A 60 year old turntable design is still going strong!
If the design was as inherently flawed as implied above, it becomes hard to reconcile this opinion with the actual history of the TT series. It was in continuous production for 15yrs+ and sold in record numbers. This tt was praised for its great sound, and excellent tracking ability. A surprising number of original tables have survived. If this design was as bad as implied most owners would have thrown it away, and contemporary users would have recorded issues with performance or record wear. In fact it was continuous praised in the press, and by owners who voted with their wallets. When carefully adjusted, the arm will track a high compliance cartridge at 1g. Cleanly. Without inner groove distortion. While maintaining a solid and unwavering central image from lead in groove to dead wax. I know what mistracking sound like, I know what inner groove distortion sounds like. I know what a wavering central image sounds like. The AR TT and arm can be improved- I never said it could not. But the basic design can deliver excellent performance when carefully adjusted. |
iopscri wrote "Cartridge alignment can be difficult because the entire arm tube has to
be adjusted to set alignment, but that is easy enough if you know what
to do and have patience. The real problem is most people (and techs)
did not know or care enough to carefully adjust the bearings ! Simple,
surprising, and true." An interesting post with enough fact woven in with the misinformation to lull the unsuspecting, but please forgive me I mean no disrespect. You cannot know what you do not know. I grew up in a nearby suburb of Boston and had many occasions to meet and get to know Mr. Vilchur. In fact I was and am a big fan of his, my reservations about his turntable notwithstanding. Sometime around 1967 or 68 a couple of friends and I made the treck to 24 Thorndike Street, Cambridge, MA, to meet with Mr. Vilchur precisely to go over the proper setup of a recently purchased AR turntable. We also brought along a Weathers Townsend, a less expensive competitor that was tracking better using an Empire cartridge. Mr. Vilchur started out with great confidence and showed us how to carefully adjust the bearings as suggested above. But the AR arm could not be adjusted to perform satisfactorily. Mr. Vilchur blamed the cartridge and substituted first a Grado and then a Pickering, but the Weathers easily outperformed the tracking performance of the AR no matter what was tried. As I said in my previous post, the AR arm had too much friction, and even with careful setup it was never a good arm. I owned one, sold several, setup and worked on hundreds more over a decade or more. I know what I am talking about as I was personally trained by Mr. Vilchur himself on how to get the most out of the AR turntable. It did lead to better designs. My sister still has a TD150. I owned a TD125 for many years, but it had an SME arm and I still own an older VPI also with an SME arm. In summation the AR turntable should be relegated to the history books and museums. Save your precious vinyl. |
A long time ago I had an AR TT. Also a Lenco. Both were $99. An even older and venerable design by at least a decade is the unsuspended Garrard 301. It took until 2 years ago to acquire a Woodsong 301. It is the heart and soul of my current system. But I don’t know of an AR rebuild that is in the same arena as newly built Lenco or Garrard. |
Interesting that the AR TT has come up. MF included a very favorable mention of the AR TT in his most recent column in SP. Prices will probably rise going forward. The AT TT has to be one of the most influential TT designs sold over the past 60 years. Very inexpensive, built to a reasonable standard, and it still outperforms many tables with much higher prices of entry. What many don't realize is that AR was not the first manufacturer to use spring suspension isolation combined with a T Bar subchassis for location of the platter bearing and tonearm. The London Scott TT from the mid-late 50's used a very similar suspension design, but also used a very complex worm gear drive to control speed and platter rotation. The Weathers TT and integral tonearm were highly regarded in the late 50s. It also used a spring suspension and a lightweight clock motor for power. It differed by using rim drive through a very soft rubber tire mounted on the motor spindle, and then driving the platter through contact with the inner edge surface. Mr. Villchur was no doubt aware of these TT when he designed the AR. His focus on isolation let him to decouple the motor from the platter through use of belt drive, which simplified the drive mechanism. He included an integral tone arm that could track lightly and made the package very affordable. Many point to the tonearm as the weak link. In some ways it is. It seems simple, even crude. But it is capable of excellent performance when carefully adjusted. The horizontal bearing was simple, well engineered and worked as need. Vertical bearings were delrin needle points that screwed into the arm yolk and could be adjusted for tension. I can tell you from experience that adjusting these bearings "just so" is crucial for best performance. Adjustment of these bearings is what located the arm in the vertical plane. A minor deviation from dead center would have audible consequences. Get it right, and you have an arm of surprisingly good performance. It is capable of accurate tracking at 1g, without inner groove distortion. Cartridge alignment can be difficult because the entire arm tube has to be adjusted to set alignment, but that is easy enough if you know what to do and have patience. The real problem is most people (and techs) did not know or care enough to carefully adjust the bearings ! Simple, surprising, and true. How good and influential was the AR TT ? It directly led to the Thorens TD150, which led to the LINN LP12, VPI and many other decks that are remarkable similar to the basic AR design. Differences are in parts quality and execution- not design changes. |
Well I just must weigh in here. Chakster has it right, the AR turntable was a terrible design. Specifically the problem was the arm. It had too much friction. Cartridges and records wore unevenly because of this problem. I was in the business for most of the decade of the 1970s and looked at literally hundreds of these using Wild-Heerbrugg M5 microscopes (I still own one) to examine the stylli, an O-scope, usually a McIntosh, and test records to optimize set up etc. Stylii invariably wore unevenly on AR turntables. The arm was the problem, the rest of the AR turntable was excellent. Thorens was the first to come up with a better solution with their TD-150 and later the even better TD-125. Many other companies also came up with better players. The better changers of the era from Dual and Miracord also outperformed the AR at least in the arm department. Again, to repeat, I looked at hundreds of these things over a decade, using the best available microscope and excellent test equipment. This is not onesy-twosey anecdotal testimony. If you think otherwise you are living in a dream world. |
Right. That's why I said it isn't a weight, and put scare quotes around "weight". Technically it is a weight. It has mass. Or it would float away. But only a little. So not a weight. Not in the normal sense everyone means. Origin Live https://www.originlive.com/ has a number of interesting products besides turntables and tone arms. https://www.originlive.com/hi-fi-accessories/ Technically the Gravity One is a damper. But to call it that is only about as accurate as to call it a record weight. As Mark Baker told me, the key to both the platter mat and the Gravity One is to achieve a balance between holding the record firmly and at the same time allowing vibrations to flow into the mat and weight. Even more important and even harder to achieve is to have this happen uniformly across the frequency band. So the Gravity One is a complex design. It feels funny in your hand. It looks normal, but look underneath- https://www.originlive.com/hi-fi/turntable-upgrades-modification/turntable-record-weight-best/ That is NOT normal! Impossible to tell from the pictures but those pieces are not rigidly attached. The three rings are not rigidly coupled but move slightly. The hole in the center is quite a bit larger than a spindle. It is designed to help center but to be uncoupled from the spindle. Another interesting feature, the Gravity One touches the record only at a small triangular area near the center. This review has some of the best images. Scroll down to check out the side view showing how little area touches the record. https://www.originlive.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Paul-Rigby-Record-Weight-Review-2020.pdf I used the Gravity One on my Teres Miller Carbon table before setting up the Sovereign. I have tried a lot of other record clamps and weights. The comments in this review are right on. The Gravity one is on another plane. |
Hah! I feel better now. From the first review i could find (have not yet foudn the origin live site....hmm):
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itsjustme- MC - you are saying just use a record weight correct?First I said: Let me share just one thing, one tiny little thing: the record weight. First, it isn’t a weight. Barely 2oz, if that. It doesn’t weight, or clamp. It isn’t even one solid piece. It moves around and feels like several pieces. It doesn’t contact the spindle. It touches the record at only a small triangular area near the center. Compared to my carbon fiber clamp that securely flattens the record to the platter it looks and feels like a joke. But the sound is so much better it is hard to believe! Attack is faster, decay and detail more resolving, tone and timbre a lot more lifelike, on and on. And then I said: I would not worry about holding records down. My Origin Live Gravity One record "weight" disabused me of all that in no time flat. From all that to, "just use a record weight correct?" If you want to simplify, "Just use the Origin Live Gravity One." Which I clearly said, "isn’t a weight." |
The AR XA was a landmark design. It was the first isolated turntable, it was belt drive and it instantly antiquated most turntables. You could not use it commercially but audiophiles do not slip que records. It was built to be as inexpensive as possible so it has no creature comforts but thousands of growing audiophiles could own one and enjoy a level of performance totally unique at that time. It was like the VW Bug for audiophiles. The Bug was a superb winter performer (compared to other cars of the day) if you put snow tires on it you could drive through anything. People who live South would not realize this. Up here everyone my age has bug stories. A friend in collage had a purple Bug. We went to Montreal to see Elton John. Coming back at the border I guess the guard smelled marihuana. He got us out of the car and planted us on the curb while we watched them take the bug apart. They took the air cleaner off! In the mean wall us long haired collage geniuses knew there was not so much as a seed in the car. We cleaned it out and smoked everything we had on the way up and at the concert. I tapped on one of the guards and quietly told him he was really wasting his time. That made a big difference of course but, I really did not want them to be disappointed that they did not find anything. |
Watch this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rgK0YMsJXM |
I have a Thorens TD-125 with Shure SME 3009 tonearm that I purchased on R&R in Hong Kong in 1969 for $250 U.S. and a Miracord 50H changer purchased in a Marine Corps exchange on Okinawa in that same year. The Thorens/Shure has a Hana M MC cartridge while the Miracord has a Hana SL MC caretridge. The Thorens system includes a Krell PAM-5 preamp (1980's) and Martin Logan ReQuest 'speakers. The power amps are 100-watt pure class A monoblocks designed and constructed by me in 1989/90 and still in use in August 2021with no malfunctions to date (3-part Audio Magazine construction article published in 1995). The sound of vinyl on that system is very good. The ELAC (Miracord 50H) is in use with an ordinary integrated amp and inexpensive bookshelf 'speakers. It sounds OK, which is OK because I use it to check on my new phono preamp designs before trying them in the main system. That system includes a VPI TNT 3.5 turntable, JMW Memorial 10" tonearm with Hana M MC cartridge, my third generation phono preamp design, Anthem D2v preamp/processor, and B&W 802D 'speakers. I purchased the TNT 3.5 in August 2001 and had to replace its motor several years ago. That turntable/tonearm yield the best sound from vinyl I have heard, despite their age. The Hana M cartridge and my phono preamp are largely credited with the improvement. Norm Thagard |
A bit of audio history! He was one of true pioneers in the beginning! https://community.classicspeakerpages.net/topic/10071-ar-demonstration-room-in-grand-central-station... |
Love the design of the AR table. So much can be done to bring it to another level of performance for vary little effort. Plus it looks great in its simplicity! That TT, the AR-AU amp and AR-3 Speakers would be one very cool vintage set up! https://www.stereophile.com/content/acoustic-research-integrated-amplifier |
Great design with a mediocre, but easy to set up arm. Linn used the design and enveloped it with their bs in order to claim shortcomings were due to bad set up and inferior magic. Still.... I had two ARs myself and my father used his AR with the original Shure cartridge (a $0.1 upgrade in the originals purchase) to his death and loved it. I used a late version with a Grace 707 with decent results until I moved to MC carts. Lots of clones of the original AR table. That means the original design was excellent. |
It still is one of the the BEST and most sought after TT on the vintage market. It was the first to incorporate the T bar design. All that followed were following a wonderful, simple design.. For a light weight, it's one that should be, in the WORK WELL nostalgia class of audio gear. Buddy, AR has a full blown CULT following and with good reason.. Until you actually hear a tricked out AR.. I'd keep my opinions about HIGH quality gear to myself.. They are one of the BEST nuggets out there IF you can find the 78-9 dollar AR.. Russco.. NUT here.. I have a few.. Look at my page here on AG. There is one in transition from a local FM station in the area. Older is good, look at Farm Girl.. LOL Regards |
Edgar Villchur developed acoustic suspension which allowed smaller speakers to produce bass and had a significant affect on stereo as the smaller speakers made stereo practical. And until the 70s it ruled audio speaker sales. Acoustic Research owned 1/3 of he market. Villchur then wanted a better reasonably priced turntable. He hired a designer and after a year with no results took over himself and with no background in turntable design, just working with logic, developed a turntable that became the model for most of the turntables for the next decades. He treated his customers like family. If you had problems that needed factory warranty work, they supplied boxes and paid for for shipping both ways. He sold Acoustic Research in the late 60s and went into hearing aid research and acquired several patents that he gave away. If there was ever an audio hero it was Edgar Villchur. |
I would not worry about holding records down. My Origin Live Gravity One record "weight" disabused me of all that in no time flat. It was the general I-beam design that caught my eye, not the details of how it was implemented way back then. The Sovereign turntable I have now is light years more sophisticated in materials and construction, but it does share this one feature of design. Which I find fascinating. |
Fantastic turntable design. I have two. One is my "B" system daily driver. Now, it has been souped up just a bit: quiet DC motor; acrylic sub-chassis with cast-in bearing; thrust ball bearing; adjustable VTA mount for tonearm, and a good-but-cheap tonearm circa 1990, the Jemco. And a Grado Black. I am completing a thick, heavy, constrained damping base for it. In general superior to my Linn, Ittok, Troika, although it has its own merits. The AR showed the way for a littany of similar tables from Thorens, Linn, Logic and others. Its fun to rung the inner platter lie a bell, ring the out platter like a bell, and put them together for a dull thud. I would like a better way to securely attach the vinyl to the platter, but that's a common problem. With this table and the Grado, dynamics are superb, considering that by today's hgih end table standards its quite modest. My second AR is still in parts. |
I am not that familiar with AR, certainly not this one, just studying the exploded diagram on the video. https://youtu.be/NOlhiZ902hY?t=25 It is not shown on the diagram but he explains that it is "suspended from the top plate" which is another thing not shown. It looks like the big "T" piece is attached to the top plate at the 3 points shown. But there is no way to tell for sure. A better schematic would sure be nice. |
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Thanks. Not only my Teres either. It started with a Technics SL1700, then Basis 2005. The Basis used belt drive with the motor in a pod along side. This enabled a few different mods, first adding a better power cord to the Basis motor, then replacing the whole Basis motor with the original Teres motor pod. The original Teres motor used a belt. A lot of this has been covered in The Miller Carbon Story https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/the-miller-carbon-story and no point repeating it here. Even though it is relevant. The Origin Live Sovereign does follow this AR design, the bearing/arm plate anyway, but only in the most superficial or general sense. The Miller Carbon was and is a fine table. I was real happy with it, and still quite sure it will go up very well against a lot out there, at least in the under $5k or so area. But the Sovereign, it is kind of like the Herron VTPH2A, there is so much more going on, so much better than you would think from the price. Then there is the technology. Which even after reading and watching everything I could find, even after talking and emailing Mark Baker, still I get the darn thing and immediately a whole bunch of things are catching my eye. Things I immediately get the significance of, but only because of having done so much stuff myself over the years. Let me share just one thing, one tiny little thing: the record weight. First, it isn't a weight. Barely 2oz, if that. It doesn't weight, or clamp. It isn't even one solid piece. It moves around and feels like several pieces. It doesn't contact the spindle. It touches the record at only a small triangular area near the center. Compared to my carbon fiber clamp that securely flattens the record to the platter it looks and feels like a joke. But the sound is so much better it is hard to believe! Attack is faster, decay and detail more resolving, tone and timbre a lot more lifelike, on and on. The whole table is like this. So many clever little vibration control techniques no way I can cover them all. Even the most thorough reviews I have seen so far have missed a ton of stuff. The general design principle is very close to the AR, but even so has come a long way in 60 years. This thing is a monster! |
Chakster How many turntables have you built??? How many motor controllers??? How many tone arms??? Do you have a degree in vibration control? Etc Etc Etc ... Trying to understand how you got to your highly detail white paper of 2 words (Awful design). Miller Carbon has at least played around with his teres and knows what mods affected his old table. Now if you where just referring to its looks then disregard the above. Enjoy the ride Tom |
One more idea about how a turntable should be designed. The concept of things getting out of the way is optimistic . Everything has some effect. Having not built a turntable with that arm bearing plate combo I really have no opinion or first hand listening exposure. It will be nice when Millercarbon does a review if he compares his rim drive teres with his new table and actually talks about tone, attack/decay, pitch, body etc... Enjoy the ride Tom |
This design that he talks about, mounting the bearing and arm on the same beam, is used on Origin Live turntables like my Sovereign MkIV. https://youtu.be/8ZkOzh9GFHk?t=5 Follow the video as it goes around the turntable. The bearing and arm are mounted on a plate that is attached to the plinth. It looks like the bearing goes into the plinth but really it is just a hole, the bearing does not touch the plinth at all. The Sovereign has a lot more going on, but in this main design principle is exactly the same as the AR. I had no idea it went back that far. Thanks! |
