denon DP80/100
Exclusive P-3/P-10 (these have never been available outside Japan)
Kenwood KD990 (there are at least 4 model numbers for these and I think the 8030 actually has a mahogany plinth)

The fully automatic DDs were disparaged simply because they were just that.

Some DDs come with arms that do them no favours and with some it would be almost impossible to change arms easily.

The kinds of feet fitted to a lot of decks in the 70s & 80s were sorbethane and plastic, they do no favours to any deck. I used to use sorbethane products but no more - time smearing. If you can get a stonemason to make you a set of feet from slate/granite/ marble and drill them so that you can use the original screws is the way to go.

Memepool mentions the Technics SL120/1200, this is probably the best place to start even if later you move on to other types of decks. If you encounter one of these with speed stability problems, very likely a squirt of something like De-oxit into the adjustable pots inside the chassis will cure this - do not buy one of these decks if the speed problem cannot be solved.

Idlers - some people love these and would never part from them but they can have all kinds of problems not least, speed stability. As other posters have commented - they love the sound. They have aquired a cult status as have the Sondeks - you have to pay for that. The Ittok arm looks good but thats all - don't be suckered by looks. Some of the Denon DDs look good to some people, especially the ones with raised platters but they suffer from ringing - not good.

If you use a phono stage within an old receiver, it may work but you will soon be disappointed, a good seperate phono stage will show you what you have been missing.

I know some of us keep banging on about a solid platform/wall shelf for a TT but it is essential.

There is no substitute for research and if at all possible listen to a few vinyl rigs first before buying anything.

 

[Thermionic]

Well, I have been using for the last few years a Lorricraft re-manufactured Garrard 401 and I certainly don‘t feel like a lemming. I had them make a special plinth and stand for it as well. I use an old SME 3009 (with the steel top bearing, can’t remember the exact version) re-wired with cotton covered silver wire and an ancient Dynavector 30C PU head (integral MC cartridge and head shell). The whole thing looks rather nice with the neon lamp gently illuminating those nice machined strobe markings on the edge of the platter and the red translucent sides of the Dynavector revealing the cartridge’s mysterious innards . Every time I look at this little lot which must have a combined age of over one hundred years I chuckle to myself and remember how the 401 was once regarded as the very best, then lost favour to later machines of fashion, and then decades later became the height of fashion itself.. Even the good gentleman who made the famous Kotsu (spelling?) cartridges used a 401. I bought mine because I always fancied one (since they were new!) and had the funds at the time to do a deal with Lorricraft. Not for one moment have I regretted the cost and it’s a pretty good record player too, probably not the best, but I don’t care and I have no intention to upgrade it.

Hi-fi Is a bit like cars; ask a dozen drivers what the best car is and you get a dozen mostly ill informed and biased answers, and it is of course the same with audio. Personally I have had not that many turntables, I have had some cheap ones and some less so, I built one once, together with a rather complex unipivot arm. I put a Dynavector 100R in a plastic DD parallel tracker and that worked pretty well, and now I have the Jurassic Lorricraft. They all sounded a bit different, as did the arms and the cartridges. But different might not mean better or more accurate, and who knows what any record should actually sound like? Back in the days when I used to make tea in a small London recording studio I learnt the amount of processing and tweaking done just to get a clean sound on the record, so the truth is rather a movable feast as regards record playing. Actually the most impressive sound I ever heard from a record player was from a wind-up acoustic gramophone playing some thirties jazz. My goodness did that sound live and impressive. Perhaps I have tin ears.

I suppose the point I am not making very well here is that like everything else, it all depends on your point of view, experience and taste. The great classic record players of the past when made to work properly can give you many good things which include excellent sound quality as well as a certain integrity and historical rightness. But like classic cars, they will need proper and sympathetic restoration for their special magic to become apparent. With a new player you just slap your money on the counter. As to which is best, like cars and most everything else there is of course no answer. But I am inclined to think that reasonable amount of money spent to get a good example of a classic turntable is not a bad way to go, especially if funds are a bit limited. But there again most of my equipment is vintage and I am of an age that can remember when reel to reel tape and long playing records were the only means of music playback.

 

[memepool]

Stuart I agree with a lot of what you say but some of it is verging on the same kindof partisanship which you accuse belt drive afficionados of.

The idea that every other deck in the world was inferior to the Linn Sondek according to the British press in the 1980s isn't strictly true.

I have an extensive collection of old Hi-Fi magazines from this period like What Hi-Fi and Hi-Fi Choice and of course they certainly rated the Sondek as the benchmark but it's not so straightforward as that.

You have to remember that the Sondek, and all homegrown belt drives which were equally disparaged of course, was pretty cheap by comparison with the Japanese decks of the day. The ones you mention were between twice and three times more expensive than the Linn back then so their comments should be seen in this light.

They liked the big Sony's and the Nakamichi and the Marantz TT-1000. They always raved about Technics decks but the SL-1000 cost the best part of a grand which was a massive chunk of cash. The reason the BBC bought these was probably more to do with spending cuts than their preference for this over an EMT.

The reason you see more of this Japanese esoterica in Germany than the UK probably has more to do with the fact that their economy was stronger at the time so people had more disposable income.

I recommend modding the SL1200 because it's good value for money compared to so called audiophile beltdrives like the Rega P3, not because I think direct drives are inherently superior.

There are too many variables involved apart from the drive system to make such blanket statements in my opinion. The same goes for idlers. I have a Lenco and was gobsmacked at how good it is in stock form, even with that funny arm, for the 30 quid I paid.

You don't need to spend 4000USD on a slate plinth to get good sound from a Garrard or Lenco and most people use birch ply / MDF. To say the bearings are inferior to modern designs is simply untrue. British and Swiss / German, or indeed American in the case of Rek-O-Kut, build from the 1950s and '60s was uniformly overengineered and of stunning quality which is why these behemoths are still going strong.

I have direct drives and belt drives too. There is nothing wrong with a suspended subchassis and if you check soundfountain there are instructions on how to make one for the Technics SP10.

What it comes down to for me is that turntables these days are often ridiculously expensive for what you are actually getting and therefore looking for good sound quality from older designs is the way to go if you want the best bang for buck.

 

[mikeg]

At the South Florida meet, on the 27th of this month, I'll set up two vintage turntables, and a fairly expensive new and modern one. Hopefully they'll be listened to, and compared. So, Keep an eye for comments from this meet, regarding how well these turntables compare. You can see them listed in my headfi profile.

 

[lini]

mikeg: What needle are you using in your V15II, btw? Looking forward towards your meet results - I'm pretty sure quite a few people will be positively surprised by your B&O...

Thermionic: Very much agreed, hifi is a very subjective matter in many aspects. And there always seem to be many fans for whatever approach/philosophy/theory, who will defend what they're convinced of - often enough without even being challenged.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFF /img/forum/go_quote.gif I once heard a restored TD-124 with SME arm. Best turntable I have EVER HEARD. WARMTH, TONE, MUSICAL, OMG - AWESOME! Now I own two of them.

I used to own a Thorens table upon which I had mounted a Mayware Formula IV Mk. II arm.

Nice setup, but it did have a bit of VLF rumble when stock. I mixed a concoction of STP (The Racer's edge) and some Molybdenum DiSulfide and put it in the bearing well. It took a good half hour or more for the platter to settle back into place, and one it did... NO MORE RUMBLE! It was such a sonically sweet deck. I also used a 1.5lb record mat and a record clamp. I also experimented with various mat materials. Great fun!

 

[fishbolish]

what about rega? simple ,set up right they sound great,& the design hasn't changed that much over the years,& the used ones dont go for that much money,P2,P3,P25.unfortunatley you cant adjust VTA(with stock rega tonearms).

 

[mikeg]

I have two of these cartridges, and they both have the original needles.
Quote:

Originally Posted by lini /img/forum/go_quote.gif mikeg: What needle are you using in your V15II, btw? Looking forward towards your meet results - I'm pretty sure quite a few people will be positively surprised by your B&O... Thermionic: Very much agreed, hifi is a very subjective matter in many aspects. And there always seem to be many fans for whatever approach/philosophy/theory, who will defend what they're convinced of - often enough without even being challenged. Greetings from Munich! Manfred / lini

 

[Black Stuart]

Memepool,
my personal experience of TTs is as I have outlined, for others it is different and perhaps I have been 'beating the drum' a bit too hard because of that very biased partisan mentality expressed by so many of the Idler crowd on another forum.

What I have found refreshing on this thread that all the Idler owners who have posted here have been very honest and straightforward. So that anyone who is interested in getting into vinyl has been able to get a broad sweep of what is entailed in the old v new equation.

Like you I don't think that newbies can go wrong in buying something like a s/hand Technics SL120/1200. Buy a cheap new TT and maybe become very disappointed.

Idler owners here have stated the Garrards/Lencos have a coloured, warm but very dynamic sound that they like - there is no way I'm going to criticise or make negative comments about that, far from it - there are way to many style fascists around who will tell you what is correct and what is'nt.

Why do I personally prefer the nuetrality of a top class DD, simple really because I want to hear, for better or worse what was pressed onto the vinyl.

This allows a totally personal preference to be applied to the arm/cartridge combo. I used to accept the 'received wisdom=BS' that arms with a removable headshell are inferior in every way to a one piece arm aka the Rega. Having experienced and wasted lots of money on fully modded RB250/300s in the past, compared to the Kenwood arm, there simply is no comparison. Having a removable headshell which is totally unlike the classic spindly SME one, I now emphatically deny all these arguments.

Your argument about new costs is spot on but this is one of the main points I made - s/hand with care it's possible to buy all that expensive quality DD engineering for a fraction of the new price.

It is this superb engineering of the Kenwood arm and how slickly the headshell mates with the arm that is so impressive. By using a little Blutak at the interface it is impossible for resonances to pass along the arm in either direction.With a one piece arm this is impossible, yes, you can damp an arm in lots of ways but that is just going to tamper with the sonics as a whole.

The other huge plus of course is that you can use more than one headshell/cartridge combo, changing headshells is so easy - I like versatility, rather than going to the expense of buying another arm, that makes no sense to me.

Suspension, no matter how good (Mitchell) is always going to involve 'time smearing' by it's very nature. There is someone on another forum who did the whole thing with a Gyrodeck - all the uprating, everything, spent a lot of money. He then bought a Garrard and after some minimal work on it was gobsmacked at how good the sound was compared to his Gyrodeck.

What the Iders and DDs do is to create an almost seemless symbiosis of motor and platter, the methods are different but both eliminate this time smearing.

Because the Idler method is mechanical it will always be held to ransom by the quality of the engineering and by wear of all those mechanical interfaces. one only has to look at Idler threads to see how much work is involved in all of this - as another poster said 'it has to be a labour of love'

By contrast the DDs use top class electronic design. I have tested my TT with strobe mats - it runs precisely on both 33 and 45 RPM. If this goes, I may well need to change some caps or resistors - the bogeyman of DDs is made out to be the motor run chips, I can't see this at all. A TT is not high heat/high voltage gear unlike an amp and we all know that high heat will degrade the performance of all components and definately curtail their life.

I agree that old TTs should have their phono wiring replaced, that is something where there has been some huge leaps forward in the last 10 years. Kenwood used a patent pending stranded copper wire for their phonos, I removed this and used my own design here - it changed the amount of detail coming through quite dramatically from what was already a very detailed TT.

So many get conned into buying the latest flavour of platter mat - this is something that IMO most of the TT manufacturers got right long ago - heavy inert rubber composition ones. I've used cork compos, the lot, no thanks I'll stick with the original one that came with the deck.

I don't use MCs because (1) they can be very variable and (2) whenever I have listened to well put together systems using them, they have been for me too analytical and lacked that musicality that can be found in many MMs.

I wonder how many Idler owners use MCs with their TTs, perhaps because they balance out the 'sound' of the Idler system - it would be interesting to hear opinions on this from Idler owners.

One thing that no one has mentioned on this thread - record cleaning machines - it's long past time when I must buy one of these but the good ones are'nt cheap, especially in rip-off Europe. I used to pay £1 per LP to be cleaned professionally - that's an even more expensive way.

It is true to say that when you get heavily into vinyl - it gets heavily into your bank account but - there are far worse ways to spend our money, that's if your partner does'nt get to it first.

As always - enjoy the music

 

[kpeezy]

Biggest post in the history of ever.

 

[PITTM]

I bought a Music Hall MMF-5 after researching the market for months. I am very happy with my purchase. I have heard a lot of older turntables and they just dont stack up. The only thing that sucks is that i bought it used and the seller didnt secure the cart. well and the stylus fell out and broke. They sent me 100 bucks and I got a Grado Red, but I imagine its a bit of a downgrade from what I would have had, but yeah, the MMF-5 is pretty awesome.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Stuart /img/forum/go_quote.gif Why do I personally prefer the nuetrality of a top class DD, simple really because I want to hear, for better or worse what was pressed onto the vinyl. This allows a totally personal preference to be applied to the arm/cartridge combo. I used to accept the 'received wisdom=BS' that arms with a removable headshell are inferior in every way to a one piece arm aka the Rega. Having experienced and wasted lots of money on fully modded RB250/300s in the past, compared to the Kenwood arm, there simply is no comparison. Having a removable headshell which is totally unlike the classic spindly SME one, I now emphatically deny all these arguments. It is this superb engineering of the Kenwood arm and how slickly the headshell mates with the arm that is so impressive. By using a little Blutak at the interface it is impossible for resonances to pass along the arm in either direction.With a one piece arm this is impossible, yes, you can damp an arm in lots of ways but that is just going to tamper with the sonics as a whole. The other huge plus of course is that you can use more than one headshell/cartridge combo, changing headshells is so easy - I like versatility, rather than going to the expense of buying another arm, that makes no sense to me. I don't use MCs because (1) they can be very variable and (2) whenever I have listened to well put together systems using them, they have been for me too analytical and lacked that musicality that can be found in many MMs. I wonder how many Idler owners use MCs with their TTs, perhaps because they balance out the 'sound' of the Idler system - it would be interesting to hear opinions on this from Idler owners.

Interesting points. I think you've highlighted here something which is another major issue for the buying new over old debate.

Since the single casting gimballed tonearm design of Rega / SME is pretty much accepted as superior, at least by the market in the sense that there are very few other designs of gimballed arm being made these days, then the design of cartidges has been developed to suit these designs.

Therefore finding a cart to complment either very low mass tonearms like the SME 3009 S2 or indeed high mass arms like the Fidelity Research or those commonly found on Japanese DD's like your Kenwood, becomes all the more difficult as they arn't being made any more. SME's explanation of this relationship between mass, compliance and damping explains it far better than I could. http://www.sme.ltd.uk/content/Series-V-1330.shtml


This is I suspect why you don't like Moving Coils. Have you tried the Denon 103 I wonder? as they are specifically designed for higher mass arms and are also said to work well on arms with loads of joins because of the extra damping this affords the cantilever suspension. William Thakker in Germany sells the Denon for less than you find them in Japan...


Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Stuart /img/forum/go_quote.gif Suspension, no matter how good (Mitchell) is always going to involve 'time smearing' by it's very nature. There is someone on another forum who did the whole thing with a Gyrodeck - all the uprating, everything, spent a lot of money. He then bought a Garrard and after some minimal work on it was gobsmacked at how good the sound was compared to his Gyrodeck.

As far as I know 'time smearing' is more likely to be the result of the belt drive system per se rather than the use of suspended subchassis. The latter however does seem to have an inpact on the above issues you mention about cartidge compliance in my experience.
Quite simply if you have no suspension in the subchassis and an ultra rigid arm firmly bolted to the plinth then energy from the stylus will have nowhere to go but feedback into the plinth causing distortion perceived as hardness in the upper registers I suspect.
So the high mass approach always taken by the Japanese and increasingly by manufacturers of modern belt drives combined with the hegemony of ultra rigid gimaballed tonearms is I think one of the reasons for the resurgence of unipivots by manufacturers like VPI as they avoid this effect.


Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Stuart /img/forum/go_quote.gif So many get conned into buying the latest flavour of platter mat - this is something that IMO most of the TT manufacturers got right long ago - heavy inert rubber composition ones. I've used cork compos, the lot, no thanks I'll stick with the original one that came with the deck.

Surely Trio/Kenwood supplied a variety of platter mats including a ceramic one with their flagship L07-D

so they must have some effect?
I have found a silicon one supplied by SRMtech to be very much better than rubber or felt on my Thorens TD-125, damping the metalic ringing of the platter and improving detail.

 

[Black Stuart]

Memepool,
agreed about arms bolted to a plinth, that's why most Idler owners go to the trouble of buying/or making a de-coupled armboard and that's another reason why the Kenwood engineers mounted the arm on one leg of the spider, it is truly de-coupled from the plinth. If I thump the plinth of the Kenwood whilst playing a side, there is a very dull response reflected through the speakers and that's all. They also used HDC - high density chipboard, which is far superior to MDF.

I have yet to see a TT, where the plinth is more or less de-coupled from the platter/motor and arm like the Kenwood and some of the other Japanese DDs.

A 'load of joins' - no just the one extra between headshell and arm. The high mass of arms like mine is exactly where it should be at the fulcrum point, which means superb tracking.

You fail to mention that the one piece arm like the Rega and their copies are far cheaper to manufacture. Unipivots are the complete opposite, that's why they tend to cost more.

Also there is no reason why modern Rega type arms could'nt be semi-automatic, it would'nt make them sound better but they would be far more functional.

Belts are the main culprit in time smearing but suspension means that any movement at all and we know that the slightest movement in the platter will be reflected directly onto/into the stylus.

Why have so many who bought into suspended platter TTs dumped them in favour of no suspension TTs

I don't have any problem finding cartridges and I'm about to buy into the top of the range hybrid Pickering. Some love the Denon 103/R, some don't. This cartridge was really 'worked on' on a different forum - some love it and some hate it. It needs an awful lot of work to give of it's best but I doubt that I would gain anything more than I already get from the Pickering V15 -625E. In fact many say that the Pickering is the MM equivalent of the MC 103.

I still say that most MCs are too analytical, if that's what you like fine but for me, musicality is far more important. Let's not forget just how much the best of the MCs cost. I would say that for someone getting into vinyl - pay less for the cartridge and buy more vinyl and indeed there are many who simply can't afford the best MCs - you pays yer money and makes yer choice.