Turntable Adjusting

Time flies when you are messing with a turntable.  On Monday night I thought some of the bass was excessive, suggesting either feedback or arm resonance.  On Tuesday, I had difficulty determining which of those, or neither, was true.  It might have simply been the recording I was listening to.  But then later, I decided that worse than feedback, I seemed might be having a serious tracking error issue.  On Wednesday morning I was playing Peter Sprague again, and in the final grooves it seemed to be silently skipping, sliding back a groove or so but without any obvious tick or pop.  THAT was an issue that immediately needed fixing, I decided, and no more records until it is fixed.

The first thing I did Wednesday night was to check the level.  I had leveled the table on Sunday night using a very small level of unknown quality.  I couldn't find my regular level, or my bubble level.  So on Wednesday I bought a level, and used it on Wednesday night.  I had leveled the table correctly on Sunday with the little level I had found then.  (The Rear feet are cranked up nearly an inch, it seems, but that's what it took!)

Then I checked the arm balance, and stylus force.  All were OK.

Then I got out an anti-skate test record, which has a 1 inch blank surface near the end of the record.  There was no skating whatever, suggesting my cartridge alignment was OK.  And since there was no skating force, that could not explain skipping anyway (regardless of how correct the alignment is, but it *is* probably correct anyway).

So then I got to something I've wanted to do for a long time.  I adjusted the height of the cueing mechanism.  The owners manual tells you to adjust this, and it should be set for 3/16 of an inch.  But when I turned the screw, nothing happened.  So I decided to take a chance and turn the screw all the way.  The screw came out!  Then I looked under the screw, and there is a little collar that the screw goes into.  When you tighten the screw, it's supposed to lift that collar flush with the surrounding metal (which is as far as it can go).  When you loosen the screw, it's supposed to fall back.  But it wasn't falling back.  The solution was to put the screw back in, and push the screw down.  With several pounds of pressure, it finally moved the arm to change the cueing height.  At first, I adjusted it a bit too low, then I adjusted just slightly higher than 3/16 of an inch (to allow for thicker records), and that worked great.  Turning the screw clockwise works great for raising the cueing, but counterclockwise requires a push so that the collar actually moves down.

Then I noticed something really weird.  When I had the cueing too low, the blank record now showed considerable skating towards the center of the record.  That would suggest that the arm had been made too long.  When I finally got the cueing adjusted right (just slightly more than 3/16 of an inch) there was no skating again.

So it seems the cueing adjust screw actually adjusts the arm tilt rather than the cueing arm itself!  Actually the manual does not even call this the cueing adjustment, they call it the stylus level adjustment.  Small changes in arm tilt affect (by a very small amount) the length of the arm when the stylus touches the record.  If I understand this correctly, it suggests my cartridge alignment is very exact, because even a small error introduces significant skating, and I have none.

I had some idea that adjusting the cueing was beneficial in this way: the cueing had been set so high that the cueing mechanism was actually pushing the arm up at points when it was in the groove.  That could explain the mistracking.  I'm not sure this is true, possibly the mistracking (which I thought I heard while in the bathroom) was just hearing the repeats in the music.  I had not tried to replicate the mistracking before I started testing and adjusting (because I wanted to get the job done, and I knew some things needed adjustment anyway).

The rest of the adjustment mainly involved getting the arm to land precisely in the arm holder after automatic arm return (this turns out to be VERY important on this turntable) and to get it safely into the lead in groove on automatic start.  These two adjustments require very fine screw turning, and they are said to interact (though I didn't notice much interaction, per se).

Here is why you need to get the arm to land precisely in the holder when it returns.  If the arm doesn't land precisely in the arm holder, it will get bumped either toward the record or away from the record.  Then, the arm will no longer be perpendicular to the arm rails.  So then if you put the arm on the record, when it lands (or before it lands) the servo mechanism will try to correct by moving the arm base.  This could cause the stylus to fall off the record (not good).

Now I had noticed from Sunday night that the servo mechanism was turning on above the record surface.  That could cause the arm base to move before the stylus falls into the groove, which is inconvenient if not dangerous.  I tried unsuccessfully to adjust that.  Actually, this particular adjustment was covered by what looked like factory applied black tape, which I needed to peel off.  That black tape is on both of my LT-30's.  Anyway, I peeled off the tape, but the small phillips screw underneath could not be turned by any reasonable amount of pressure.  I gave up, not wanting to break the arm.

But after I had adjusted the cueing height, the servo engagement system fixed itself.  Now the servo turns on at the moment the stylus reaches the grove.  That means even if the arm is not correctly perpendicular, it will fall where you want it, and not servo to some other position (which could be off the side of the record) before reaching the groove.

Then one more adjustment, because I actually feared all of the above (while useful) would not actually solve any mistracking problem (if there had been one).  I tried adding more mass to the headshell to change the arm resonance.  I first tried using the 4g weight, but that was too much because I could not get the arm to balance.  But the 2g weight worked fine.  I'm not sure if this is helpful, it seems I can see more relative arm to stylus jiggling than before.  But I think that might be good if previously the jiggling was at too high a frequency.

I've noticed no more mistracking.  But it sometimes seems like the turntable might be adding wow and/or flutter, despite the servo lock light being on, and the turntable not being affected by a little extra finger drag.  I've gone ahead to buy the Dr Feickert test record from Hong Kong through ebay as it is apparently not sold in the USA (not online anyway).  That should give me some objective results for wow and flutter and arm resonance.  An arm resonance could also be adding wow and flutter.

Friend came over on Thursday night and we listened to two records together.  She noticed nothing wrong and said it sounded great.  It's great to have a working turntable!  It's great to have friends too!

Servicing SP 10

One of the great advantages of buying an SP10 Mk2 or above is that these were very popular turntables, at least by high end audio standards.   That translates into incredible support today, almost 30 years after the launch of the SP10 Mk2.  People are talking or will talk about them everywhere, discussing all aspects of use and refurbishing.  There are companies well known for servicing SP 10's, which is something I intend to do soon (but hopefully not because the turntable has stopped working well).  Here is a list of well known SP 10 shops:

1) Bill Thalmann at Music Technology in northern Virginia.

2) Steve Dobbins (mostly known for high end plinths)

3) Sound HiFi in UK

Here's the blog where I found these names.

I like the idea that the SP 10 bearing is supposed to be user serviced, because that means it is user serviceable!  (And not some bit of magic that requires you to find a guru in Xanadu.)  The main thing required is cleaning (with alcohol q tips) the bearing and then adding oil, or just adding oil if the bearing is clean and in use.  The factory specified oil is Technics SFWO 010.  Technics does not supply this anymore, but claimed-identical products are available in many places, include KABUSA.com, where I just bought some.

KAB reveals that they learned from Technics that the oil is actually a synthetic diester oil blend known as Anderol 465, used for impregnating sintered metal bearings and parts on aircraft (!)

Others have suggested various alternatives, like synthetic 5-50W oil.  What definitely should not be used is 3-in-1 in the red can because it gets gummy, but 3-in-1 in the blue can (for medium electric motors) is said by some to be ok.  Seems like Technics was using the best possible product though.

Spinning Vinyl Again

I've been spinning vinyl again, and loving it.  The sound is pretty much the best I've ever had, with minor issue that will be explained below.

My vinyl spinner is a straight line tracking direct drive table from Japan in 1980, a Mitsubishi LT-30.  My first unit worked fine out of the box, even though the ebay seller had not bothered to remove the platter or secure the linear tracking arm with the factory shipping plates.  The arm makes a very soft tick or bump sound just before it moves while tracking the record.  I have a recollection of a straight line tracking table in the 1980's doing exactly the same thing, and I think it was a Mitsubishi, and the reason I did not buy it, even though way back then I didn't really think it was such a big deal.

Anyway, I spent a week after unpacking the first LT-30 not actually playing music through it, just testing how well it tracked records, and adjusting the user accessible adjustments.  I wanted to be sure it was OK before mounting my Dynavector Karat 17D2.

In fact, the last weekend in January, when I received the first LT-30 on Saturday, was very busy and productive.  As usual, I hosted a discussion and movie party on Sunday from 3-9 PM.  I spent most of Saturday preparing for that by cleaning up the living room, which was filled with stuff I had been working on (including the Sony PS-X800 turntable I had attempted to fix).  I needed to install the new set of UPS batteries in the Pure Audio UPS, move the UPS back into position, and set up the stack of components that rests on top of it (which had been strewn about the living room).  That included exchanging the Acurus A250 tweeter amp (which has waaaaay too much power for my Elac ribbon tweeters) with a Parasound HCA-1000A (which has less power, higher bias, circuit design done by John Curl and approved by my friend Tim as being the best possible, and is direct coupled).  I wanted to set up the Parasound also, but I found out that it wasn't working.  Then I found the problem, a blown line fuse, and recalled the experimentation with the PS Audio Power Plant Premier when I had an APC Smart UPS 1500A on the same multi room AC circuit.  The two power conditioners on the same circuit were fighting each other, my equipment was buzzing, especially the Parasound amp, then the fuse blew.  I don't think there was actually a problem with the amplifier.  Anyway, it turns out the Parasound uses a 3/4 inch line fuse, and all my line fuses were 1+ inches.  After putting more than an hour into the effort of getting the Parasound running again, I simply abandoned that project, but put the Parasound in the new equipment stack anyway, with the old Acurus taken out to my climate controlled storage building called Lyndhurst, where I had also gone to retrieve the Parasound.

With all that, and the party preparation, it was a wonder I even got the turntable unpacked, but I did, and started the testing and setup process.  I was actually spinning vinyl before the end of January, as I had promised a friend at the River City Audio Society meeting, but wasn't actually playing music from it until the following weekend.

I tried to get some answers on the arm ticking/bumping sound from a thread at AudioKarma during the week, but no answers yet.

Then the following weekend I finally got vinyl spinning AND sound playing.  Though it started with another busy Saturday.  I went to computer club meeting and gave a Kurzweil demonstration.  Then I had dinner.  Then I went to the San Antonio Symphony to see and hear a semi-staged production of Rusalka.  Then I went to the supermarket and did the shopping I had been postponing all week.

Finally I got to the actual vinyl playing setup on Sunday.  The first step was getting AC power to the related components (turntable, DB-8HG phono module, and Acurus L-10 preamp).  I though about various temporary solutions, but then jumped right in to what I wanted to do, taking a chance it would work, and it did.  I cut a hole in the back of my drawer/shelf chest, in one of the shelves.  That hole would allow me to put an AC power strip on that shelf, and run all the cords to and from it.  I was initially thinking I'd need a saw, and that would create a huge mess, and I'd have to move all the equipment (lots of it) off of the chest so I could move the chest out from the wall to vacuum up all the saw dust.

Fortunately, it turned out that the back panel of the chest is basically just cardboard, and it cut fairly easily with a utility knife.  I did take all the electronic equipment off of the chest anyway, to vacuum it off, and set it back with even more equipment on top.  But I didn't have to mess with the turntable or the piece of slate beneath it.  (Actually, I had already done this equipment vacuuming and setup BEFORE I was faced with this problem of cutting a hole or not.  So I REALLY did not want to move the equipment off AGAIN.)

Then the next problem was getting power to the power strip.  The hole I cut was not large enough to squeeze the power strip through, and just pushing the cord out from the hole I couldn't get it to go anywhere where it could be pulled out and attached to another cord to be connected to the main equipment strip.

The solution to that problem was cutting a short piece of string, and then attaching a metal object (actually, a cat nail clipper) to the string, and lowering it down from the top of the cabinet, I could then pull the string through the hole.  Then I could tie the string to the power cord of the outlet strip, and pull it back to the top of the cabinet, where I could attach it to another cord (I found the perfect 8 foot 14g cord in my cord box) to reach the sub-strip next to the TV.  THAT second strip connects to the main Monster Power strip that powers all my AV equipment, and that main strip is connected to my 20A dedicated AC line.

It also turned out to be easy to get all the equipment cords run through that hole just by lowering them from the top of the chest.  The plugs almost seemed to magically appear in the opening, and I pulled them in one at a time.  I connected the three things I needed to run right away, plus the three others I will be using in the future: the SAE impulse suppressor (a friend insists I use this when I copy his out-of-print records to digital for him), the Alesis Masterlink recorder (which I use to records LP's and cassette tapes), and the Nakamichi RX-505 cassette deck (which I can use to play cassettes I'd like to copy to digital, or just play cassettes).  So the metal outlet strip is nearly full now.

Once I got everything hooked up to AC power, I had to connect the interconnects.  I didn't use anything too fancy, but I did have a 1.5 foot length of premium OFC interconnects I got at CES in 1989 to connect the DB-8HG phono stage to the Acurus L-10 preamp, which then drives a pair of cables the 25 foot distance to my level-boost preamp, an Aragon 28k, which then drives my MSB PAD-1 analog to digital converter, which feeds AES/EBU to my system Tact preamp.

(And despite all that, despite all the long cables and multiple in-line buffers, all my care in AC connection and cabling shows itself as zero noise and zero buzz when listening to phonograph records).

I first played the Peter Sprague album I had been using for testing and setup purposes (because I considered it expendable).  Actually, this turned out to be a marvelous record, and all my messing around with it (even using the *gasp* cheap phono cartridge which came with the table) didn't seem to have hurt it at all.  Then I tried some Emerson Lake and Palmer.  First, Pictures at an Exhibition, then Tarkus.  I liked the Peter Sprague better.

The weekend ended well.  I texted my friend and she wanted to hear over the cell phone but I was hydrating in the kitchen and missed her call.  While I was hydrating in the kitchen, I used Sonos to pipe the sound from the bedroom turntable into the living room.  The Sonos system in the bedroom takes as input the tape outputs of the Aragon 28K used to amplify all analog sources to suitably high level for the MSB PAD-1 digitizer.  But the tape outputs are at just the right level for Sonos as they are not amplified to that high level.

Actually, before I even started on this project in earnest, something else happened.  I won my ebay auction bit on a Technics SL 1000 system, include SP 10 Mk2A turntable, Obsidian base, and EPA-100 arm.  That is the turntable I hope to use in my living room, with the Lenco L75 as an alternate (for testing or backup).  Since winning that bid, since before winning the bid actually, I've been talking with the seller about the details of packaging.  I had already ordered a shipping plate for the Technics motor on the expectation of winning this table, which has been a dream table for me for decades.

I never believed that direct drive tables, the better ones, are lousy sounding.  My previous favorite table, the Sony PS-X800 is a nice direct drive with wonderful sound.  Likewise my new LT-30.  When I mentioned my belief to an audiophile friend years ago he quipped "so where is your SP 10?".  Well I didn't have an SP 10, and I'd be the first to concede it could be an even better sounding motor than the one in the PS-X800.  So now I will have one, with a fine arm also, and I even believe the Obsidian base has been unfairly maligned--it would take considerable effort to make a better plinth, and the Obsidian can likely be made better without starting over (I hope) mainly by adding bottom decoupling (i.e. damping feet).  Anyway, the motor is superb and the plinth with dustcover will be very convenient until I get another one.  There is no reason to believe the Obsidian base is inferior to the base of the LT-30 or the PS-X800, in fact it's likely to be better than those, with the only weakness being the lack of damping feet.

So I've been very excited about winning my "dream" table.  Meanwhile, I just barely managed to check out the second LT-30 I bought for backup, parts, and experimentation during this weekend.  It was actually Monday afternoon by the time I quickly unboxed it and plugged it in.  And I discovered quickly the turntable didn't even turn on when I flipped the on switch (at the arm holder).  Later on Monday I opened an eBay "case" and sent a message to the seller about the claimed-to-be-working turntable.  But Monday night I took the bottom off the unit, and quickly discovered the problem.  The actual power switch was loose and was not getting enough push from the cam that was supposed to be pushing it.  I tightened the switch, and the turntable worked.  I put a record on it for testing (this time, I chose the Emerson Lake and Palmer Tarkus, my least favorite of the 3 records I played Sunday night) and it worked perfectly.  Despite the arm base seeming even looser than on the other LT-30, and despite the table generally seeming in slightly poorer condition, the arm does not make the ticking/bumping sound that the one in the bedroom does.

Anyway, I'm glad I had the opportunity to take a look at the bottom of the LT-30.  It is far simpler than the PS-X800 and looks like it can be much more easily serviced and experimented with.  I should be able to figure out how to fix that bumping sound.

But I've not heard any ill effect from the arm movement on my speakers.  What did strike me as being slightly wrong were the loud pipe organ bass notes from the Reference Recording of Respighi's Church Windows.  Right now I don't know whether the lumpy bass was caused by the arm/cartridge mismatch (I think the Dynavector 17D2 cartridge needs much more effective mass than the current arm and headshell provide) or by acoustical feedback.  It will be important to find out.  I can fix the effective mass problem by using a heavier headshell, like one of the Sumiko headshells I must have somewhere. I loved those Sumiko headshells, but I was forced to use a lighter headshell in the PS-X800 because it's auto-balance system didn't seem to be able to balance correctly with the Sumiko headshells anymore.

If the problem is acoustical feedback, I'm not sure it can be as easily fixed.  The table sits on a 50 pound piece of slate on the chest.  The chest is very strong vertically but can be made to twist horizontally by a millimeter or two.  If there is an acoustical feedback issue, it is most likely from this horizontal twisting.

It had been sometime during last week that I decided to go for my "dream" SP 10 turntable.  I had been looking at SP 10's and Denons on eBay and in discussion forums for the past month.  Finally, it was the sense that I really need to follow my bliss that got me going.  I'm a serious audiophile, and I take turntables pretty seriously, I think that rotational speed is very important, and I think direct drive is basically the way to go for best performance.  So why did I not have an SP 10 already?

But actually, I've had a number of conflicting feelings.  Not that belt drive is superior, but that perhaps the DC direct drive used by Technics isn't the best.  The audio salon I worked at in the 1970's sold Denon turntables, and pushed the line that Denons were better because they used AC rather than DC motors.  We also said that the DC motors worked on a series of pulses (I now think this part is likely incorrect).  I haven't compared the two myself (we didn't have a Technics in store, we had only Denons and our Mitch Cotter base had a Denon 6000 on it, only now I learn that the official version used the Technics).

But as I was looking at auction sites and reading blogs, it seems that the SP 10 MkII is generally regarded as being better than most Denons including the 6000, and about on par with the DP 80 (which I had never heard of before this month).  The only Denon which might actually be better would be the very very expensive Denon DP 100.

The Technics also has other things going for it.  They sold many of these tables, so service and reconditioning is widely available, and in fact the turntables are easily serviced.  Checking and oiling the bearing is the first think any new owner can do.  Denons are more like closed systems.  You don't touch the bearing at all, in fact it isn't even well known what the Denon bearings are actually like; they're a black box to most people.  So it looks like servicing a Denon would be far more difficult and expensive.

I also like the idea of the separate power supply.  And my newfound thinking, from reading the likes of Arthur Salvatore and listening to idler drive maniacs, is that speed constancy requires good torque.  SP 10 MkII and MKIIa, and MKIII are the torque champions!

I'd also been a little upset to learn that Denon went to using PWM to generate the sine waves used in it's turntables.  I generally think of PWM as an inferior system; it's been poorly used in tuners and amplifiers over the years anyway.

So it was actually only this month that I've moved over to the Technics camp.  Not very long ago, I was  criticizing the use of DC motors as in the Haiku Fan that I returned because it was too noisy.  But then I started learning that DC motors were not so necessarily inferior.  For example, Michell went to DC motors for their latest Gyrodecs, and users say universally and unequivocally that the DC motors are better.

Nevertheless, I had been continuing to look at auctions for the Denons.  Not only have I learned that the DP 80 was a successor to the DP 6000, but also the DP 75, which has better specs than the DP 80 but made to a slightly lower price point.  Either DP 80 or DP 75 would do for a nice contest with the SP 10 MkII.  But by most accounts, the MkII would probably win, and the MKIIA should be even better.

Turntable Drive Systems

Here's one on which currently my friend Tim disagrees.  He likes a short Rega belt drive system as being optimal.  He claims the platter mass is the best defense against wow and flutter.

I'm not so sure.  I remember reading about grove drag speed modulation in Peter Moncrief's International Audio Review (IAR) in the early 1980's.  The Japanese had realized the importance of that issue in the mid 1970's, if not before, and designs like the Sony TTS 8000, Technics SP 10 Mk II, and Denon DP 6000 were taking it very much into account with massive torque finely delivered, and proclaimed in specs.  For example one turntable claimed 0% deviation in speed with up to 150g of resistance.

Peter was worried about belt drive, IIRC.

(Update: Peter wrote again (?) on this very same topic in his latest online IAR.  Unfortunately this review hasn't been completed in a long time.)

I think looking just at platter mass is the wrong thing.  One has to see the drive system first as a complete system.  In that system, the platter mass serves as part of a low pass filter, as a parallel capacitor.  A belt or idler serves as a combination of resistance and inductance.  But the belt or idler has dynamic properties which may further help or hinder.

Now belts and idlers have different properties.  I believe it is probably easier to get better motor noise reduction with a belt.  That's because it's easy to get arbitrary amounts of "inductance" (stretchiness).  And one can use a weak motor (high resistance).

But I believe there is also more lag with regards to motor correction stability.  Any errors take some time to work themselves completely in a belt drive system.  An idler wheel doesn't vary as much.  There isn't much stretchiness, and the motor is high torque.  Also the idler rubber recovers instantaneously, it doesn't have to work itself out, re-stabilizing the entire length of the belt.

Belt drives where the motor isn't fixed to same plane as the platter also introduce the possibility that timing may be slightly thrown off by suspension movements.  Idler drive motors can move, but the range of motion is very limited, usually restricted to vertical only, and this has little effect on timing.

So why did people hear better timing with belt drives?  I argue they didn't.  As Arthur Salvatore says, the Linn simplifies the music.  In less complex music, the rhythm and timing becomes a more significant, ultimately the only remaining part.

Small degree of flutter caused by belt drive is exactly this…a simplifying effect.  Small timing errors are another way of raising the sound floor, of covering up micro details.

Update: I've now won a Lenco L75.  I will shortly have two working late generation direct drive tables (Mitsubishi LT-30) and one non-working one I hope to get repaired (Sony PS-X800).  I still look at listings for the top direct drive models from Technics, Denon, and Sony.  I got myself the two Mitsubishi's (one for backup) and the Lenco for my birthday instead of getting the Rega RP6 or Michell Gyrodec.  I have placed a bid on a high end tonearm for the Lenco.  After I win a tonearm, I'll order an appropriate plinth for the Lenco.  My initial hesitation in getting the Rega had mostly to do with their anti-record-clamping philosophy and lack of VTA adjustability (which I see as a conspiracy to deprive us of the right to use other phono cartridges than theirs).  My hesitation, if you can call it that, in getting the Gyrodec had mostly to do with the total cost of a loaded and new Gyrodec system, $6000 or more as I had envisioned it, including upgrades and SME 312 arm.  But as a result of my new distrust of belt drive systems, as described above, which only a few weeks ago I was making fun of  ("Idler drives rumbling into the future"), I'm not particularly interested in getting a belt drive now.  I only have some regrets in not getting a new and likely perfect for 10 years table as I think the Rega would have been.  Even the one Mitsubishi I have received so far has a minor but worrisome issue--the moving base of the arm makes a slight bumping sound when the servo moves it for linear tracking.  This likely is not audible.  If you're not into belt drive any more, there aren't as many new choices as there were in 1980, at the height of the Japanese direct drive table phenomenon.  The Rockport which Peter Moncrieff started to review is a custom built direct drive for $100,000.

Rigid arm to turntable coupling unnecessary

Another faulty part of the Linn LP12 religion is the claim that it is necessary to have a firm coupling between headshell back through the arm and the chassis up through the bearing of the turntable and the surface of the platter.  At some superficial level this may be true.  You don't want the arm and platter wandering away from one another.

But the argument as applied to making all the coupling very rigid is completely false, as that creates a connection that transmits not just position…keeping arm and platter from wandering away from one another…but vibration.  Vibration needs to be stopped from every source of vibration as close as possible from that source, and the last thing you want is vibration from the stylus traveling down the arm tube to the pivot, the chassis, the bearing, and the platter, or the vibration from the platter going the other way.

Pretty much everyone else understands this now, though some of the rigid coupling thing rears its head in the drive to eliminate non-commercial user conveniences, like removable headshells.  Imagine being able to change a cartridge without bringing your table back to the Linn dealer so he can use his special jig on the Ittok to prevent damaging the gimbals.

If you skip the rigid coupling thing, which is mostly wrong anyway (the arm must, should, and does move freely with its range of motion anyway, a slight variation in the surface of that motion is of little consequence, so long as it is not transmitted in audio band, and all the more that a pivoted arm doesn't even move in the correct surface anyway, to duplicate the cutting head, as a linear tracker at least approximates) there is little wrong even with old 1/4 cartridge headshells, which I might add were on some of the finest arms and tables (and still are!).

A standard headshell provides sufficient coupling…and it actually reduces resonances, and permits the easy addition of addition damping to the headshell…and even the cartridge body itself, where it is ultimately most useful.  It was the coupling argument which mainly lead to the disparaging of the removable headshell.  It also creates more dependency on the dealer, and saves money in arm manufacturing.

Like the arm mounting itself: damping here is a good thing.

Damping: Essential

My key problem with Linn products is that their eschewing of damping ruins their potential.  I believe the Linn Sondek LP 12 is a fair turntable, but it could be a good one with additional, even user applied (if done correctly) damping.  If one thinks of the LP 12 as a Scottish made and somewhat ineptly copied AR turntable (Linn got the suspension objectively wrong in at least one way, according to my friend Tim, they did not put the center point in the trajectory of the stylus, as the AR correctly did), then, AND ONLY THEN, does one have the right ideas of how to use it.  Not following the Linn anti-damping religion, which virtually everyone else in audio realizes is wrong.  Everywhere else you go, eliminating resonances through clever use of damping is being done more and more.  Everyone else brags about it.

Now I suspect the AR was better damped as well…but generally with less costly products, and likely even the venerable AR turntable, less damping (or most likely, none at all) is used than would be desirable.  (I think the AR may have been made with more fundamentally damping materials than the Linn, but probably additional damping would be useful even for the AR.)

So generally one expects with a lower cost product to have to do some rework, such as applying damping.  But in the case of the Linn, it is an expensive product, already perfected as much as it can be, so you are told by the dealer.  There is no damping not because Linn is cheap, you are lead to believe, but because damping ruins the sound.  (No doubt it does remove the "Linn" sound, added brightness and other resonances.  But that's exactly what I want to remove to have a product I could enjoy!)

Now the Linn has a practical problem with such rework.  It is a highly tuned device.  Even a small amount of user added damping is likely to throw off the suspension, thereby requiring a suspension adjustment.  The suspension adjustments have no readily accessible controls, and in fact they may be best leaved to a trained and experienced Linn dealer anyway.

I may (or not) keep my LP 12.  I'd keep it because they really aren't worth much anymore.  I have a product that may have cost the original owner $3000 or more if they started from an earlier version and added upgrades.  I'd be lucky to get $800 out of it (arm and table) I think now, even if it were working. It's almost worth keeping just as a museum piece.  It's actually minty beautiful.  It's finely made in many ways even if wrongly designed.  It's a pleasure to look at and fairly nice to use.

Now for that $800 I might buy a better sounding player, but maybe not.  And if I could overcome it's weaknesses a bit by damping resonances…all the better.  I'm sure with user applied damping, and perhaps other imaginable modifications, it could exceed the sound quality of a stock AR, Thorens, etc., many fine and highly regarded tables.

Though chassis damping is a bit unimaginable, as described, I might get away with a bit of arm damping.  I see Arthur Salvatore says the Ittok arm is quite good, better than the table actually.  Well I blame much of the added brightness I hear to the arm, which is about as light and undamped as it could be made (since those are Linn's goals, which are not inconsistent with making a cheaper product either).  I think with a bit of removable hockey tape, my friend Tim's favorite suggestion, this arm could be made into a contender.

I think even that small change might make this table satisfactory to me sonically, and otherwise (though I will note in a future post how many ways I dislike the LP 12).  Still, I think it could be reasonably good sounding.  It's basically an AR copy, with high quality manufacturing.  It's universally agreed that the AR was a landmark product, and partly because it was a good sounding product, though it WAS compromised to achieve a far lower price than the Linn.

It's the religion that ruins the LP 12 (though one can also think about the cheapness…and profitability to them…which all the religion is consistent with).  But a used one could be good spare parts, more than it's worth trading for.

OTOH, there are a lot of other decks below $800 that I'd find interesting, and just above that.

Deciding on my next Turntable

I have a large collection of LP records, but both of my turntables have been broken for the past two years.  Though my two existing turntables are well regarded as being ultimate perfectionist good sounding turntables, they have not been reliable.  Both of my turntables have broken twice.  They each got fixed the last time they broke, though after much delay.  They are, in order of my preference, a Sony PS-X800 with Fulton mat and Michell clamp, and a Linn Sondek LP12 with Valhalla power supply and Linn Ittok arm.  I've alternated among them, finally settling on the Sony as my favorite until it broke, then using the Linn until it broke.  For reasons of historical accident, the Linn which has non-removable headshell (I originally wrote non-removable cartridge--that's what it seems like) has my Panasonic Strain Gauge cartridge, and the Sony has my Dynavector Karat 17D2 cartridge, both also highly regarded but as different as the two tables are.

My feeling about LP records is that they sometimes offer a superior sound to standard resolution digital sources, and that this is partly because of "information" (any analog storage system has in some sense infinite resolution only partly obscured by noise, and standard digital sources are somewhat limited in this same "information") and partly because records are mastered differently--and better from the standpoint of a serious listener because they are limited in how far producers can play the loudness wars.  Playing LP's can also be a somewhat relaxing experience (or it can be tense…) akin to an I Ching divination.  In my opinion it is worth having an LP playback system if you have LP records, both for regular use and for copying LP records to digital formats for use in my music server.  I have copied about 10 LP records to digital format, and in several cases I like my transcriptions better than commercial CD's.  Two such LP's are among my favorites, Hope from Klatuu and Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy by Eno.  Though the truth is I really didn't listen to records much after I had a sizable collection of CD's in the mid 1990's.  The truth is I don't listen that much to CD's either.  I often live in silence, and FM Radio is likely my most-used source of music, but it's pretty much only for background music.  Serious listening, which I believe in but rarely do, is best with LP's, CD's, or advanced resolution digital sources.

For quite awhile my plan had been to buy a nice but not super high end Rega turntable.  My friend T thinks they are pretty good, and has defended some of Rega's design choices, such as the small inner platter driven by a small belt.  In fact, this goes way back, he almost walked me through buying a Rega turntable in the early 1980's.  I did end up getting a Dynavector Karat Ruby at his advice, but then I broke it before using it.  I only got the Dynavector Karat 17DII as a gift from a friend, the late Professor Bill Banks, in the late 1980's.

I looked at the Rega models and decided that the P6 was about the level of unit I wanted.  I hate noisy motors and it has a 24 pole motor with custom tuned power supply in a separate box.  The usually light glass platter in the less expensive Rega's is enhanced with an additional ring of glass to bring up the rotational inertia.  Meanwhile, the top end Rega's look nice but have even more impressive looking competition.  I had wanted to buy a similar level Rega P25 back 15 years ago when the dealer convinced me to buy a second hand Linn instead.

So the plan was to buy a P6 for my own selfish birthday present.  But instead around the time of my birthday this month I was preoccupied with my broken dvd recorder, something which I have played with a lot more than any turntable ever (especially the hard drive video recording feature of my RDR-HX900) so I bought myself two replacement video recorders instead, a Pioneer DVR LX70 said to be the best of the genre, and a Magnavox which is one of the few available new in the USA.  The LX70 was a big roll of the dice, but has turned out well so far.

So my birthday passed without a turntable self present, and I had more time to think.  I was thinking of a turntable that looks more like a statement than a P6.  Soon I had discovered the Michell Gyrodec, which now seems very much like the kind of thing I like.  Of course it's cool looking, perhaps the coolest looking turntable ever because of the spinning brass weights.  But it also fits my preferences, being designed for use with a clamp, and offering a screw down record clamp as an option (an option which I'd definitely go for).

I had never thought much about Gyrodec because it was introduced about 5 years after I left my job at an audio salon.  From that earlier period I had known about the Transcriptors Skeleton turntable, and it set a high bar for what I'd like a turntable to look like (a high bar now met by many so-called statement turntables), but to me it seemed a wrongheaded design.  The record is only supported by a few points, with the rest of the record left to vibrate in the breeze.  I knew that was bad because I experienced a similar thing with my Dual 1209 turntable, my very first.  The Dual never sounded quite right, I figured, because it only held any particular record with one or two concentric rings of plastic.  That was a good design for keeping motor rumble out of the record, but not good for establishing groove quietness for good tracking.

Well J.A. Michell had been hired to engineer and build the Transcriptors so I unfairly connected the faulty design it has with the name Michell.  But it seemed either that Michell himself had other ideas, or he learned fast, because the Gyrodec was very different, and exactly as I would have wanted it.  The Gyrodec was built for record clamping, with a platter deliberately made out of a plastic composite material to couple well to a vinyl record.   It also has other very good ideas, such as an inverted oil pumping bearing, and a 3 point suspension with tensioned springs.

So for a week after my birthday I was imagining buying myself a new Gyrodec.  I imagined getting the following setup:

Gyrodec SE
Orbe Clamp upgrade (screw down clamp)
HS never-connected power supply upgrade
Techno Arm

Then I saw a review comparing the Techno arm with an SME 309.  The 309 had far better high frequency characteristics, according to the reviewer.  No more tizz.  So then I put 309 down on my list, replacing the Techno arm.  The 309 also has removable headshells, a feature I very much like (and might even begin considering mandatory).

Well the package total would have come to about $6000 for all this, $2400 for the turntable and $2400 for the tonearm, for starters.  That's as much as I was planning to spend soon to upgrade my broken bathtub to a luxury Kohler Tea for Two bathtub.  I had been figuring the difference between plain vanilla bathtub replacement and Tea for Two bathtub to be about $5000, and I really wanted the nicer one.

Actually, even though I haven't used turntables much, I still might get more use out of a good turntable that a bathtub, which I've used even less.  But a difficulty with the bathtub is that there's only once chance to get it right.  If I put in the cheap bathtub this year, if I changed my mind and decided I wanted the bigger bathtub next year, I'd have to re-do all the construction work, which is a large part of the total cost.  So if I need to skimp this year, it might be better to skimp on the turntable then get a better turntable later.

So it was as I was thinking about all this that I decided to take another look on eBay for turntables very much like my old Sony PS-X800.  Mind you, I've been browsing mainly Sony turntables on eBay for the past two months.  But I really hadn't gone much past Sony with regards to linear tracking automatic turntables, and there aren't many Sony's listed (actual PS-X800's in working condition are extremely rare).

As fate would have it, I came across a newly listed Mitsubishi LT-30.  I quickly checked the online story about the LT-30.  It is very much praised on AudioKarma and other audiophile websites.  One reviewer said it was the best he had heard so far, and another performed a shootout with very expensive Clearaudio and other tables, and the Mitsubishi won as the best sounding table.  That second review caught my eye because the reviewer was using the very same stylus as me, a Dynavector Karat 17D3.  So that satisfied my concerns about compatibility with my cartridge.  I wasn't long after that I did the buy-it-now on the LT-30.

I hope this works out, and if it does I think this is the right table for my bedroom.  I think it's very nice to have at least a semi-automatic table for the automatic lift off feature, in which the arm lifts off the record at the end of play.  Otherwise you have to get up and take care of it, which may not be good if you are making love.

It seems like the LT-30 has an excellent design in many ways, and should be both more reliable than the Sony PS-X800 and easier to fix.  One guy has posted all the details of his LT-30 repair on Audio Karma.  The LT-30 I am buying was just serviced and had its belts replaced, and I paid SquareTrade for a 2 year warranty.

It's a nice looking turntable, and has nearly a full length tonearm with respectable rigidity (stainless steel) and mass for a low compliance moving coil cartridge.

Even my friend Tim thinks this looks good.  He believes I can add damping to the arm, the chassis, and perhaps the arm carriage to make it all less resonant.  And he has argued that the "information loss" argument that claims the stylus needs to be held firmly in position with respect to the turntable platter is all wrong.  In fact, in order to play records, the tonearm must move freely with respect to the platter.  What the tonearm should not do is transmit and reflect audible vibrations.  And there's nothing wrong with the base of the tonearm being on a horizontal carriage that moves to eliminate tracking error, so long as the carriage movement doesn't generate noise (and the LT-30's tracking assembly is said to be very quiet).  What is wrong is vibration in the tonearm itself, which quickly leads to reflections and intermodulations.  It is key that those vibrations be absorbed as quickly as possible and as close to the stylus which generates them as possible.

I think now it may have been obsession with the bogus information loss argument that led to these linear tracking turntables being less popular than they might have been.  Obviously a linear arm is in a more complex geometric system than a pivoted arm.  But there is nothing wrong with that.  And especially the pivoted arm is not "correct" in any sense at all.  The linear arm is mirroring the cutter arm much better.

Tim doesn't even have a problem with the removable headshell.  He says that's fine the rubber washer can help absorb some vibration.  I think removable headshells have disappeared from respectable arms primarily because of the bogus information loss argument.  And I also have conspiracy theory involving high end audio dealers, especially Linn dealers, who want you to come to them for everything you need.

I love removable headshells.  Just as I expected, once my strain gauge cartridge was mounted by a Linn dealer to my Linn tonearm 16 years ago, it has stayed there.  I've never wanted to mess up the cartridge installation done by a professional.  There was a two year gap after my Sony died that I could have moved the Dynavector cartridge to the Linn to play records since the strain gauge demodulators I had were not working.  But I couldn't even get myself to do that, instead I waited until I got another strain gauge demodulator working.   Cartridges are very finicky and once you have one installed properly you don't, you just don't want to mess with it.

Removeable headshells are like getting your freedom back.  Not only do they make it possible to swap cartridges around, they make it easier to install and uninstall cartridges in the first place.  Linn dealers have a special jig which allows them to install cartridges on Linn arms easier, possibly with the table upside down.  That is not the kind of thing I want to do at home, and I'm not on first name basis with a Linn dealer.  I didn't like the sound of my Linn, it hasn't been reliable, and the manual arm and non-removable cartridge are highly inconvenient.  So I'm just not the right kind of person to be a Linnie.