Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Hi Mike, guilty as charged :-)!! I myself still have all those tonearms, which I have never yet heard on a Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Lenco. I'm REALLY curious to hear the Black Widow on this later Super Lenco, as well as the Mayware (which some say is superior to the pricey SME V), the SME 3009 MKII, my NOS Transcriptors Vestigal (which achieves state of the art detail with Grados) and especialy my new NOS Audio Technica ATP-12 tonearm, which appears to be built to higher standards than the superb AT 1005 MKII. For this detail I am currently constructing a workhorse Lenco to take everything from ultra-short tonearms (Vestigal) to ultra-long tonearms, so my fun will be endless. Probably the wrong thing to do for an analogue obssessive like myself :-).

Hi Wolf: I myself was confused by all the different vintage Sony lore, the best place to learn about the chronology of their developments is on The Vintage Knob, at www.thevintageknob.org. The reason I thought the earlier Sony electronics (TA-3130, TA-3130F, etc.) were V-fets was because of thir very rich and tubey sound, the V-fets being called the tube of the transistor world. But the V-fets came along later in the mid-'70s. The "F" designation on the earlier amps was their special audiophile version of what were already superb electronics, Sony's Statement to the world of their seriousness at the time. The earlier amps were simple TOS-3 amps, and yet I prefer them to the later and much more famous V-fet series. But the V-fets ARE superb, just that they're pussycats, not being able to deal with more difficult loads, needing easy speaker impedances, low reactivity and so on in order to sound their considerable best. I have heard that the V-fets are very good with electrostatics. The series I'm aware of is the X-450 series receivers, amps and preamps. And btw, I'm DYING to get my hands on a TAE-8450 Mike, I already have the earlier Statment premap, a 2000F, which is also superb.

And keeping on the track of Vintage and The Illusion of Progress, let's once again consider those old idler-wheel drives: the Garrards, Lenco, Rek-0-Kuts and others of the Days of Yore. These are STILL, apart from DD (which as you all know I consider inferior, perhaps due to the quartz-locking, experiments still to come with the servo-controlled variety - like the Sony 2250 - which are definitely more fluid-sounding), the only 'tables designed from the ground up, INCLUDING THE MOTOR, to combat the now evidently serious problem of Stylus Force Drag, which it was thought was dealt with by the simple momentum of heavy platters on belt-drives (NOT). These motors are extremely high-torque, large and powerful, and spin at roughly 1500-1800 RPMs, thus eradicating to a certain extent their own speed imperfecftions (no physical system is perfect). They are coupled very securely by a rubber wheel (which doesn't stretch or contract or slip, given basic maintenance) to their own platters, which are themselves flywheels, on the heavier models, regulating the motor's performance, thus creating a closed system which is utterly immune to Stylus Force Drag. Direct Coupling to a high mass (minimum 70 pounds) deals absolutely with the very powerful motors, leaving the field clear for state of the art audio performance in every area: detail, imaging, black backgrounds, dynamics, frequency extension at both extremes, razor sharp transients and most of all MAGIC...in fact, it is again not hyperbole to say that if one has not heard vinyl on a vintage idler-wheel drive so set-up, then one hasn't heard vinyl, PERIOD. Close to 20 years on, I continue to be amazed by the performance of these machines, as do all those who hear them, as attested by the latest convert in my previous post.

Anyway, keep having fun all, and don't forget those stellar and cheap vintage speakers as well, such as the Klipsch Heresies (MKI's with the metal horns), the AR2ax's and AR3a's (the world's smallest full-range speakers ;-)) and of course the ESS AMT-4's (the world's largest and heaviest mini monitors ;-))!!

Actually, there are two new megabuck idler-wheel drives, built by Loricraft, who in turn bought the rights to the Garrard name, which had ended up in the hands of a Brazilian company!! They make the Garrard 501, and I believe the lower-priced (but still very expensive) 601. With snail e-mail out here in the country it's just too painful for me to go searching on Da Net for the info.

One of the improvements Loricraft have made is in the motor, which as I understand it is designed so the motor spindle/rotor rides on a magnetic cushion to reduce noise. Too bad they don't believe in Direct Coupling to a high mass, as noise problems are still reported for these new machines by some, and of course there would also be a HUGE improvement in speed, information-retrieval, imaging and so on. Then there would be no need to go the misguided route one fellow resorted to of using a belt to drive the platter, a Heresy!! Anyway, Hi Fi + magazine did a very nice review of the 501 a couple of years back I think.

On the issue of early solid state, these types of reports are exactly why I steered clear of early SS electronics until relatively recently, just as so many steered clear of the Idler for so many years for similar negative reports. The press said Idlers had problems A, B, C and D, and the consumers heard these problems and turned their backs. It's difficult to say how much of what we hear is actually heard, and how much is conditioned by the press and industry (which did a similar hack job on tubed electronics in the '70s). I'm not saying you didn't hear what you heard, Lew, just that at the first hint of problems, we tend to side with the press/industry; but conversely, if the press and industry tell us that a piece of crap is great, we will spend months optimizing (and end up with a piece of crap we refuse to let go, convincing ourselves we have improved our systems...megabuck blet-drives come to mind ;-).

Anyway, some say I am their guru, I in turn have a Vintage Guru, an unassuming fellow, typical French Canadian "Bon Vivant" (life centres on eating, drinking good wine and beer and telling stories) who thinks anyone who discovers these vintage SS pieces (especially higher-end PIoneer stuff) sound good have finally "woken up". I get all my vintage tonearms and cartridges (and now electronics and speakers) from him, as I simply love driving out to visit him (in a small historic town south of Montreal), drink giant beers in the local pub, eat gourmet food, shoot the sh*t, and drive away with a car full of goodies (he's a "picker", the best in NA). Anyway, he kept bugging me to buy this little shoe-box of an amp, the Sony 3130F, and I kept condescendingly refusing, secure in the knowledge he didn't know good equipment (I hadn't yet "woken up").

Finally, I accepted - I was using tube monoblocks and thought I could use the SS power for parties - took it home, hooked it up, and was blown away by what I heard: the little Sony out-tubed my tube monoblocks, sounding richer, with more PRaT, more dynamic, better imaging and transparency and with none of the glassiness I couldn't eliminate from the tube amps!! I soon sold the tubes (to a very happy fellow), then bought the Sony TAE-5450 (V-fet and similar in its tubey richness and PRaT) which also blew me away, and which finally turned me into a full-on vintage nut (though I do have a very-new cutting-edge SS amp and still experiment with newer preamps, though I have to say that overall the ARC SP8 is my favourite preamp overall).

Some say the transformers actually age like fine whiskey and sound better with time, and of course after all these years the electronics are fully burned-in, and this may also account for the different experiences. Wiring has also progressed (in my case Music Boy/Petra interconnects and solid-core speaker cable), as well as set-up (vibration control under the electronics), so the potential can be realized, just as Direct Coupling to a high mass realizes the potential of Idlers.

Speaking of which: I've begun the Rek-o-Kut Rondine experiment (very quiet massive motor), and will report in stages as my listening impressions and struggles/solutions develop!! I LOVE the RS-A1 tonearm, which I can unceremoniously plunk on any table, instantly (simply sits there with no bolting), and audition any 'table in a known context (tonearm/cartridge/system). Have fun all, and Vive la Idler Wheel, Vive la Lenco (the instrument of the Downfall of the Belt ;-))!!!

Boy, lots going on in just a few days!! I've been off-line over the weekend enjoying the last "summer" weekend (temperatures in the mid-twenties Celsius when they are ordinarily 10 degrees cooler), hiking the provincial parks and watching the amazing Perseid meteor shower (we're talking fire-balls with smoke trails).

BIG Kudos to Teres for so bravely turning their backs on the belt. As my Vintage Guru would say, FINALLY, the industry is waking up, the charge led by Teres! I confess I never thought I'd see the day when the War for the Idler-Wheel/Wheel/against the Belt would actually lead to a change in the industry, so I'm caught entirely by surprise, having adjusted to eternally being consigned to a rebellious fringe element.

That said, Teres is a commercial company, and it's wise to take pronouncements with a grain of salt, and to separate advertising from truth and facts. I refer here to the following lines: "An idler setup suffers from cogging effects but to my ears it's a better compromise than the smearing you get from the greatly increased isolation resulting from a belt. But it is a still a compromise." Now, there is a LARGE difference between a large idler-wheel drive simply bolted to a plinth, and one which has been Direct Coupled to a large high-mass plinth. Furthermore, as I am all too aware of right now (working on a bunch of TD-124s by coincidence), rubber mushrooms, rubber gaskets and so on act like springs (not to mention actual springs), allowing the very powerful motors in these old idlers to actually move the 'table, leading to the claimed speed instabilities and cloudiness.

Now Direct Coupling to a giant plinth not only improves speed stability, but it also drastically reduces noise, drawing away and eliminating everything from the 'table's own noises (motor included of course) to simple surface noise. I would love to hear the effect of the Verus motor on a Giant Direct Coupled Garrard, perhaps one will show up in my area. Looking more specifically at the motors, these old induction motors are brushless like the Verus, and are essentially cogless, once one gets rid of the suspension which amplifies various motor energies, as they spin at an average 1500-1800 RPM, eliminating/smoothing out their own speed imperfections. Being coupled securely via a rubber wheel rather than a belt, the platters themselves act as flywheels to the motors (this design philosophy being expressed most of all on the Lencos), regulating and smoothing out speed imperfections in purely analogue fashion with no need for electronics. The trick is Direct Coupling to a Giant plinth.

Finally, there is more to this whole issue than mere silence, there is the issue of the amount of torque. These old idlers have MASSIVE torque, and the question is: does the Verus provide an across-the-board improvement with no sacrifices in transient speed (a function of torque as well as speed stability), dynamics (ditto) and bass reach, SLAM and detail? I am especially aware of this facet of idler design, as European Lenco motors do function in NA (but not the reverse) and are actually quieter than the NA variety (can hold it in your hand and feel/hear nothing). But their torque is significantly less, as is the SLAM, transient speed and PRaT. So, how much of the perceived improvement to the Garrards is simple silence (addressed by Direct Coupling to a Giant plinth) and “smoothness”, with PraT, SLAM and transient speed being ignored; and how much is across-the-board improvement? I hope to hear a Verus soon, and perform yet more experiments!! Be very interesting to see how the horizontal orientation of the motor works out if a Lenco version is released. FINALLY, the Lenco gets some serious consideration, and thanks for that!

Hi Lew, I found the article on the Garrard 501, and the main improvement is indeed to the motor, which, given the current discussion, is crucial and fundamental. If the magnetic cushion removes the noise while retaining the torque, then this indeed is a very large step. Loricraft have also resorted to electronics to further control motor speed, who knows how much this contributes? I'd love to hear one of these as well.

On the issue of direct drives, it is well-known what I think of quartz-locking and how this too leads to a form of audible cogging (dryness and dynamic constriction): I find the servo-controlled variety thus much more musical and fluid. The Sony 2250 has an absolutely superb main bearing (makes me think of the Roksan’s superb bearing), and extracts astonishing amounts of information (this tested with a smaller plinth, simply bolted). So I will be rebuilding this into a Giant Plinth and going the Direct Coupling route, and testing out a power conditioner to see how this affects the servo-controlled speed stability.

Have fun all, WHAT developments, and thanks again to Teres/Chris for waking up (as my guru would put it), smelling the roses, and stepping forward, and most of all for joining us on our journey here on Da Thread and posting!!!

Hello all, back with some more audio experimentation and information. First of all, I resurrected my Piezo YM-308 MKII MM, apparently a moving iron like the Grados, and was greeted with the same tremendous resolution of fine detail as always hit me with back in the days of the original thread. Truly stunning amounts of fine detail reminiscent of high-end LOMCs, but without quite the edge or speed of the best MCs. But, this is a plus in some systems, like say with my Athena Technologies SP-3s (their top-of-the-line before the Klipsch takeover), where the softer edges make the YM-308 MKII the Cartridge of the Day; while the JMW 10.5/Ortofon Jubilee comes across as grainy. This is because, like the Klipsch, the Athenas are horn-loaded (though not nearly as extreme as the Klipsches), and so benefit from MMs and tube electronics. I think I'll order the hundred-buck-tube-monoblock kits from Antique Electronic Supply to run both my Athenas and my Klipsch Heresy MKI (the ones with the metal horns). I remember a friend of mine bought these 8-watt wonders and they utterly outperformed a megabuck Class A SS amp when backing pricey Tetra loudpseakers and fronted by an upper-end Sonic Frontiers preamp, with, of course, a Lenco doing the grunt-work. Don't feel like spending lots of dough, and now that the amazing Antique Sound Lab Wave 8 8-watt monoblocks are no available, then the AES amps are it. Definitely worth the cost, absolutely incredible results provided they are matched to sympathetic speakers, which include true high-end speakers. Replace key capacitors with audiophile-grade ones to make the most of them. Fun too, being kits, AND cheap.

With my more neutral/refined Yamahas and ESS speakers, however, the Ortofon Jubilee is the Cartridge of the Day, as the Piezo's softer presentation becomes too much of a good thing in my very tubey-sounding system using the fab vintage SS Sony electronics. The Piezo doesn't have the slam and excitement of the Grado Woody, or the transient speed of the Ortofon M15E Super MKII, perhaps my overall fave vintage MM of All Time, with the warmth and magic of Grados and stunning resolution to boot, superior to that achievable by the Grados. The Sonus/Mayware tonearm matched to the Satin M-117 HOMC (with conical tip and replaceable stylus assembly as with MMs) takes the all-time Prime Position at the moment as overall the most musical, magical and detailed (and all this with a conical tip!!!), and - FINALLY - I have managed to track down another Satin M-117, this time a "Z", an extreme stylus profile. Whew, this might crush my Jubilee, we'll have to wait and see. Keep your eyes open for these Satin gems all, they do exist, though they seem to be as rare as the Piezos.

I'm going to start construction of a sand-box to place under my unsuspended idler-wheel drives and report on the results: hopefully all the speed and focus of unsuspended designs will remain, while all extraneous noise - which includes audio feedback in the lower frequencies, a real danger with unsuspended idler-wheel drives (the ONLY way to go), especially with low-mass unipivots and MMs - will be filtered out. Can't wait!!

Getting back to the Athena Technology speakers, previously known as Sound Dynamics (essentially identical designs in terms of crossovers) where their RTS-3 bookshelf model wowed Harry Pearson (a budget wonder getting rave reviews from him, a miracle!), these have the same Supreme way with PraT I remember from back in the Golden Days of my Antique Soudn Lab Wave 8/Sound Dynamic RTS-5 combo, which counts as one of the most musically-successful systems I ever owned: endless all-night listening sessions which had me dragging my exhausted feet to work. When I hooked them up to the Lenco/MAS/YM-308 MKII, the music was irresistable and melted me in my seat. All their speakers are easy to drive and major in dynamic ease and surprisingly good imaging and depth, and in unbelievable bass from small woofers and enclosures (how does he do it??). Anyway, the SP-3s - a three-way budget speaker which nevertheless was at the top of their heap - have truly incredible bass, tight, DEEP, and detailed, though the box does not weigh much, and which is not very big. This is a charactersitic of the man behind these speakers, who in wizardly fashion was incredibly adept at producing incredibly musical model after incredibly musical model, AND which produced incredible amounts of bass, detail and imaging at a low low price. Match any of his models - which all share a crossover point at precisely 2K, perhaps partly responsible for the musicality? - to tube electronics, and to an Idler-Wheel Drive and a PRaT-Supreme MM (or perhaps a Denon DL-103), and you will find yourselves glued to your respective seats night after night. Lenco/RN-250/Grado/AES tube amps/Athena Technology (or Sound Dynamics, both used) spells Incredible Musicality And Peformance at a Budget Price, or "IMAPBP" ;-). Let's hope the man behind these various musically magical and musically exciting deisgns (I used to know his name - he was a guitarist in a band and put his ear for music to excellent use) continues his career in speaker design: anything else would be a crime, ahem, Mr. Klipsch.

Anyway, time to try out the AKG P8ES (and the Super Nova version I also have) cartridge next!! Have fun all, I LOVE hooking up $100K+ worth of sonic performance (i.e. a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco belt-drive equivalent, if even this :-)) to budget components, now THIS is fun!!

Hello from the country after a long absence all, I've been very busy with both audio and non-audio related stuff the past couple of weeks. Sorry for the delay Gonglee: no, the L85 is a belt-drive and therefore persona non-grata, go for either an L75 or L78, which both show up quite often on eBay. Anyway you look at it there's a lot of reading to do, so focus those eyes and brain, and good luck and have fun!!

Thanks for the support Gilbodavid, as always. I do have a few Sony stories to relate which address various issues. Over the last two weeks I had to occasionally go to the nearest large town, and waiting for a friend to emerge from work I decided to kill some time in a high-end shop. A fellow is standing there and we get talking. He asks me what source I use and of course I launch into my usual explanation of idler-wheel drives. It turns out he is fresh from the latest high-end audio show where he had spoken with Chris and heard his Verus demonstration, and so was very open to my claims for the idler and the role of torque and weaknesses of belts. It turns out as well that he had a Garrard 401 sitting in a closet and asked if I could fix it up for him. Of course, I said yes, and invited him to come out to the country to enjoy the scenery and hear the Glories of the Idler for himself. So up he shows, and within twenty minutes of listening commissioned me for both the Garrard rebuild AND a Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Lenco, which shows just how audible this theoretical cogging is (theoretical in the sense of inaudible). The system?: of course the Lenco/RS-A1/Denon DL-103E combo, going through my Sony TAE-5450 pre; and out to my ESS AMT4s via the Sony TA-3140F amp (in stock form). As always when high-end audiophiles (and this guy is involved in both manufacturing and distribution of high-end components, and was a vice-president of Nortel) hear my system, he gets up and looks behind my components to try and find the explanation for the stunning sound quality (these vintage components truly are stunning, the Heil Air-Motion Transformers still amongst the best drivers ever designed, and the AMT4s perhaps the best matching of woofer to AMTs ever managed), and seeing my 24-ga. solid core and Petras said "Incredible, even your cables are crap!!" I was being disingenuous when I replied "Yep, nothing to point to but the Lenco!" as of course, I know that the AMT4s ARE incredible, as are the vintage Sony components. But asking an audiophile to accept both the Mighty Lenco AND various "crap" vintage compnents is to ask too much, best let it all sink in slowly ;-).

Getting back to the issue of truth and advertising I raised before, I point once again to the foundation which Teres'/Chris's advertising and posts asks us to implicitly accept as fact: "An idler wheel is far less effective at reducing cogging effects and also introduces a lot less negative effects. It's all about compromises." The spoken fundamental assumption is that idler-wheel drives have seriously audible cogging effects AND serious compromises. As I wrote, which was NOT that there was no cogging, these motors are "essentially cogless, once one gets rid of the suspension which amplifies various motor energies, as they spin at an average 1500-1800 RPM, eliminating/smoothing out their own speed imperfections." Anyone who has held a Garrard motor in their hands while it is running has to have been astonished by how little vibration emenates from this massive motor, I know I have. Once one further eliminates any form of suspension for the 'table itself (either springs or the misguided use of rubber in whatever shape), which emphasizes the motor vibration rather than eliminating it (the classic idler set-up mistake), one hears, when the platter is acting furthermore as a flywheel to the motor via the very secure coupling of motor to platter via the idler, smmmoooothnesss and no cogging or smearing, which however is heard VERY& audibly in any belt-drive, massive platter or not. Those who speak of slipping here should try the following simple test: simply press a record brush against a record on a revolving idler and see how much push/torque there truly is. In fact so much that neither DD not belt even approaches the power, which of course speaks for the effectiveness of the idler-wheel approach, which allows for these enormously powerful motors without slipping. The fellow who commissioned two idlers after hearing the Verus is testimony to just how audible this effectively theoretical cogging is. Result trumps theory, not the reverse, something which scientists and engineers would do well to remember. Once again these briliant words spring to mind, the immortal words of Daniel R. von Recklinghausen, former Chief Research Engineer, H.H. Scott: "If it measures good and sounds bad, it is bad; if it measures bad and sounds good, you have measured the wrong thing." I.E., experience trumps theory.

This is not to say that the Verus is not a TREMENDOUS boon to belt-drivers and the world in general, both because it provides an ingenious way to improve belt-drives and save them from a fundamental design flaw, but also provides an ingenious test/experiment/demonstration to underline the weaknesses of the belt-drive I have been going on about lo these many years. BUT, it does not, I believe, improve on a properly set-up idler-wheel drive, though perhaps some day I will get the chance to do the experiment myself on a Giant Direct Coupled and properly restored Garrard.

The trumpeting of the flaws/compromises of the idler-wheel approach is advertising also in another sense: it asks us to accept as fact that the Verus approach is the current top of the potential of the wheel (very debatable), and that Teres' own very expensive DD is therefore inherently superior to the best idler-wheel drives. BUT, if the Verus is NOT superior to a properly set-up idler, then this claim is also debatable. Time and experience will tell, of course I believe a properly set-up idler is currently at the top of the food chain.

So, getting back to DDs, yet another EMT DD owner has gone to the Dark Side, and so sent me an e-mail with the title "Giant Lenco is Sounding EXTRAORDINARY!!!" Furthermore, I have now rebuilt my Sony 2250 into a Giant Plinth, and Direct Coupled it to boot, and it sounded extraordinary as well. As previously written, this 'table is a detail meister, and with the Direct Coupling and Giant Plinth it also took on many of the characteristics of the idler-wheel drive: tremendous PRaT, great flow and musicality, and excellent transient speed. I wondered, "Do we finally have a match for the Mighty Lenco?!?" I sat entranced and amazed, and switched back and forth for a while. I also plugged the Sony into a power conditioner (a Monster) and thought I heard further refinement in the upper frequencies. But, as time went on, it became clear that from the middle range down to the lowest bass the Sony was simply - like a belt-drive - missing all sorts of information. For instance, while the Sony captured the pluck and transient edge of strings, along with the high frenquencies, it lost out on the body of the instrument, the decay and the wood and lacquer, clearly heard on the Lenco. Voices had mouth but no chest, relatively-speaking (against a belt-drive I believe the Sony extracts more low-frequency information). Everything sounded more natural, with more body on the Lenco. And once THIS became audible (it took a while to sink in the Sony was so good), THEN it became clear that the Lenco's high frequencies were also more extended, natural and even more detailed. Nevertheless, the Sony IS an amazing 'table and should be recognized along with the Thorens TD-124s of this world as a classic well worth rebuilding. Just how serious a 'table is the Sony?

Being a Canadian and long in search of a lovely Oracle turntable for my collection, I accepted one Oracle Delphi MKIV, Anniversary Edition, in black and gold, as a trade against the Garrard 401 rebuild/plinth. It predictably suffered badly against the Mighty Lenco/RS-A1/Denon DL-103 combo, and this with SME IV tonearm allied to a Dynavector XX-1. BUT, how will it fare against the Sony/RS-A1/DL-103 combo? THIS I will do over the coming weekend and report on further. In the meantime, the Sony is a true Mighty Classic, and deserves replinthing and a serious tonearm. For those who don't like the dry and dynamically-constricted sound of quartz-locking, but LOVE those soft-touch controls (and boy do I like those piano-key controls!!).

Anyway, that's enough for now I think (breathe a sigh of relief ;-)), the Battle of the Idler is FAR from over, have fun with your discoveries and experiments all!!! Now, back to this country scenery.

It's nearly Christmas all, so Merry Christmas in case I go missing again!! Up here it's constant snowstorms and sub-zero tempertaures, the snowbanks are piling high. Slow internet and intermittent access means I post less. Though my workshop is out here I'm currently almost devoid of a soundroom, so Lenco-inspired rants have slowed down considerably as well.

Mario, that is one beautiful creation, as always!!! I've just picked one of my own Reinderspeter top-plates from being professionally coated (in cream) so I can soon report on it's own benefits vs my own Reference Lenco. Just so those watching don't get the wrong idea: it's not that the Lenco NEEDS extensive modification in order to become perhaps the top-performing LP-spinner on the planet, all it needs is restoration and adjustment, and Direct Coupling to a neutral high mass. Pouring marine-grade glass-epoxy into the hollows of the top-plate go a LONG way to eliminating the weakness of the top-plate along with, of course, the Direct Coupling itself. Of course, Reinderspeter's top-plate eliminates any of the tricks, while making Direct Coupling more complete. Anyway, had the review happened, I had built an "original" Lenco with no modifications other than restotration and the Giant plinth in order to make the point of how truly Mighty the original Lenco is!! There will be other opportunities.

To reiterate the Lenco's inherent Mightiness ;-), my exposure to the Giant Lenco vs the 11,000-euro EMT 930 - and that of the two EMT 930 owners - was shock and surpise, as the EMT sounded like the original Master Tape, and the two fellows who own the EMT in fact make master tapes of professional musicians as a hobby!! I gulped a Mighty Gulp, but using the RS-A1 on both 'tables to ensure a level playing field, the Lenco comfortably outperformed the EMT, which itself would likely embarrass every belt-drive and DD on the planet (the EMT idler-wheel drives are considered superior to the DDs). As well, no belt-drive yet has even come close to the Lenco's performance, and the Giant Direct Coupled Garrard 301 (oil bearing) itself utterly embarrassed a Massive Plattered PLatine Verdier (and the Garrard was plunked down on no platform and into an inferior phono stage with inferior cartridge, effectively with one hand tied behind its back), which was subsequently sold. In turn, the Garrards do NOT outperform the Lencos, though they can be brought up to Lenco levels by Direct Coupling to a high mass, and careful and painstaking restoration and readjustment.

The issue is TORQUE, and as with mass, it seems almost that there is no such thing as too much torque in order to deal with the VERY serious problem of stylus force drag, the braking action caused by the friction of the stylus in the groove. A European motored Lenco has a dead-silent/vibationless motor when used in NA, and seems from this point of view superior to the NA motors. But though they are dead silent, one can hear a loss of energy: of SLAM, of transient speed, impact and definition, and so on. Audiophile judgments are often not to be trusted, as they will constantly and year after year throw the baby (i.e. PRaT, SLAM, jusicality, musical excitement, etc.) out with the bathwater (noise), which explains the large number of muiscally-uninvolving electronics, speakers, and sources. They then declare that PRaT is an illusion, in order to avoid facing the musical consequences, and end up in a never-ending change of equipment. The secret to preserving the TORQUE and eliminating noise is simple: Direct Couple it to a high neutral mass. This improves the speed stability vastly, so that any cogging effects are eliminated and, more importantly, the motor ceases to actually move the 'table around and so muddy the speed stability by relative motion. Once done, the Lenco does not need a whole host of items replaced and immproved on in order to make it the Best on the Planet. But, of course, it can be even further improved by those who want to improve things ever further.

Does the Lenco even have a sound? I've pondered this often: it has state of the art detail retrieval, imaging, transient speed and definition, bass, highs, in fact, EVERYTHING. If it does have a sound it's that mesmerizing and POWERFUL liquid flow of the Amazon in Full Flood: unstoppable underground POWER on tap, lying behind the music, always there in reserve, while the perfect timing and transients, and astounding SLAM allied to delicacy and fluidity continue unabated. Is this a colouration? Perhaps, or perhaps this IS the true sound of music. Either way, it's very hard to stop listening and being astounded by a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco.

Moving on to the Sony 2250, I compared my Oracle Delphi MKIV, equipped with a SME V/Dynavector XX-1, to the Sony equipped with a Morch UP-4/Ortofon Jubilee, so the stack was, according to economics and reputation, stacked in favour of the Delphi. In the event, the Sony utterly outclassed the Oracle (which has just been returned from the factory), in every conceivable way. Not only that, but using a Monster power conditioner, the Sony's bass improved along with detail and a sense of fluidity. It even has great musicality and PRaT. So the Sony is a Contender in the True High End 'Table sweepstakes, provided, as always, it is Direct Coupled to a high mass. Fun to use too due to those great pinao-key controls. But, using the RS-A1/Denon combo, it is clearly inferior to the Lenco in equivalent plinth, though there will be further tests.

Anyway, have fun all, time to get back to work, and start shovelling!!

A Happy New Year to you all from Canada!! I have recently had some very interesting experiences with regards to both DDs and Idlers, and the effects and importance of Direct Coupling, having had the opportunity to compare the servo-controlled Sony 2250 - which according to common wisdom is an OK DD until one gets to the serious/classic Technics SP10 MKII (which is to DDs as the Garrards are to idlers according to the common wisdom) - and the Technics SP-10 MKII. Results have a bearing as well on the Lencos and their motors.

Both DDs were set up on plinths of equivalent mass and construction. While the Sony can be Direct Coupled, having, like the Garrard 301s, holes for bolts to pass through, the Technics SP-10 MKII sports integral bolts which must be tightened to the plinth from underneath. Construction of the Technics, as well, means that unlike the Lencos holes cannot be drilled through the bottom to achieve Direct Coupling.

The Sony is servo-controlled, which according to the accepted understanding (i.e. press and industry promoted this view to the point where it was accepted wisdom; same process as led to the hegemony of the Belt-Drive) is inferior to quartz-locking, as servo-control leads to endless hunt-and-seek as it endlessly responds to speed variations caused by stylus force drag, thus seriously affecting overall speed stability. Quartz-locking provides an independent reference (the regular pulsing of the quartz crystal), not responding to speed variations brought on by stylus force drag (interesting that while both idlers and DDs were built to combat stylus force drag, belt-drive was not until much later in its history, or via a very few Japanese manufacturers and Thorens with their massive models, via the use of massive platters), and so was deemed and pronounced the superior system. As with belt-drives, I had accepted this as true as well, though I had accepted the superiority of the belt and so never investigated this further until after I had discovered the Idlers.

After I had already been seduced by the Idlers and started the original Home Despot thread, I investigated the DD system via Technics' SP10 MKII, as the only "threat" to the Idler, the Technics being pretty well THE DD to have (as with the Garrards for the idlers). I built one into a truly massive Giant plinth, and found that despite great neutrality, information-retrieval and bass detail, reach and control, it could not match the Lenco for fluidity, PRaT or musicality, while not being able to beat it in the aforementioned audiophile areas. And this was in the days before Giant plinths and Direct Coupling (which yield HUGELY better results). The Technics also had a characteristic "dry" sound which is reminiscent of digital artefacts. While these experiments were going on, I tripped over as Technics SL-1100, Technics' first DD (in fact, the first DD ever built and marketed I believe), and servo-controlled. It came with a removable armboard as standard, mounted with a Grace 707. Now, by this time I had pretty well dismissed DD as dry and unmusical overall (compared with both Idlers AND Belt-Drives), so imagine my suprise when I plugged it in and found it to be both fluid and musical!! When, eventually, a Sony 2250 motor unit ('table/chassis same as the Garrards designed to be built into a plinth with separate tonearm) came my way, a servo-controlled unit, I jumped on it to test it out, as I had come to the conclusion that quartz-locking was the problem, which was audible to human ears via a sort of sampling ratio (the quartz pulsing), resulting in both dryness and a constriction/reduction of the dynamics.

The Sony 2250 has going for it heavy and superb construction, ESPECIALLY the main bearing which is superior to the Technics. But its platter is lighter than that on the Technics, it has less torque than the Tehnics, and its construction, while excellent, is not as heavy as the Technics. The Technics, in addition to this, has a large and hefty separate power supply/quartz-locking reference. It would seem on the surface of it to be the superior machine, even by idler standards (i.e. more torque). To even the playing field, I plugged the Sony into a Monster power conditioner. I was shocked to hear by just how much the Direct Coupled Sony 2250 outclassed the Technics when I switched the handy-dandy RS-A1/Denon DL-103"E" combo from one to the next, playing the same source material. I had thought that due to the Technics' various advantages, it would outclass the Sony in strict audiophile terms (detail, imaging, etc.) while the Sony would take it for fluidity, PRat and musicality. But switching the tonearm fror one to the next was, first of all, like doubling the volume control on the preamp, dynamics were HUGELY superior to the Technics! In addition to this, bass was deeper on the Sony, detail was VASTLY superior, as was clarity and transient speed. On first audition, using an "a capella" tune, the Technics seemed to be telling the truth. But switching to songs with instruments, the truth of the Sony's superiority became evident. The digital/"neutral" sound of the Technics, as with digital media, was mistaken for truth. But music should be first and foremost musical, and this type of neutrality (flatness/lack of colour) is in fact a severe colouration. Some, however, are seduced by this sort of bogus "truth". Music is NOT cold and analytical, as so many audiophiles seem to believe it should be but, in its natural state, musical and rivetting.

Finally, I mounted the RS-A1/Denon combo on the Giant Direct Coupled Lenco, and the gap between it and the Sony was as significant as the gap between the Sony and the Technics. But, the Sony has PRaT, musicality, fluidity and extreme detail (just not as extreme as the Lenco) and, given a better power filter (a frequency regenerator which does not rely on quartz-locking, if such a beast exists) and a better platter (you can't mess around with platter mass with DDs, as the mass of the platter is carefully calculated into the drive due to the extreme slow revolution of the motor, 33 1/3 RPM at 33 1/3, and 45 RPM at 45). The solution for the Sony is then, the Boston Audio Mat 1, which being made of graphite should not weigh much, but add much-needed solidity to the platter. Who knows how good the Sony would then be? I hope to answer this question eventually. But I will say this: in standard trim but with a power supply/filter/regenrator, I will challenge all Technics SP-10 MKII and EMT DD owners, as I did the Lenco vs belt-drives, and go around crushing these fabled machines, and lay to rest another suspect Dogma :-). I throw down the gauntlet ;-)!! I have every confidence that a Giant Direct Coupled Sony 2250 will outperform an EMT DD. Hopefully chances for these shootouts will materialize.

So what happened with the rise of quartz-locking in the case of the DD? Well, precisely the same process as occured with the rise of the Belt-Drive vs the Idler, a program of misinformation and the acceptance of the judgment of "experts" by the general population, in contradiction to their actual auditory experience. As with the idler which had superior PRaT, gestalt, dynamics and overall musicality to that achievable by belt-drives, the press and industry simply declared all these sonic/musical attributes as subjective and thus illusory, and so removed them as issues. In addition, the rising Belt-Drive Hegemony saw the DD as a threat (to profits as well as belt-drives are MUCH cheaper to manufacture), and came up with the criticism of the servo-control system in order to nip it in the bud. The industry (Technics) responded with the quartz-locking system, which with the appropriate measurement system yielded very impressive measurements indeed, and damn all that subjective stuff. It became the standard, and the opposition of the belt-drivers (fluidity/musicality) vs the DD-ers (analytical/"truth"/control) was born, the Idler for the moment releagted to a simple footnote in history.

One more lesson to be learned: though the Technics has far more torque than the Sony, the Sony STILL beat it by a very significant margin, meaning that torque only takes you so far. Of course, the Tehnics' torque is contantly reined in and so defeated by its own quartz-locking mechanism, and the Sony's ability to be Direct Coupled makes more effective use of what torque the Sony does have (i.e,. Direct Coupling to a high mass goes a LONG way to stabilizing whatever motor system is used). Extrapolating with respect to the Lenco's own Mighty sonic results, we see that the Lenco motor is FAR better than it is generally considered to be, as its fluidity and audiophile performance is still vastly superior to that of even the Sony (so far), while having considerably more torque.

Digesting all these results, the most effective DD should in fact resort to no cuircuitry/correction whatsoever, apart from clean electric power, and rely instead, as with the Idlers/Lenco, on pure mommentum/mass of the platter to even out the motor's imperfections (a delicate balancing act) in order to achieve perfect - i.e. FLUID - speed stability. THIS machine (torque and build of a Technics SP-10 MKII and main bearing of a Sony) might challenge the Mighty Idlers!!

Recently I Direct Coupled a quartz0locked Technics SP-25 (it can be Direct Coupled, but has a lighter platter and less torque and lighter construction) to a high-mass plinth and achieved far more musical results than from the bolted but heavier SP-10 MKII, so soon I will compare the two to see how much Direct Coupling increases overall musicality.

For the moment anyway, the Idler is at the Top of the Analogue Heap, Vive la Idler, Viive la Lenco!! Enjoy your respective projects/experiments all!!

Hi all!! Starting with Mario, you're most welcome, your work is always an inspiration in dedication! A lot of DIYers should have a gander and think about the satisfaction of a project well done. I've discovered that in woodwork patience and care - not professional experience - is the Prime Ingredient. Measure twice and cut once as they say. I absolutely LOVE to hear about budget Giant-Killer systems, especially using vintage components! Though my own sytem is made up entirely of such items (excepting currently my tonearms and cartridges), I STILL have hankering to pull out my AR2ax's and play with them, and my Yamaha 625's, and so forth, and have some fun.

While on the subject of vintage tonearms, hey Mike! No, I haven't abandoned either vintage tonearms or MMs, having been busy lately conquering my area with the Decca: there's now a Decca Revival going on in Ottawa thanks to a combination of the Mighty Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Lenco/Graham 2.2 Ceramic combo. Last I heard, the Decca has displaced both an upper end Benz Micro MC AND a Koetsu Platinum Something-or-Other. I've also been experimenting with an incredible and Final-Type match-up: the combination of the Rega RB-250 with the Grado cartridges, including the Woodies. Now I've often been on record speaking for the RB-300 as opposed to the much-hyped RB-250 (OL etc.), but this is in the case of MCs, with which the RB-300 extracts much more refined and "complete" results. But with an MM, ESPECIALLY the Grados, the RB-250 yields truly State of the Art astonishing results, so much so I bought myself a RB-250 for my own Woody. I made the discovery initially when setting up a Lenco for a friend on a budget. He bought an RB-250 to keep costs down, and I talked him into a Grado Platinum as a Final Cartridge. I was frankly stunned by the results, his system now counting amongst the best I've heard anywhere in the world (using old and stunning JSE Infinite Slope speakers, a Superphon Dual Mono Revelation preamp, and a couple of 20-watt ASL tube monoblocks). Now lately, I mounted my RB-250 to the Technics SP-25 in heavy plinth (Direct Coupled) and mounted my Grado 8MX to that, and am again stunned by the results.

And more ahead, as I bought an NOS Audio Technica ATP-12, which is, in terms of build quality/engineering, superior to the AT-1005 MKII. Can't wait to try it out. I am about to mount my Black Widow to my new Reference Lenco (I've improved things some more by more extreme application of certain principles) to show what this baby can REALLY do. One thing about this ultra-low-mass tonearm: a cartridge on this tracks the most severe warps as if they didn't exist. Plus, I've never heard one on one of my Giant babies, let alone my new "Ultra Lenco" (and I've not yet applied these principles to Reinderspeter's top-plate...we're entering realms of music reproduction which border on a violation of the Laws of Physics!!).

Though my Reference tonearm/cartridge combo is now the JMW 10.5/Ortofon Jubilee (though not budget, for the price this combo still ranks as a Giant Killer and stunning value, as they are both "reasonably" priced at roughly $2K each), I was frankly stunned at the results I got from the classic AKG P8ES on the JMW, which may in fact have outperformed the Decca...I'll have to get back to this cartridge and see what more I can extract from it. I HIGHLY recommend the AKG as a State of the Art Contender, no need for caveats in any area. I also clearly remember the stunning results I got from my Transcriptors Vestigal tonearm, likely the lowest-mass tonearm ever made (and WEIRD and so FUN), which extracted SUCH detail and transients from my Grado Woody it matched the best MCs I've heard. Finally, in my Fun Bag, is the Decca International Heavy Metal version I have, which might displace even the JMW 10.5! We'll see.

A note on the highly-underrated (despite a stream of rave reviews) and misunderstood JMW tonearms (especially the 10.5 and above): these tonearms "humanize" otherwise cerebral MCs (which normally cannot match MMs for gestalt, PraT and overall exhuberance/musicality) and so bring them much closer to MMs in overall sonic characteristics. I've heard the Lenco/JMW in many systems, with always the same results: an utter naturalness allied to state of the art detail and imaging, and perfectly even tonal balance, from the lowest lows to the highest highs. I believe it's due to a combination of the unipivot design and very high overall mass, which ups the gestalt of the normally analytical/dissective character of most MCs.

And finally Lew, those sound like fabulous machines, I've heard a lot about the better Denons, but haven't yet managed to get my hands on one. As to speed stability, since there is no such thing as perfection in this world, then it is not so much the overall speed stability which matters as the TYPE of speed instabilities which matter. Take quartz-locking: with a given speed stability measurement (averaged in such a way as to make the figures look very impressive) their speed stability figures outdo many much better designs, as I've discovered. But the quartz-locking is causing a sort of go-brake-go-brake-go-brake which disappears when averaged out over a certain time period/frequency, but to which the human ear is EXTREMELY sensitive. Using the same measurement test, another DD (of course servo-controlled) yields much inferior results, but sounds MUCH more stable in terms of overall gestalt, transients and dynamics (i.e. these are not mitigated as they are with quartz-locking). So perhaps the servo-controlled system at a certain frequency/time sampling is vastly inferior, but perhaps at a smaller sampling frequency the speed stability is vastly superior (i.e. averaged over one thoudsandth of a second to the next one-thousandths of a second the Quartz is superior, but perhaps at the pico-second to the next pico second level the servo is MUCH superior, yielding a more liquid/musical result). With respect to simply removing ALL correction circuitry from existing DDs you're right, the results would likely be disastrous. A DD would have to be designed from the ground up to operate on simple momentum. When removing the platter of my Sony, for example, one can see the motor/spindle of the 'table go, in quarter-turns, revolve-STOP-revolve-STOP. But, mount the platter and this HUGE cogging simply disappears. This demonstrates that the platter mass is calculated into the final result, and a DD designed with no correction whatsoever would also have to be so designed, to work without electronic speed stability tricks, which many audiophiles mistake, it being a matter of wondrous computing technology, as big PLUS, when in fact the correction circuitry is a big bandaid to cover up a great LIABILITY, i.e. the extremely slow revolution of DDs, as is necessarily so (33 1/3 for 33 1/3 and 45 for 45, as opposed to 1800 RPM for Idlers), which magnifies any imperfections hugely (the faster a motor revolves, the more simple momentum "papers" over the speed instabilities).

Anyway, more fun'n games ahead for me and evidently for you all, have fun all!!

Hi Lew, no, the issue as far as I understand it and understood back in the day was that servo-control is reactive, meaning that it reacts to deviation from absolute speed stability (whatever tolerance) and corrects, thus bringing with it an endless hunk-and-seek as it never achieves perfect speed stability (this was the argument anyway, as experience shows the system had its advantages ;-)). The advantage of quartz-locking was that it was not reactive, the quartz "signal" being the independent Reference, and so divorced from the antics caused by stylus force drag, and not reactive. I notice that in this respect, the Technics SP-10 MKII has lots of torque, so stylus force drag or not an issue (but, the quartz-locking reference is itself a problem, as it is audible), and the quartz-locking itself thus more effective (i.e. a true reference signal).

Hi Mike, sorry, my digital camera was destroyed by a grain of sand (while my '70s Nikon FM falls off of speeding motorcycles with nary an effect) during my travels. The Heavy Metal Decca can be recognized by its "futuristic-looking" headshell, sloped with holes drilled out of it to minimize mass, somewhat like the Hadcock headshells. The pillar also sports a cylindrical bubble-level as opposed to the circular one of the more common plastic one. The main pillar is much longer and made of steel, and the cable is detachable 5-pin DIN with a heavy-duty spring-collet. Finally, the counterweight is also drilled out with two holes through is and is assymmetrical so it can be used to correct/balance azimuth.

I had always thought the Ikedas were more expensive, but with the new expensive models and the rise in prices, the Ikedas may be becoming a bargain. It would be great to hear one on a Lenco/JMW combo!!

I'm about to test out a new Garrard 401/SME V combo to see how it fares against a Lenco/Dynavector 507 MKII/Dyna 17D MKIII. In my experience so far, it seems the 401 is actually superior to the far more expensive Garrard 301 grease-bearing (we're not talking a Crushing, but instead a matter of slightly more Lenco-like fluidity) we'll see what happens in further testing.

On the subject of the Technics SP-10 MKII and quartz-locking, Technics' SP-10 MKI was servo-controlled, and I would LOVE to get my hands on one of these! Nevertheless, the main bearing of the Sony 2250/2251 is about the best I've ever come across (about as good as the superb Roksan main bearings), far better than that on other DDs or indeed anything else at all I've tested, which might give it some important advantage, not to mention OF COURSE its Direct Coupling-friendliness. We'll see how it fares in testing against other DDs with time. As always, careful application of Direct Coupling and high mass, and reliance on one's ears and against prejudice in all its forms (i.e. the penchant to automatically assume that expensive exotic materials sound better than the tried-and-true utterly tonally neutral and dynamically monstrous Russian birch-ply/MDF recipe; the penchant to again equate price-tag with final results - i/e/ EMT better than anything, Garrard better than Lenco, Unobtainium better than Obtainium etc. - in fact all forms of Audio-as-Status; and various forms of axe-grinding which do nothing but continue to muddy the waters and slow down actual progress and honest discoveries, and so on and so forth Ad Infitinitum and especially Ad Nauseum) will lead to true progress in design and results, both for the DIYer and in the industry.

As George on Cyprus was always fond of saying, engineering is about engineering TO A PRICE, which is to say, that if it takes $100K to match via, say, Oh, it's on the tip of my tongue...yes!, a Belt-Drive!, a MUCH cheaper idler-wheel drive (and even DD, which at $20K or perhaps much less - given the riddance of expensive circuitry/bandaid - should be able to outperform, correctly designed, a $100K Belt-Drive), then the Belt-Drive design is ultimately an engineering FAILURE. Similarly, as I've often written, if a steam-driven automobile can be made to match the top speed of a combustion engine, but it will weigh 100 tons (several obscenely-priced high-mass belt-drives come to mind) and cost $100,000,000, then it is, quite simply, the inferior system. Until the DD is done correctly, the jury's out on whether or not it can be made to match the superb results of a Giant Direct Coupled and carefully-restored/rebuilt/tuned idler-wheel drive, which relies on pure analogue speed stability rather than tricksy electronic bandaids to achieve speed stability which does not offend the human ear/brain. Of course, as opportunities arise (any of these DD legends materialize in my greedy hands), you can rely on me to faithfully and honestly report on actual results. The Lenco and the Sony are both a HUGE wake-up call on what's important in vinyl playback, the Lenco because it slays pretty well anything on the planet, the Sony because it demonstrates the audibility of quartz-locking/sampling frequencies to maintain speed stability (ditto the analogue Lenco).

Finally, don't forget the Uber Directive all, have fun!! So, a 'table with superior PRaT and liveliness is ALWAYS better than a 'table which majors on analysis at the expoense of the MUSIC (which should, it goes without saying, be musical, anything less being a severe colouration/flaw), and so kills the music. Not that State of the Art results in terms of detail and so forth cannot be achieved with a trusty old idler-wheel drive ;-). Have fun all, and have a good weekend! Now, to mount that Black Widow and see how the AKG P8ES fares....:-).

Hi Mike, how's your new Giant Lenco coming along? Out here in the country I've been busy with some experimentation and preparing for and then enjoying the local winter carnival, which involved lots of horses and lots of beer!

I had wanted to mount the Black Widow, but it turns out it was a casualty of my last move. So I rewired an NOS Sonus tonearm instead, using a Giant Lenco as platform, the Sonus being a very low-mass version of the Mayware unipivot, and mounted both an AKG P8ES and a Grado Master. The Sonus, with the Grado mounted to it, seems to equal the VPI JMW tonearm with the Grado, and so by extension with MMs, which is great news for audiophiles on a budget! But the JMW's abilities with MCs gives it the overall edge in performance when it's matched with the amazing Ortofon Jubilee cartridge. As I wrote before, the JMW seems to bring otherwise analytical MCs into MM territory for gestalt and PRaT, so that the JMW/Ortofon Jubilee matches the erstwhile unmatcheable Grado for these two specific qualities while drawing ahead in every other area, excepting perhaps the Grado Woodies' way with acoustic instruments/resonances of natural materials (i.e. wood, lacquer, strings).

Of course, more listening is required to pin down these elusive qualities with respect to the JMW/Jubilee vs Sonus/MM. Right now, I have the Master mounted on the JMW, which sounds excellent and comfortable and intensely "together", as Grados do, and so I'm in no hurry to go back to the more detailed Orotfon for now.

I have to sing the praises of the Jubilee however, which is a true contender for State of the Art in terms of detail and other traditional MC strengths, which most agree is currently the Bass Master (in terms of reach, detail, all sorts of low frequency information, etc.), and which matches the Denon DL-103 for overall excitement and musicality and, when mounted on the JMW, also matches MMs for PRaT and gestalt. So good is the JMW/Jubilee match, in fact, that I'm having trouble finding a combo for the second tonearm board (my Lenco is a two-tonearm Lenco) which can provide a viable alternative! The Jubilee is ten times the price of the venerable Denon however; but its stylus is said to last 5000 hours as opposed to the Denon's 600-800 hours, and it is superior in perhaps every area. I will have to next mount my special Denon DL-103E on the JMW and see how it stacks up in a head-to-head, lots of comparison fun!! I'm thinking of drilling out the tapped RS-A1 bolt-holes so I can mount threaded cartrdiges like the Jubilee and the Grado Woodies to it as well. More reports of the AKG P8ES on the way as well, on both the Sonus and the JMW. Be bringing in the Rega RB-250 soon too, and I hope also the Transcriptors Vestigal! Throw in the Piezo YM-308 MKII as well for fun, and at some point the Pickering TL-2S currently being promoted by Dopogue and sweeping the world according to all reports. I've been a BIG fan of the Pickerings for a long time now (I remember the stellar peformance of their stereohedron models, and the excellent neutrality of the XV-15/625E), and look forward to trying out this new discovery by Dopogue, being I think a current model.

And let's not forget as well the MAS 282 tonearm, which had me convulsing under the spell of the Kundalini Effect a while back, when matched to the Grados: astounding gestalt, bass, SLAM and musical excitement (provided the crappy tonearm cable is replaced with something better, like the Audio Technica tonearm cables which come with their vintage tonearms and which are superb). Can't wait to start all this experimentation and comparison, things will be getting quieter for now and so I'll have time, as well as finally getting around to building the Reinderspeter steel top-plate version of the Lenco, for even greater performance, already mind-boggling due to the Mighty Idler-Wheel technology!!

Have fun all with your own respective match-ups, I look forward to reading about more fortuitous matches and combinations!

Oops, thanks Mike for the research, I leave it to you to source the various elements and get back to us with the results ;-)!! I've taken the first steps in having new teflon thrust-plates made too. Now to treat my "Ultra Lenco" and see which incredible place it takes me: Why don't you come with me, little girl, on a Magic Carper Ride!!!!

Hey, I missed the four-year anniversary of the beginning of the Idler-Wheel War!! We've come a LONG way baby, and actually affected the industry and brought to light the phenomena of stylus bforce drag, and the connected issue of speed stability and drive systems!!

Those who deny themselves the Glories of the Idler - the incredible transients, bass SLAM, reach and detail and natural presentation of detail - literally don't know what they're missing. But, thankfully, the Ship of Lenco - and other idlers and associated experiments and discussions with DDs and so forth - sails on, thanks for that Mario and all other participants!

Hi Mike, thanks for the tweak suggestions. Pierre, the designer/builder of my 100-watt SS amp, had once very convincingly demonstrated the effects of the degaussing tweak, but these machines were no longer available (I think sold by Monarchy at the time), great to know there's a cheap and available alternative! Thanks as well for the tip on the Rat Shack tool, I'll look for it.

On the tonearm/cartridge front, more news: in fact, none of the vintage tonearms I've tried match the JMW, Morch or RS-A1 tonearms, due principally, I believe, to the suppression of internal resonances, and in some cases also the headshell resonances. The Sonus has a flimsy plastic headshell to minimize mass, and no internal damping at all. Nevertheless, the Sonus/Grado Master came close to the JMW/Grado Master, but with other cartridges the gap was rather large, showing that Grados like low mass, regardless of specs. The real advantage of vintage low-mass tonearms (excepting perhaps the lowest-mass Morch) is that they track the most difficult warps with the utmost ease (no momentum to create the ski-jump effect), and so enlarge the collection and reduce problems. They also save on suspension and stylus wear. I won't give up on the Sonus yet though, as I'll try the fab vintage Satin MC (a gorgeous sound like the Grados, but aimed more specifically at stringed instruments) I have on it next to see what's what.

I had tried the Audio Technica ATP-12 tonearm, a superbly well-built higher-mass professional tonearm with no provision for anti-skating (but seems to work perfectly well nevertheless), but better-built overall than either the AT-1009 or AT-1005 MKII. It sounded great with the Ortofon Jubilee (at 10 times the price!) and a variety of other cartridges I tried. But, compared with the JMW 10.5, there was a slight hardness/brightness, those tonearm resonances again. But it came surprisingly close! All this on my new Reference Lenco of course, I'll have tio try the Rega RB-300 and RB-250 tonearms again to see how they measure up in overall performance now that my Reference has reached new heights.

More on the Jubilee: properly set-up - and this means on a large idler-wheel drive with its clear superiority in terms of PRaT, gestalt and SLAM and transient speed to every other system so far (though we're working on optimizing DDs) - it is a stunning high-end cartridge, which at the price (just under $2K) is a steal, considering its competition lies in the <$8K league. The only high-end MC I've heard so far which matches and beats the incredible Denon DL-103 and variants which so far - for musical power and togetherness - have been King of the MC Hill. I had set up the Denon DL-103"E" (retipped by phonophono in Berlin) on the JMW nad was as always seduced by the musical power, intensity, and togetherness. But when I switched back to the Jubilee, there was all that and more, and even more musical power! As always when setting up cartridges and tonearms on belt-drives, a true idea of a given cartridge's character and performance escapes us, as the belt-drives' various speed instabilites - MOST clearly audible in the relative lack of bass when compared with idler-wheel drive, which itself is the simplest and most evident proof of the inability of belt-drives to deal with stylus force drag and so achieve true speed stability (as opposed to bogus/not real-world speed stability reached by cooking the testing books via biased testing) - cause brightness and poor tracking, among other phenomena such as loss of transient speed and timing. Take the Ortofon Jubilee and mount it on a Lenco/JMW and Bingo!-Presto! it becomes a Denon for musical power and togetherness, and as well preserves its leading-class detail, bass and overall clarity. Also, being King of the Hill when it comes to bass, its results in this one area is truly awesome when mounted to an awesome idler-wheel drive!!

Given all that, I'm still experimenting with various viable alternatives to the Mighty JMW/Ortofon Jubilee pairing, and by this I mean equal but different in overall performance and musical effectiveness. I'm hoping either a re-wired Rega RB-250/Grado Master, or the MAS 282/Grado Master pairing will do the trick.

Tomorrow, in a truly scary high-end system, I'll be setting up a Lenco/Dynavector 507 MKII/Dynavector 17D MKIII, for the previous owner of the Oracle Delphi MKIV/SME V/Dyna XX-1 VdH, already handily outperformed by the Giant Direct Coupled Garrard 401/SME/Dyna XX-1. It'll be interesting to see how the two - Lenco and Garrard - sound compared to each other in such a high-calibre system!! The Oracle is already moot :-)!! Have fun all!!

Hi RFG, thanks for the input!! Haven't read a discovery post like this one for a long time now, I remember when the original thread was punctuated with just such regular reports from new converts, ah those were the days when nobody but an intrepid few dared try or believe! Kudos to you for giving it a go! Of course, being an "extremist" ;-), I will continue to say that the Lenco, maximized (there are Lencos and there are LENCOS), will outperform the best currently available, especially in that sense of rightness you write about, and if it ain't about rightness, then what is it about?!? Great post.

One recipient of one of my Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Lencos has recently reported a big improvement in sound by substituting Stillpoints for my usual cheap-but-effective 3/8"/16 carriage bolts solution. Will have to see just how much more we can continue to squeeze out of these Mighty Machines!!

On the budget front, great news ot report: my Satin M-117 removeable-stylus HO MC (yes!!!! weird cartridge!), from which I always heard the potential for Great Things (about $200 when available, no longer made, rare as hen's teeth), when matched to my own rewired $200 Sonus tonearm (usual Cardas/Petra mix), has matched, or close to, the Mighty JMW 10.5/Ortofon Jubilee combo!! The Satin, though plastic, is extremely heavy, and who knew that this Beast would sound so great on an ultra low-mass unipivot?!? But, FINALLY, bass to match that of the Denon (Satin always being fuzzy in the bass before), allied to close to the detail of the Ortofon (and this with a conical tip!!), and with a HUGE dose of Magic. Obviously the Satin was also a high-compliance cartridge, what an oddball. But its sound is SO magical, even before when the bass was weak (on heavier tonearms), that I always thought it might have the legendary alnico magnets in its engine. If anyone knows anything about the Satin range of cartridges, please report to this thread!! Anyway, the point being, that at the budget/vintage point, it is possible by fortuitous matching to find combos that can duke it out with the current extreme/$$$ High End. Tonight I try out the MAS 282/Grado Reference Master to see how that works out, the MAS itself being one ingredient in the lost lamented days of the Kundfalini Effect in my living room.

On another budget front, I just picked up the Big Brothers to the fab Yamaha 625s I used to rave about back in the days of the Kundalini Effect (along with the MAS/Grado Platinum), the Yamaha NS-690s. These speakers also have the ability to raise the hairs on the body, and I sense soon a return to the Kundalini Effect. The 600 line of Yamaha speakers belonged to the famed NS-1000 line, and are extremely well-built, with the heftiest drivers I've so far encountered (with massive magnets and massive die-cast metal face plates and baskets, and extensive bracing and HUGE crossover components), and the 690 was the top model before the NS-1000 and variants, and in fact has more bass, going down to 40 Hz vs only 55 Hz for the NS-1000s (studio monitors), so some might prefer the greater richness of the NS-690s. The NS-690 has a large dome midrange driver, and a 12" paper woofer in massive basket, being an acoustic suspension design. Gawd these speakers are musical!! And I'm STILL astounded that the little shoe-box Sony amps from the '60s can drive these difficult acoustic suspension designs so easily, while today it takes the likes of Bryston and so on to do the same thing, but with less swing!!!

And speaking of musical/magical speakers, I had written a while back about the Klipsch takeover of the Athena line of fabulously musical speakers. So Mario, they've begun to water down their inherent Musical Greatness have they?!? AND the truly great Mirage line, BOO-HOO. As a testimonial I'll dig out my Athena SP-3s and set them up again and write them up. I also know where to find a lingering pair of new RT-5s and RT-9s, should haste me over there soon and get them, as the RTS-5s were SO musical I rarely hit the sack before 1 am, unable to leave the soundroom!! The RTS-5 were just one model up from the famed RRTS-3s which Harry Pearson fell in love with and regularly wrote up back in the day.

Anyway, have fun all, and don't hesitate to join the growing Lenco Army, which marches with such perfect rhythm and timing and POWER :-). I can't believe that after years of successes, conversions, and such a deep effect on the analogue industry and the analogue landscape, that the cost of Lencos still remains extremely low relative to the pricier Garrards and EMTS!! But good news to all the budding and potential Lenco-philes, as economic conditions are about the same as they were back four years ago (except the days of $25 Decca tonearms are over) when I threw down the gauntlet and dared the world to take the Lenco Challenge (but now we know much more about how to maximize these beasts and extract much more!!!), back when the Lenco was considered the WORST turntable in the world and I was considered insane (this, at least, hasn't changed ;-))! Vive la Lenco, Vive la Idler Wheel, Endless Rightness (thanks RFG)!!

Hi all, just a reiteration of a previous rave on piece of vintage audio: the fabulous MAS 282 tonearm!! After playing with the Sonus and the Audio Technica ATP-12, both of which came close to the JMW-10.5/Ortofn Jubilee combo, I mounted the MAS and set my Grado Woody up on that. Once again this combo SLAMMED, with bass which might in fact be more powerful than the fab JMW/Jubilee combo (and even the high-end experts agree the Jubilee may have the best bass in the business), and which in terms of dynamics is absolutely rivetting, along with the sense of togetherness/gestalt and PRaT. But then I set up the Ortofon M15E Super MM (the leading and first cartridge in the VMS range, though VMS is not in the moniker), which seemed to surpass even the Grado Statement Master for resolution, if not for the Wowie-Zowie Decca-like sense of excitement. In fact, the MAS/M15 combo came closest so far to the JMW/Jubilee combo in terms of detail/resolution/transparency, surpassing even the Mighty RS-A1 Denon DL-103E combo!!! I used a live recording of Carmen MacRae, and only the JMW/Ortofon and MAS/Ortofon M15E/or MAS/Grado managed to resolve the crowd and associated back-stage and stage noises (recorded in a club).

What's truly interesting is that the MAS uses a technique patented by none other than Lenco: the rubber-decoupled counterweight end-stub, though done to a higher and more solid standard than that which came with the Lenco L782 and L75s. Obviously, the whole device is to a higher standard than the Lenco tonearms. Having done some research as to why this arm was so good, I discovered the design was done by the designer of the Linn tonearms, Mr. Ito, whose specialty was most specifically bearings, and the MAS bearings are superb. Ito gave his name the Ittok and the Akito tonearms. Now, these arms are alternately respected and dismissed, and perhaps the MAS tonerarm is a bit of a fortuitous luck, being the result of combining a low-mass (but very stiff and strong arrangement, apparently a sturdy graphite tonearm tube and sturdy/strong plastic headshell) with the Lenco's decoupled counterweight design, the bearings doing the last bit to extract even better detail than the unipivot Sonus, which should in fact be borderline impossible (especially considering the Sonus is rewired with my favourite Cardas/Petra combo, soldered, while the MAS has the original internal wiring and removable headshell, and so should be at a disadvantage)!!

Back when I had tracked down a case of fifty, but in the end I only found and sold a few, but those who have these need to replace the crappy tonearm cable which comes with them and substitute something better, and try quality MMs with them. To reiterate, so far the biggest surprise in vintage tonearms I have experienced are these MAS 282 tonearms!

Next up, the Rega on an Ipe tonearm board (a very heavy exotic wood I'm hoping will surpass my fave walnut and give the Rega a leg up) and the lovely Athena Technologies SP-3 three-way top-of-the-line speakers (but still budget ;-), if unavailable). Have fun all!

What Steve, tupo, me ;-)?!? Actually, many of these rubber-decoupled tonearms do sag over time, but it doesn't seem to affect performance unless of course it's extreme. I too found the Sony PUA tonearms to be superb, but each one I got had a broken antiskate thread, difficult to fix in this particular tonearm, though I should get off my ass and fix it. When I first discovered just how good the Sony 2250 was, I mounted a PUA-286 to it and matched an Audio Technica OC-9 to that, and the resulting sound was stunningly pure, delicate and filigree-detailed. No rubber decoupling on these particular tonearms however. Be interesting to do some experiments as you say and see if this technique improves many tonearms. The Lenco tonearm's piano-wire goes some ways to decoupling, and so incorporates the idea if not the method (and also often sags over time). Anyway, more MAS experiments ahead, tonight the Piezo YM-308 MKII, one of the most detailed MMs I've ever heard.

A friend of mine with one of the best systems I've ever heard, though largely budget (heavily-modified legendary Superphon Revelation Dual Mono, 20-watt budget Wave 20 Antique Sound Lab monoblocks, big brothers to the legendary Wave 8s, JSE Infinite Slope Model .8 speakers, and of course Lencos), recently discovered the Greatness of vintage Sony electronics! I always thought much of his system's performance was due to the Giant Killer Superphon preamp, but when we inserted the Sony TAE-5450 preamp in his system, the performance went up a few notches, to the point where it sounded like a $10K no-holds-barred tube preamplifier. The sound was so BIG (walk-in soundstage)and pristine and smoooottthhhhh, with truly juicy and punchy bass. The TAE-5450 is a V-fet preamp, and V-fet were called the tubes of the silicon world, and in this system, rightly so. Now he has to have one.

Good to hear from you again Gene, and to the rest, have fun all, as always!!

Hi Mario, sorry to say, the M15E Super MKII was the top model in the VMS range ever produced, though the VMS 20 and VMS 30 which folllowed it were more famous. The M15 designation was the first VMS (Variable Magnetic Shunt, being centred around a ring magnet dor, I guess, a controlled magnetic field) cartridge ever released too in 1969, the Final model of this particular one, the M15E Super MKII - being released in 1973. The FF15E is a cheaper model, though ALL VMS models stun with their musicality (first) and resolution, never heard a bad one yet. The M15E Super MKII was close on to $400, which was a LOT of dough for an MM or any cartridge back in the late '70s when it was still being produced. Recently Ortofon discontinued the M15E stylii, but when it was still available it sold for $275 USD, in comparison with $100 or less for most other VMS models, which tells you something.

The M15E Super doesn't look like much, a gold-coloured tin can with a bit of plastic at the front and an sloppy-looking cantilever, but one can't argue with results!! Actually, the Piezo also has, under magnification, nothing to write home about at the end of its cantilever to account for its extreme information-retrieval capabilities, a diamond just barely visible in a large blob of glue, but MAN does it retrieve detail and produce a neutral sound, but still with that MM edge in terms of gestalt and PRaT, though it leans more towards the cerebral than Grados or Ortofon VMS cartridges.

The King of PRaT/complex rhyhtm was, in my estimation, the late lamented Shure V15VMRX, last edition. This thing could unearth, like an paleontologist a skeleton from the earth, THE most complex timing interrelationships which were simply utterly absent with most other cartridges, like comparing a Maestro piano player playing against another Maestro, but this one wearing oven mitts while playing. Incredible, for those who have the system which can demonstrate these subtle variations in PRaT ...like those who have such PRaT-Master speakers as Athenas/Sound Dynamics and of course, those who use idler-wheel drives, which reign Supreme here as in so many other areas (if not all ;-)). Come to think of it, I first noticed this Shure V15 quality on a belt-drive, to wit my very musical Audiomeca tunrtable, which I had bought for its very ability with rhythm, when comapred to other belt-drives at the time (which at the tinme I thought was the only system worth using, like most others at that time). Perhaps I'll track down another V15 in the near future.

Have fun all, back to the very promising AKG P8ES, whichy the first time around I actually preferred to the Super Nova model (perhaps something wrong with it though). I'm now using the Athenas, which in terms of PRaT/timing relationships simply have more discrimination than my other speakers, and so highlight this particular area of MM supremacy (excepting perhaps, for the famed Denon DL-103...I'll have to try this too via the Athenas and the Bauhaus Lenco: Black-laquered Giant Direct Coupled Lenco/RS-A1/Denon DL-103E). Vive la Idler-Wheel, Vive la Lenco, which make of timing - a Prime Ingredient of music - SUCH an obvious and inescapable thing!!

Hi Mario, haven't yet tripped over any Metzners, but am definitely on the lookout for one, if only for their bizarreness. I still have to get off my ass and get started on the Rek-o-kut Rondine I have, which, as I wrote a while back, sounded utterly superb in mono, where there is no rumble (rumble is not picked up in true mono), in fact, SO superb in mono that it reminded me of nothing less than the fully restored and set-up EMT 930 I heard back on Cyprus this past summer. For those who have an inherent fear of rumble with these old machines, get yourselves a true mono cartridge and set-up and find some true mono recordings to listen to: they sound astonishingly good, even the 78s, when played through a real system. I heard mine via tubed elctronics and a single Quad ESL57. As high end as I've ever heard, made me wonder - once again ;-) - about the Marketing Myth of Progress. In fact, I should get into the workshop and get started right away, and work on setting up a true mono system!

But, busy up here with yet further Lenco experiments, including the steel Reinderspeter top-plate I am now about to start on. Not that "ordinary" Giant Direct Coupled Lencos leave anyone wanting. The fellow who received both a rebuilt Lenco and a rebuilt Garrard 401 from me, the former with a Dynavector 507 MKII/Dynavector 17D MKIII and the latter with a SME V/Dynavector XX-1 re-tipped by VdH, reports he hasn't returned to the Garrard yet after setting up the Lenco, which he received after the Garrard. And lest we forget, the Giant Direct Coupling recipe works as well for any idler as it does for the Lenco, forget about Mystical Synergies, it's just about maximizing and proper set-up.

Just as a reminder, here's what one fellow sent me when he received a Giant Direct Coupled Garrard 301 from me: "Well, got the stock i/c on the Dyna, and not all tweaked yet, and nothing sitting on stand, without isolation, and it betters the Verdier/Koetu Urishi on a special Isolation stand...I am candidly surprised. I did not expect this. I had the the Cain and Cain plinth and it did not sound good. This is way above. The 301 is incredible in your plinth. It has only the inexpensive Denon 103 R and that is not redone yet...and only a stock cable and it is better by a long ways than the Verdier on a special isolation table. Next I will try the Koetsu in the arm....and in my best phono stage and see. Damn...don’t let this get out, or it will ruin the high end."

There's still resistance to the idea of Lenco as a true high-end 'table (more from Garrard-ers than anyone else, sadly), not to mention resistance to the idea of idlers as true high-end 'tables, despite the HUGE increase in interest and sales of these machines, HUGE increase in reporting on these machines in the hi-fi press, and their re-appearance on the market!! Prejudice is a tough one to beat. I STILL read that old politically-correct canard (not as in duck ;-)) that all drive systems are equal, it's only implementation that counts. Rubbish. Engineering is about engineering to a price, and if it takes a $50K belt-drive to match a $5K idler-wheel drive (and I mean in every audiophile area, not just SLAM and bass and rhythm and transients), assuming a $50K belt-drive can even match a properly set-up idler-wheel drive, then the issue is settled and the idler-wheel drive is quite simply superior. For a belt-drive to match the torque of an idler with an 8-pound platter, let's say it takes a 75-pound platter, to make the equivalent torque with momentum, which requires all sorts of expensive precision manufacturing and materials. Then it takes a very expensive and solid bearing to bear the weight and friction, assuming a bearing can be made which will not seriously wear out in just a few years. Then it takes a structure capable of supporting this massive weight, and so on. The belt-drive is not a practical system (not that it doesn't sound good at budget prices, like the great Thorenses and ARs, etc.), which is why they have hit $100K and beyond, with still improvements reported at each price point!! Or, simply buy a 'table with a high torque system with no slippage or stretching (why, an idler of course), a powerful motor which does not lose speed when faced with Stylus Force Drag, and sufficient weight on the flywheel-platter (Lenco springs to mind) to create a closed system - motor drives platter, platter smooths out motor - which utterly ignores stylus force drag, does not require vast amounts of material or unnecessary expense, and achieves the same thing, more reliably, at a much lower price-point, than an equaivalent belt-drive, assuming a belt-drive exists which can outperform a properly set-up idler-wheel drive.

Direct Drive is also undergoing a resurgence of interest due to the idler-driven topic of speed stability, and also because DD motors are still available on the market. But, due to the extreme slowness of the rotation (literally 33 1/3 RPM for 33 1/3 LPs, and 45 RPM for 45s, as opposed to roughly 300 RPM for belt-drives and 1800 RPM for idler motors which iron out speed imperfections), they require expensive controlling systems and engineering to counteract the magnification of speed imperfections, all physical systems being to some extent imperfect (but the faster the motor spins, the more these imperfections are ironed out). People make the mistake that the consequent high technology in DDs is a big plus (computational power as a selling feature), when in fact this high technology is required by the Great DD Liability, which is magnified speed imperfections caused by the extremely slow rotation. Not that DDs cannot be made to be extremely good, in fact better than belt-drives according to these ears (especially servo-controlled DDs so far), but, as with belt-drives, it is perhaps true that DDs can only be made to match idler-wheel drives by increased expense, which means that according to the principle of engineering to a price point, idler is still the superior system.

Those with experience know that noise/rumble is not an issue with idler-wheel drives when properly set-up, a lingering bit of misinformation from the Bad Old Days of the Hegemony of the Belt, those same belt-drivers now saying that all systems are equal and it comes down just to proper implementation....yeah, and the combustion engine is not superior to the steam engine, it just comes down to proper implerementation, as in a 100-ton machine (locomotive) to match a half-ton machine....but the steam locomotive will not stop on a dime, or accelerate in a matter of seconds.

Anyway, DD experiments will continue in my workshop, the Lenco will be taken to The Max via the Reinderspeter top-plate and reported on, and I hope to delve into the mysteries of the fabulous Rek-o-Kuts!! Have fun all!!!

Thanks for that Fordmod, and good luck in finishing your Rek-o-Kut project!!

And now for a Tale of Idler Rumble. A while back I delivered both a Giant Direct Coupled Garrard 401 and a Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Lenco (GDCGRL...say that ten times fast!!) to the same fellow, who after hearing one of my GDCGRL for only twenty minutes agreed to trade his Anniversary-edition Oracle Delphi MKIV (black and gold) against the deal. He had subwoofers set up in the corner of a rather large listening room, and a flimsy Target shelf for the unsuspended 'tables right between them, and close. As background, I advised him, as I do all who receive Lencos or other idlers from me, that the best platform I have found is stone bonded to acrylic or Corian, acrylic being on top. This is because stone will not flex and so is much less likely to transmit furniture-created rumble (low-frequency vibration of the sort familiar to other unsuspended decks, like Regas), and acrylic makes it all sound more natural, and damps the stone's ringing, being a CLD sandwich. This has the result of eliminating low-frequency feedback, and of focusing the idler's great strengths, which actually are everything and everywhere, but especially, against a background of belt-drives, transient speed, SLAM, limitless and tight and detailed bass information, incredible timing.

Now, bolting or Direct Coupling an idler, already extremely powerful in the bass, to a large inert mass, creates limitless bass reach, detail and speed (Direct Coupling even more so), which in turn means that any rumble, whatever the origin, will be picked up and amplified. The Garrard/SME V/Dyna XX-1 on the Target shelf was fed into a fully-tubed phono stage (Audio Space), which was, to boot, microphonic. Immediately the first record was played, unacceptable levels of rumble were heard, and so I advised him to simply sit the Garrard on the floor. Much better, but now the opening grooves on each LP - which are distorted by the process of spreading the vinyl outwards in the pressing, meaning the outer edges/opening grooves are distorted in the cooling/hardening vinyl - caused a low-frequency feedback loop which overloaded the phono stage and drove it into oscillation. Plus, there was some rumble/noise still being heard at low levels. So we found some sound-deadening blocks and stuck one under each of the three carriage-bolt feet. Noise now gone, the oscillation yet remained, and we inserted a solid-state phono stage, noise now greatly diminished, vanishingly so. So things stood until I delivered the Lenco.

The fellow didn't want to spring immediately for a stone platform, so we compromised: I built him a new shelf made from my usual recipe of birch-ply and MDF, which we plopped down into the Target stand, and he ordered an acrylic slab. We set up the Lenco on that, no acrylic slab yet, and heard some rumble/noise, and some of that old feedback oscillation in the opening grooves (tubed phono stage back, but with new, less microphonic tubes now). We put the sound-deadening blocks in, which eliminated the noise, but which to my ears also eliminated much of the Lenco power, magic, speed and bass impact. But, he was very happy (remember he had a high-end belt-drive before ;-)), and I left it at that for now, yet still dissatisfied.

Eventually he sent me news of his acrylic slab being ready, and I went over to glue it (using 3M spray adhesive which doesn't react with rubber platter mats either). We first went about finding the best combination of phono stage without the acrylic slab, and settled on the John Curl-designed Sota active step-up fed into the MM section of the tubed phono stage as having the best balance of musicality (much more musical than the solid state phono stage) and silence (MC stage too noisy with no appreciable increase of musicality). Now it was starting to sound good.

We bonded the acrylic to the Birch/MDF platform, and set up the Lenco on that, this time without the sound-deadening blocks. ALL rumble and noise was now completely gone, regardless of volume (and we were playing LOUD), and the improvement in sound quality was truly shocking. NOW the Lenco was indeed Mighty, with that familar sense of untapped yet ever-present limitless power (and the comparison to the Amazon in full flow is still the best description of the Lenco sound so far), and incredible delicacy, SLAM, limitless duynamics, air, imaging, transient speed with decaying notes fully recovered and atmospheric, and incredible bass detail and information which is, quite simply, inaudible and not present on belt-drives. In this extremely hig-end system, the sonic results were quite simnply awesome and overpowering, the same sound which easily outperformed a fully updated $11K EMT 930 idler wheel drive back on Cyprus.

Which is to say, that properly set-up idlers do not rumble inherently, regardless of the low-frequency levels reacheable by any system, subwoodfers or not. What is happening is that the idlers' abilities to delve extremely deeply in the bass (due to the vastly-superior torque and speed stability in the face of problematic stylus force drag) means that any low frequency noise is picked up, amplified, and often causes a feedback loop which endlessly cycles and re-amplifies the noise. Of course, the idlers themselves must be meticulously set-up and restored in order to remove any possible sources of noise. Direct Coupling lowers the noise floor yet more to astonishing levels of quietness (while increasing every audiophile aspect from detail retrieval through imaging to bass information), and finally, setting up on a non-flexing suitably damped platform (which means extremly lightly damped, like gluing acrylic to stone to deaden ringing but not introduce energy-killing/sucking phenomena) eliminates all noise which "excavating" the idlers' abilities in all audiophile areas, especially transient speed, focus, SLAM, bass and timing/rhythm (Pace, Rhythm and timing, PRaT).

Finally, the recipient, extremely difficult (when I delivered the Lenco and Garrard he set up a lab with scopes to measure noise and performance before he would insert them in his system, and he is EXTREMELY sparing with compliments or positive reports) now utterly convinced, bought a granite slab within a couple of days, and has sent me the following e-mail: "Can't believe what a slab of granite will do. Great improvement on the bass .....you can hear each note clearly..........better focus on the mid ...........and the little edginess in the high is gone too. Best $60 I spent in many years!!" Now, to highlight just how serious about audio this fellow is, he is planning on buying a $100K preamp for his system, has been an audio distributor (the second to favour properly set-up idler-wheel drives, specifically Lencos, as opposed to high-end belt-drives), and is going into manufacturing of tubed electronics (also the second manufacturer of tubed electronics to be seduced by the Mighty Lenco, the other being Roger Hebert of Wyetech fame).

Anyway, consider a CLD slab of acrylic bonded to stone as practically mandatory in order to get the most out of your respective idler-wheel drives all, and enjoy the sound of your Mighty Idlers!!

Beautiful Lencos Michael!!

At this end I've been experimenting with ceramic ball bearings for the Lencos. As some of you may recall, when I reported on the Garrard vs Lenco, I had reported that only with a completely obssessive and neurotic main bearing and idler-wheel baering and motor treatment/cleanup/re-lubing could the Garrard match the Lenco. Well, in applying this same regimen to the Lenco main bearing (more difficult due to the much smaller Lenco main bearing), and combined with the ceramic ball substitute, the Lenco takes another leap upwards in performance, and this pretty well must be considered mandatory as well. Given the HUGE leap when matching the Lenco with the stone/birch-ply/MDF/acrylic sandwich (acrylic on top), this latest mod must be considered to take the Lenco - already one of the best 'tables in the world, bar none when in Giant Direct Coupled guise, in terms not only of the usual idler superiority in the bass, dynamics department and transient speed, but also in terms of transparency and detail (as those who have actually tried one can attest) - into completely uncharted territories of Analogue Bliss.

The most striking result from the bearing mod is a LARGE increase in transparency and pristine and delicate high-frequency extension, bringing my fab RS-A1/Denon DL-103"E" - previously left in the dust by the JMW 10.5/Ortofon Jubilee pairing - into perhaps superior sonics, organization, separation and transparency. Now, I need to apply this same mod to my massively huge Ultra Lenco, and see where the JMW/Ortofon Jubilee pairing, and the Sonus/Satin pairing, takes me next!

Of course, noise (inaudible noise/black background), MUST be decreased, which accounts for the increased transparency. The newly-uncovered high-frequency extension - SMOOOTTTHHHH and silky extension- is likely due to improved speed stability. Yes, speed stability, as reduced friction in the main bearing (the platter now spins forever) means the platter - already the best flywheel out there in Idler Land - acts as an even more effective flywheel which, being coupled intimately via that infamous rubber wheel to the motor, regulates the motor speed even more effectively than before (that famous closed system of platter/idler/motor motor/idler/platter which utterly ignores stylus force drag).

I haven't had a chance yet to investigate further in the bass and midrange (already improved by the much greater transparency), and will report further once I've applied the mod to my Reference Ultra Lenco/JMW/Ortofon Jubilee. Have fun all, in my region the Lencos are making a Mighty Splash, among some VERY serious audiophiles, who are learning lessons in the areas of musicality and edge-of-the-seat excitement, (not to mention that still-alive nonsense idler noise dogma!), not to mention the Myth of Progress!

Hi Lew and everyone else, sorry about the delay, out here in the country I don't always have access to Da 'Net, and the latest round of snowstorms has slowed everything down some more!!

Lew, the bearings did indeed come from Boca Bearing, but I must now add a caveat until further experimentation/notice: though in my own system - most particularly the Bauhaus Lenco/RS-A1/Monster Cable Sigma Genesis 2000 (a new acquisition to duke it out with the JMW/Ortofon Jubilee) - the bearing seemed to be a clear improvement, in another system the power and majesty of the Lenco seemed to be severely affected, though in terms of clarity, silence and detail it was a clear winner. In fact, I had done two things: obssessively restored the main bearing, AND inserted the ceramic ball bearing, so I'm not sure what was doing what. The new cleaning regimen did indeed improve the frictionlessness (added many minutes to the free rotation) of the main bearing without the substitution of the ceramic ball bearing, and did indeed improve the sonics substantially, as the recipient of one of my older Lencos attests.

But, I think the ceramic ball may be pulling that old audiophile trick I've heard so often from all kinds of equipment, from electronics through speakers and cartridges, acrylic platters and so on: strip away/supress a large part of the midbass so as to expose the midrange and high frequencies and create the illusion of increased clarity, speed/transients and detail. I don't yet know and will perform some comparisons today and through the week. It might have been my mood, or some other subjective phenomenon which caused my reaction to the changeover in a very pricey and impressive system (much more powerful before the changeover, but the owner of the Lenco loved the increase in clarity/silence/black background notwithstanding my own reaction), need to do more listening.

This tonal trick may in fact help some unbalanced set-ups (too rich, perhaps like mine which now prefers MCs, which thanks to the RS-A1 and JMW are now much more musical/MM-like), but in some systems - as yesterday (violins seemed borderline shrill, all the rosin and resin was gone) - will create problems.

Now, this ball bearing is critical, as the platter rides on it and so the whole sonic landscape depends on it. It's possible the sound of the Lenco depends on a metal ball, and Boca Bearing also has a variety of metal ball bearings which might be a better bet. Anyway, I'll get back to you all later on this issue (very time-consuming comparisons), so don't all stampede towards the ceramic balls just yet, I'll do dome listening today via my handy-dandy Bauhaus Lenco, via a similarly treated main bearing, but with the original steel ball bearing.

As to the acrylic, I bond it to the top of the platform the Lenco rides on Lew, not to the Lenco plinth itself. This improves the sound in most systems I've tried it in, though of course the usual synergy and room matching issues apply.

Finally, a note on the MM vs MC issue: I've long been advocating the superiority of MMs over MCs in all kinds of musically-important areas, more specifically gestalt (the sense of all musicians playing together to produce music rather than a disparate collection producing information/detail as many MCs/tonearm/'tables do), tonality (MMs capture resonances, wood, resins, varnish better, especially the Grado Woodies) and PRaT (Pace, Rhythm and Timing, making music especially exciting/driving); and that also many MMs produce surprising levels of detail when properly matched to tonearms (which usually means low-mass). But with my new sound-room, new/old very-rich/tubey Sony 2000F preamp (fabulous MC loadable phono stage) and with the acquisition of the MC-humanizing JMW 10.5 and RS-A1 tonearms, MCs now have the advantage in my system, which explains the current situation of MC-dominance at home. This is a first for me, and I'm still having fun with MMs, just a matter of synergies for the moment, working on getting a new soundroom, which will affect speaker choice and so on.

Anyway, have fun all, I'll get back to the bearing issue!

Hi Mike and all: I just substituted the original metal ball for the ceramic ball and heard a HUGE increase in bass power, midbass, and actual transparency, if perhaps a loss of some imaging focus, which may be addressed by other means (loading of the cartridge, speaker placement, etc.), so I have to declare the ceramic ball a Danger to the Lenco Mightiness, a Gelding of the Mighty Bull. Had the Lenco on Cyprus had the ceramic ball, the EMT would have been declared to winner in terms of power and PRaT, while the Lenco would have been deemed analytical. But, the Lenco surpassed the EMT in every area, offering a superior sense of limitless fluid POWER against the EMT's Garrard-like oversimplification of rhythm and timing (the Lenco offering a finer and more detailed exposition of complex timing which escaped the EMT, while clearly outperforming it in every audiophile area, like detail, imaging, decay/air and so on).

The Lenco I heard yesterday in the extreme high-end system, before the bearing-ectomy, sounded like the best turntable in the world bar none (Giant Direct Coupled Glas-Reinforced Lenco/Dynavector 507 MKII/Dynavector 17D MKIII), a Destroyer of EMTs and any belt-drive or DD you care to mention. The POWER, detail, SLAM, speed, transients and bass, with the familiar Amazon-like sense of barely-tapped limitless reserve, had to be heard to be believed (even I found it hard to credit). But after the bearing-ectomy, it sounded like a massive pricey belt-drive with an acrylic platter: analytical with overdamped bass and mushy low bass (speaking relative to idlers), the magic was GONE.

The ceramic bearing acts as a comb filter, filtering out some frequencies - specifically the mid-to-upper bass, precisely where the MOST striking difference between idlers and belt-drives exists - and exaggerating others (upper mids to high frequencies), thus creating this illusion of increased transparency and detail.

Now, I am not now going to try to match a ceramic bearing to the precise thrust-plate necessary to make it work, for now anyway, as here I will trust my gut reactions, as I did when I first heard an idler, when I first heard a Lenco, and when I first heard the birch-ply/MDF recipe I had been recommending and promoting on grounds of logic (CLD plus mass, avoidance of overdamping, but materials which will absorb rather than reflect energies....a perfect balance, intuitively/logically), but had not actually tried in the beginning. In each of these cases there was a Rightness which immediately struck a biological/emotional response, and a physical response (i.e. my ears saying Holy Crap and perking up like bunny ears)!!

Now many audiophiles like to dismiss these types of responses as subjective and so declare them meaningless and misleading. But music IS an emotional and biological experience (the urge to dance, to cry, to scream, to make trouble...), as well as an intellectual experience (the mathematical beauty of Baroque classical music, better exposed by a the Subtle but Mighty Lenco than anything else out there) and so to dismiss this makes no logical sense. We MUST trust our instincts. If I have a particular talent, it is my ability to recognize these responses in myself and be able to immediately chuck all I realize on the instant I had erroneaously believed (as when I, proud owner of two high-end belt-drive turntables heard my first idler) in favour of the contradictory experience (i.e humble modded Garrard SP-25 kicks the shit out of high-end belt-drives in all musically-important areas).

Now, it must be said that I seem to be able to extract more from Lencos and other idlers than many others whose Lencos fall short of the mark set by the Lencos I send out as ambassadors. This is largely due to audiophiles' weakness for the exotic and the complex. And so they rush out and apply - without comparison, this is VERY important - the latest flavour-of-the-month materials (i.e. bubinga wood and Ipe which reflect rather than absorb, approaching stone and metal for hardness and so on; ceramic and acrylic which both act as comb filters [in the absence of bonding/CLD-ing], the latest fashionable motors, etc.) and techniques (i.e decoupling which mitigates POWER and focus, separate arm-pods which introduce relative motion, materials which over-damp, and so on) without regard to logic (relative motion, overdamping, underdamping, etc, which should be evident without the experiment.).

I'm convinced that part of the Secret of the Mighty Idlers is the use of simple metal (platter) and wood (wood allowing Direct Coupling which is SUCH a HUGE improvement while reflective stone does not allow this). So, the metal to metal bearing works well, as it does in the platter itself, as does the use of birch-ply/MDF, which offers a perfect balance of mass/weight and just the right note of hardness/softness, absorbing without overdamping, solditidy which leads to incredible bass, SLAM, dynamics, transients and tonal correctness from the highest to the lowest frequencies. This last CLD recipe may not be exotic, but it is incredibly effective, as is instantly heard when tried. Wich is to say, the original Lenco parts, properly cleaned, relubed, restored, and set-up, are absolutely incredible in their seemingly limitless potential and actual results. The only parts I've found so far which exhibit any wear are, indeed, the nylon thrust plates, which dimple.

This doesn't mean I won't be seeking to improve this aspect: for instance I am trying to source new teflon thrust plates, and will look into thicker steel thrust plates (which like Reinderspeter's top-plate should improve overall sound quality without affecting the balance...the Mighty Amazon in Full Flow Lenco POWER, which must NOT be mitigated/compromised, only further improved!!!). I will also test out varying metal ball bearings. But I'll stick to metal, as my guts/ears attest.

As to the cleaning regimen Mike, long ago I reported on the restoration and replinthing of an NOS grease-bearing Garrard 301. Now the grease - an organic compound - had degenerated and formed invisible coral reefs on the metal of the shaft and bronze bushings of the main bearing. I discovered this when, after two cleaning of solvents, the now-shiny main bearing continued to stick in precisely the same places where it had stuck while the original grease was still in there. I scratched my head, and pulled out my handy-dandy Bullshit-Free metal cleaner: powdered and water-soluble Cameo pot and pan cleaner. I bought a pipe cleaner, and applied myself to both the interior of the bearing and the exterior of the main shaft. I blew compressed air through the bearing, made up my new Mobil 1-based grease (matched in consistency to the original honey-like grease) and discovered that the bearing now revolved smoothly with no problems.

My next Garrard experience came with an oil-bearing 301, which had no sticking problems, so I performed the usual solvent baths sans-Cameo, Direct Coupled it to the usual high-mass CLD recipe, and found it to be far short of the Lenco in performance. Again I scratched my head, and again I pulled out my Cameo, but this time introduced a new element: a 24-hour submersion in WD-40, an excellent solvent. Watch your brass and other metals magically come out shiny and new-looking!! THEN I applied myself with the Cameo, pipe cleaners and stiff sponges. After all this and the compressed air and new syntheitc lubrication, I reassembled everything and found the Garrard to be in the same ball-park as the Lenco.

But, the Lenco being so good without this obssessive cleaning regimen (using the solvent baths but no Cameo as it didn't seem an issue), I let well enough alone, only finally trying it out with the Lenco (which having such a smaller bearing/bushing, required lengthy polishing using Q-tips to scrub with the Cameo) this past week. WHAT a difference (which I erroneously concluded was due to the ceramic ball)!! The platter revolved so long I went away and had a nap. And sonically, a tranformation (leaving the metal ball in place). The moral of this story is: solvent are not enough. The old lubricants are organic (as are even most synthetics today as they are not purely synthetic as I discovered when I bought some purely synthetic stuff on Cyprus), and they degenerate over time, creating invisible bacterial colonies which must be scrubbed away to restore the sonics/potential fully.

NOW we are approaching the Full Idler Potential: obssessive treatment/addrssing of various issues - without replacing parts - leads to incredible heights of sonic fireworks and bliss!!! Interfering with the original recipe by resorting to new materials may lead to a Gelding of the Bull, and incorrect conclusions as to the power and true potential of idler-wheel drives. Do not rush to embrace the latest exotic materials and complex techniques without first hearing the context: a properly-restored and logically and practically designed plinth/tonearm set-up. THEN test out your new materials and techniques, as how otherwise are your conclusions valid (this argument goes back to the earliest days of the original thread, when several sought to "improve" the Lenco by replacing the fabulous motor and adapting it to belt-drive!!)?!? Not to mention the fact that these gelded bulls then become ambassadors, and end up holding back the rising Idler Tide (properly restored and set-up idlers are superior in every way to their belt and dircet-drive competitors...it's just that there remain ways to improve performance without affecting the powers and balance of these machines, like the Cleaning Regimen). Short form: don't fall for bullshit, embrace results.

Anyway, that's enough for now, have fun all!! Vive la Lenco, Vive la Idler-Wheel (which - already awesome in earliest days - continues to climb the Sonic Ladder)!!

Thanks for that Michael, as always your posts are a hoot!! And thanks for the report of the footer experiments Bob, I keep hearing about the use of Stillpoints, I'll have to get around to trying these.

Well, yesterday I staged a BIG round of tonearm/cartridge comparisons, with REALLY good news for those on a budget!! As I've often written, I've been trying to get the RS-A1 to match the Mighty JMW/Ortofon Jubilee combo, so I had acquired a Monster Cable Sigma Genesis 2000 to replace the Denon DL-103"E" (great, but low bass is essentially absent, it's a mid-bass champ, which means it fits into the usual 40 Hz or mini monitor speaker systems perfectly...midrange GORGEOUS) on the RS-A1 which actually took the lead!!...for a while. Then I installed one of the newly-treated main bearings on the Ultra Lenco - with the usual playing overnight at 78 RPM, which makes a BIG difference in getting the new lubricant sunk into the bronze bushings to reduce noise - and the JMW/Ortofon Jubilee (which has absolutely state of the art bass which shames anything else I've heard, and this is a BIG plus on idler-wheel drives as it allows Full Restitution of the LPs) once again took a significant lead. THEN I hooked up the humble re-wired Sonus (a low-mass variant of the Mayware tonearm) with the Satin M-117Z (roughly $400 at eBay prices), and, incredibly, this in overall terms matched the JMW/Ortofon (at roughly $4K new), falling behind in some areas, and surpassing it in others. Surprisingly, it matched and perhaps beat the JMW/Ortofon in the bass!!!

Now the Satin cartridges are truly strange creatures, high-output MCs - which almost always fall far behind low-output MCs in absolute sound quality terms - which have removable styluses. Not only that, but the stylus assembly is held in place by simple magnetism, nothing else. Now this last fact explains why the erstwhile beautiful but flawed Satin only bloomed when matched to the ultra-low-mass Sonus: anything heavier caused relative movement of the stylus assembly because of simple mass/momentum. But with the Sonus, the stylus remains in place and a stunning amount and quality of bass emerged. The Satin was waiting for the Sonus all this time to bloom.

Getting back to the Tale of Rumble, the Sonus/Satin was unplayable at higher volume via the reflex-loaded (ported) Athenas due to the low-frequency feedback loop I had written about back a few posts. But with the three-way Yamaha NS-690s (which belong to the famed NS-1000 line), which are acoustic suspensions speakers (i.e. no port), but actually go deeper in the bass than the Athenas, the Sonus/Satin is playable with no volume limits, no rumble, no feedback loop. Now, reflex loading leads to mushier, less controlled bass (but higher efficiency/sensitivity figures), while acoustic suspension speakers traditionally have tighter, more tuneful bass (but lower efficiency figures as it takes more power to move the drivers). The reflex-loaded Athenas picked up and amplified otherwise inaudible low-frequency noise, which moved the furniture, and cycled it in an escalating feedback loop. So again, reports of idlers and rumble are due not to the idlers themselves (i.e. the rumble is not intrinsic) but is due to the fact that mass-loaded idler-wheel drives have no lower limit in the bass, and so retrieve bass noise, which leads to amplification and low-frequency feedback loops. I point out here that belt-drives do not usually exhibit these problems, for the simple fact they cannot match idler-wheel drives in the bass, period.

Anyway, good news to budget-minded audiophiles/music lovers, you can, given proper matching, achieve state-of-the-art results on a budget!! Satin cartridges are rare as hen's teeth, but if any of you come across some, jump on them! There are likely MMs as well which, on the Sonus, will produce similar results. Ditto other vintage tonearm/cartridge combos. Have fun all!!!

And now for a tale of synergies and Deccas. Waaayyy back, in the days of the original thread, I had accidentally found that the JMW tonearm was a perfect match for the notorious Decca cartridges. For the first time in my experience, the Decca behaved perfectly with no mistracking or jumping out of grooves, at least almost perfectly, with possibly one album in my collection giving it problems.

Back then I had my vintage Sony TAE-5450 preamp (stellar, recently handily outperforming and displacing a heavily-modified Superphon Revelation Basic Dual Mono, itself a legendary '80s phono preamp), evidently an excellent match for the Decca. The POWER, and transient SPEED I heard then was awesome to beholdd, and I declared this the Best Combination in the world (Giant Lenco/JMW/Decca), being at the same time my discovery of the effects of increased mass, the first Giant Lenco I built at the request of Dave Pogue, to whom I owe TWO discoveries (Giant/Mass is Class and the JMW/Decca combination).

Now the Decca cartridges are Direct Scanning designs, meaning there is no suspension, the diamond being attached at one end of a bent piece of metal, the other end going directly to the magnets. This means direct communication of energy/information to the electrical generator (the moving magnets), which in turn means, in engineering terms, that it should (like the idler-wheel drive principle) be superior to the alternatives (standard suspension cartridges, which is everything else). But, the resulting tremendous energy of the Direct Scanning principle means Deccas will only perform up to spec on the appropriate tonearms (otherwise buzzing and mistracking and jumping about), which means fluid damping (I also got great results on a Maplenoll tonearm with damping trough in the Fab '80s). Recently, a Canadian audio magazine declared the "lower" Deccas (including the Super Gold) severely flawed and gave them a thumbs-down because they insisted on disregarding decades of collective Decca experience and using them in standard undamped captive-bearing tonearms.

Anyway, eventually I got an ARC SP8 preamp, which was fabulous, and then an Orotfon Jubilee to replace my extinct Kiseki Purpleheart Sapphire MC, and for the first time, in my system, I heard something which could beat the Decca, the JMW 10.5/Ortofon Jubilee combo. But now, I am back to a Sony preamp, the 2000F with swithcable MC and MM loading and two phono stages. On trying the JMW Decca Super Gold combo once again, I now hear the Decca far outstripping the JMW/Jubilee combo. Yet in another system the same week (Quad ESL 63s driven by tube electronics, and a Graham 2.2 Ceramic on a Giant Lenco) the story was precisely the reverse. Now that Graham/Decca combo sounded absolutely perfect in audio terms, but in my system it is Lighting and Thunder to a far greater degree, along with truly astonishing transparency and detail. Everything sounds so REAL, so palpable, so 3D!

I believe this is due not only to electronics which the Decca loves (vintage Sony), but also to the acoustic suspension Yamaha NS-690s (which I remind everyone belongs to the famed NS-1000 monitor line, haivng in fact deeper bass than the 1000s). I had also written way back in the Kundalini Effect days, that acoustic suspension speakers retrieve more of the Palbability Factor and Timing (PRaT) which is yet another aspect of the superiority of idler-wheel drives over the competition, due to their tighter and more responsive bass (also deeper bass for a given size, but with the penalty of reduced sensitivity).

Anyway, given a good acoustic suspension speaker and sympathetic electronics, the Lenco/JMW/Decca combination is once again at the Top of the Sonic Heap, providing truly unbelievable results, borderline vaporizing the Yamaha drivers!! This is not to say that the results are not stellar in other systems (the Decca handily outperformed a $3K MC in the Giant Lenco/Graham 2.2/tube/Quad '63 system), just that to hear what an idler/Decca can do an acoustic suspension design is way recommended!! This means too push-pull tube electronics, not single-ended (excepting certain particularly muscular single endeds as the Wyetech electronics) to drive these more difficult speakers.

I'll next try out the underrated AR2ax's, now that I have this fabulous Lenco/JMW/Decca combo singing once again!! WHAT fun!! Have fun out there all you idler users as well!! One discovery as well of all these tonearm/cartridge combos, was just how incredible the humble/budget Denon DL-103"E" (roughly $300 all told)sounded on the JMW, both super-smooth and slamming, and transparent as well! All you silent readers out there owe it to your Audio Happiness to get ye out and hear a properly set-up idler-wheel drive, but be prepared, as First Contact is often a severe psychological shock (can vinyl sound like THIS?!?!)! There's a reason the Idler-Wheel Movement is steadily gaining steam and adherents :-).

Hi Hxt1, thanks for the tip, there's nothing like trying something to see what it does, like the ceramic ball. Btw, how do you pronounce Hxt1 ;-)?

There are reasons I've steered clear of stone in the plinth, i.e. the "Hardness Factor", which means it is more reflective than absorptive (and so creates the illusion of detail rather than its natural and glorious reality), and it cannot in itself be Direct Couple-able, meaning screws cannot be sunk into the "meat" of the stone to drain noise away (and anyway, being so hard it would not absorb but instead tend to reflect noise back), as it can with wood products. However, bonded CLD-style to a plinth, screws can still be passed through the stone to the wood to reach the wood of the remains of the plinth. Perhaps you can organize having a slab sent my way via Canada Post so I can try it out and report on it.

In the meantime, before everyone rushes to slate (as some may have done with the ceramic ball bearings), be cautioned that hard materials (and this includes especially hard woods) may be doing the old audiophile "drain some of the bass frequencies away to unnaturally expose the mid and high frequencies Trick" to create the illusion of detail rather than the reality. I fell for this very recently with the ceramic ball bearing, first installing it in various systems, then being forced to return and remove them all once I realized what what really going on (i.e. de-testicularization of the Mighty Lenco). Your description on Lenco Lovers that surface noise is emphasized is a flagpost that this may, that's MAY (don't let me discourage you), be happening, as the larger the traditional CLD plinth ("traditional" being the now-common birch-ply/MDF recipe), the more effective the Direct Coupling and the less apparent the surface noise is, while the detail, transients, bass and high frequencies all continue to improve. Anyway, contact me, we'll organize shipping of a suitably-cut slab my way, and we'll subject it to the Jean Nantais Audio Laboratory (i.e., my hairy bat-like ears) and I'll report further.

Good news to all the Lenco Lovers out there, I've had occasion to listen to two Garrards (301 grease-bearing and 401 oil-bearing) Direct Coupled to Giant CLD plinths and compare them to similarly set-up Lencos, and both in excellent systems, one of them being way WAY beyond my means. Now as background, remember that Direct Coupling ANY idler-wheel drive works very well (and DDs too, as the slaughter of the Technics SP10 MKII by the Sony 2250 attests), in fact creating what may well be the best Garrard rebuilds currently available. So, I once again post the impressions of a complex low-mass Cain & Cain Garrard owner to set the stage/context: "Well, got the stock i/c on the Dyna, and not all tweaked yet, and nothing sitting on stand, without isolation, and it betters the Verdier/Koetu Urishi on a special Isolation stand...I am candidly surprised. I did not expect this. I had the the Cain and Cain plinth and it did not sound good. This is way above. The 301 is incredible in your plinth. It has only the inexpensive Denon 103 R and that is not redone yet...and only a stock cable and it is better by a long ways than the Verdier on a special isolation table. Next I will try the Koetsu in the arm....and in my best phono stage and see. Damn...don’t let this get out, or it will ruin the high end."

In more related news, before we get back to the subject, a former Shindo Garrard owner visited a friend of mine with a Giant Air-Bearing Lenco and was struck, while there, by the utter silence of both it and the Giant Direct Coupled Garrard which was also there. He said the Shindo was noisy. Now we know just how effective Direct Coupling to a Giant plinth really is in eliminating noise and excavating music, and also see an example of Price is the Product (which, being Unobtainium to most, engenders its own mythology, promoted by the owners in most cases, excepting this one) and Audio Bullshit. I reiterate: Russian birch-ply and MDF may not be exotic, but they are EXTREMELY effective, and tonally balanced and dynamically perfect, so much so in all audiophile areas that it is simply impossible to point to any flaws (which cannot be addressed by footers and platforms). Here's a VERY picky Russian birch-ply/MDF CLD Lenco owner with a truly high-end system looking for flaws: "The Lenco is sounding simply fabulous !! Absolutely the best LP reproduction I have owned. I spent quite a while getting everything dialed in and now think I'm realizing the full potential of the Giant Lenco. Bravo, Bravo !!" And later: "The Lenco continues to impress. I'm unable to identify any area where the performance is lacking, i.e.- no shortcomings have reared their ugly head(s) to disrupt my enjoyment of the Giant Plinth Lenco."

Anyway, the result of the visit of the former Shindo owner? The fellow bought that Lenco on the spot (don't despair Lenco Lovers, the friend is also replacing the air-bearing Lenco with a more traditional pivotted tonearm Lenco, "latest spec") with which he was enamoured to the point of Shindo and Giant Garrard invisibility. Now this is not to say that a properly-restored Garrard cannot beat the cr*p out of a multi-kilobuck belt-drive with one footer tied behind its back, just that, after all, there is an idler hierarchy, and that it appears - following as well the defeat of a mighty EMT 930 on Cyprus, fresh from full Restoration by three of Europe's leading analogue experts - that the Lenco occupies the Top of the Heap.

Why? I have repeatedly compared Lencos and Garrards, and in various systems, and have rebuilt and disassembled many Garrards, Thorenses and Lencos, and can now point to the issue of [true] torque vs inertia. Now everyone may know (or many anyway) that I detest the application of the philosophy of Political Correctness to engineering/science, i.e. that it has no place here. So, influenced by PC and tring to win popularity contest (be all things to all people, offer no judgments, offend no one), many constantly reiterate that all drive systems are equal (in the absence of actual experience or evidence), and that it is merely a matter of implementation. Baloney, Oops, I mean fine, I say, let's bring back the steam engine. It weighs about a 100 tons, takes forever to speed up to combustion engine speds, and to slow down due to its massiveness, and costs several millions of dollars to manufacture. A bit like a 150-pound belt-drive which sells for $50K-$100K. Engineering is about engineering to a PRICE, and if it takes a 100 grand belt-drive to equal a 10 grand idler machine (let's say the true cost of manufacturing a new true idler-wheel drive turntable and selling it), then the 10-grand idler is simply the superior technology (and despite the antiquated rubber wheel, it IS technology).

So, getting to the reasons why: inertia of a massive platter is NOT the same as torque, which is applied actively to achieve its ends, in this case to spin the platter. So, say, take a dinky little motor spinning at 300 RPM (low-torque) and use it to revolve an 80-pound platter on its axis (main bearing) via a flimsy belt or thread with its problematic grip, and compare it with a Monster motor spinning at 1800 rpm, and use IT to revolve an 8-pound platter, with half its mass concentrated on its rim for flywheel effect, using a grippy rubber wheel. What will happen? The little - and so cheaper to manufacture - idler, will kick the ass of the Mighty Uber-Heavy belt-drive, as more and more are discovering, and as the previously posted posting also attests: "Well, got the stock i/c on the Dyna, and not all tweaked yet, and nothing sitting on stand, without isolation, and it betters the Verdier/Koetu Urishi on a special Isolation stand...I am candidly surprised. I did not expect this. I had the the Cain and Cain plinth and it did not sound good. This is way above. The 301 is incredible in your plinth. It has only the inexpensive Denon 103 R and that is not redone yet...and only a stock cable and it is better by a long ways than the Verdier on a special isolation table. Next I will try the Koetsu in the arm....and in my best phono stage and see. Damn...don’t let this get out, or it will ruin the high end." Have a look under my "system" to see the photo of the massively-plattered HUGE Platine Verdier sitting next to the not-so-Giant-looking Giant Direct Coupled Garrard 301.

So now we get to the reason why the Mighty Lenco should outperform the Garrards and EMTs (belt-drives are a forgone conclusion), which are better-built (but NOT better designed as I often write). Btw, the Lenco just has more of everything than the Garrards: more natural-sounding, more detail, more refinement, a larger dynamic pallette/window, it retrieves more of the air and resonance, more bass (!!!), a BIGGER presentation, more of a sense of limitless power, and so on. So, what's going on? The Garrard even has the more powerful/torquey motor! Ah, there's the rub. There must exist a perfect balance of torque-to-inertia. The more powerful the motor, the more that motor's sound/imperfections are heard, as it begins to audibly imprint itself over the flywheel/stabilizing effect of the platter. The Lenco's motor has less torque, but the platter is the better flywheel, with more mass concentrated on the rim, and at a further distance too (the platter is slightly oversized), making it an even more efective flywheel/purveyor of inertia an thus Smoother/Eliminator of speed imperfections (i.e. the motor). This superior flywheel ensures the motor - via the very clever it is now apparent means of using a rubber wheel with all its grip - spins more smoothly, and in the Lenco's case - likely entirely by accident (though perhaps Dr. Lenco actually calculated all this) - creates a perfect balance of torque (VERY important) to inertia (also VERY important) to create the Mighty Lenco, which sonically is akin to the Amazon in Full Flood, a sense of limitless but fluid power which underpins everything played through it, so that the most delicate bits of information emerge unscathed in all their elegance, while backed by the full force of sudden dynamic explosions, the classic Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove.

Well, anyway, that's enough of these ruminations for now, don't depair Garrard and other Mighty Idler users, these easily outclass megabuck belt-drives and provide that incredible idler excitement and POWER, and after all, Lencos can still be had cheap!! Vive la Idler, Vive la Lenco!!

Hi Lew, no I haven't heard a Shindo platter on a Giant Garrard, but I have access to a good machinist who should be able to replicate the Garrard platter with some modifications (heavier metal, larger diameter, etc.) and perform the experiment myself. In fact, this opens up a whole new world of possibilities, as the Sony 2250's main weakness is also its light platter (but with DDs one cannot increase the mass much as it will interfere with the rotation, which is closely calculated...but the Sony platter has other design features which could use improvement). I'll be visiting him soon to see what can be done.

Problem with the Garrard and the whole issue of torque vs inertia, is that it takes a much greater increase in mass, I believe, to compensate for an increase in torque (say three-to-one) and so eliminate the motor's contribution/contamination of the sound. Of course I haven't performed the calculations, which in anycase I wouldn't know how to do, but I am suddenly looking forward to the experiment!! But, Hxt1 has a point: why go to the trouble when you can buy a Lenco :-)?? Anyway, I'll look into it.

On The Budget Discovery Front, I've been experimenting with various budget SET tube amps in an effort to reinsert my fave Klipsch Heresy MKIs (so extremely detailed, a fact which, to my puzzlement, is not reported) into my sound-room, they sounding much too bright and bass-shy using my usual Sony electronics (which, however, with every other speaker sounds tubier than even tubes, go figure). Though a pair of cheapie Radii SETs did indeed swing and were incredible fun, reminiscent in this way of the legendary budget ASL Wave 8 monoblocks - they did not produce any bass to speak of, unlike the astonishing Wave 8s, which in fact produced only half the output of the SET Radii (but twice the fun)!! Then I tried a budget Consonance SET, the stereo Cyber-10, which though rated for the same power (roughly 13 watts) sounded much more powerful and with deeper bass. But the bass was indistinct and lacked impact, when my Spidey-sense began to tingle.

Long ago I had reported on just how surprisingly good the little and much-maligned Dynaco ST-120 sounded (possibly the first solid state amp put on the market), once restored and adjusted by a competent technician. Now the Dynacos are maligned partly because they were sold as kits as well as factory-made, and the kit-built ones often had problems (sloppily built, tending to blow up), which would be assumed by the next buyer, to become part of the ST-120 reputation. The other part of the euqation is that due to their design, they are very speaker sensitive. Now I've found that many of these early solid state designs sound in fact very tubey (like the vintage Sony and Marantz, for instance), which makes sense as back in that day tubes were the reference/context, and the circuit designs started from tube circuit designs. Anyway, I thought to myself, what if the Dynaco - which so far sounded a bit too analytical for my taste so far with other speakewrs (but surprisingly delicate and resolving, making them still a steal at the resale price, itself predicated on their bad reputation...but remember, when I started the Hope Despot thread the Lencos were also considered the Worst Turntable in the World, just the the ST-120 is considered The Worst Amplifier iun the World) - works with the Klipsch?? I hooked it up and was greeted by Ultra Musical slam, bass and detail!! WHAT fun, NOW I have my new Reference system, which is the rebuilt Dynaco ST-120/Klipsch Heresy speakers, which has headroom in spades (the Dynaco weakness, except with the ultra sensitive Klipsches and their like), deep tight bass, and rocks so as to make dancing an Imperative, without a hint of brightness or that analytical sound!! Haven't boogied around the house like that in ages!! Of course, both the Dynaco ST-120 and the Heresies can be had for a song (so to speak), and so this represents an incredible example of the High End on a budget. Plus, being Klipsches, live recordings now sound MUCH more live than they did before!!

In my search for the perfect balance in my sound room during these comparisons as well, I removed the JMW/Decca combo and inseerted instead the MAS 282/Grado Woody combo, and was greeted with that familiar irresistable musicality, PRaT (superior to the Decca in this sense) and a sense of musical excitement I haven't heard in ages (as opposed to audio/hi-fi excitement), reminding me of why I have often written that the Grados are, overall, my favourite cartridges. It is also responsible for my dance routine this morning!! Now the Grados are not the equal of the Decca in terms of transient speed and slam, or resolution (the Deccas are EXTREMELY resolving), BUT, somehow, as one adjusts to the new context, the Grado begins to pull the listener in more completely, and to better communicate the sense of building musical excitemenmt, and it is definitely - given the right tonearm - superior to almost anythiung else in terms of timing (excepting the venerable Shure V15 VxMR). In addition, it is not aggressive but is extremely lively and dynamic (again, given the right tonearm), and is still champ when it comes to retrieving resonances (wooden instruments), to communicating the human voice (with all its natural dynamics) and to retrieving imaging information and air/venue (like live recordings which echo in their cavernous live spaces convincingly).

Now, I have to send my Sony 2000F preamp in to be adjusted and cleaned up, so in the meantime it'll be back to the Pioneer C-91, which along with the Wave 8s once was the heart of one of the most musically-satisfying and exciting systems I have ever had (with the Sound Dynamic RTS-5 speakers). I hope it works out tin the meantime: the Pinoeer has THE quietest MC phono stage possibly ever built, one can turn the volume all the way up with nary a hiss or crackle making its way in, sounding as if there was no power whatsoever.

So, have fun all, and I'll continue to report on my various experiments out in the Arctic Country (snowstorms keep me in, giving me time to kill ;-)!! Remember, at the heart of all this slam, power, musical excitment and boogeying is an idler-wheel drive :-).

Hi Harvey, I'll give it a go and report on it, looks like the snowstorms are coming to an end and Spring is about to make an appearance!!

Mosin, we'll keep an eye out for further idler developments. One fellow (hi Stephen) e-mailed me a suggestion: a peripheral ring-clamp for the Garrard a la VPI and as suggested originally on a certain vintage 'table website (can't remember the link now out in the Isolated Country, the one with pages for the SP10 MKII, Thorenses and so on). Anyway, I'll see what can be done once I've made the measurements and consulted with a machinist. Though the Garrard has more torque than the Lenco, it's not a huge difference, having perhaps 20% more torque, so extra mass might amount to only an extra 4 pounds or so to even out the result and make it approach/match and perhaps surpass the Lenco results. The MASSIVE Garrard bearing can certainly take the extra weight, just make sure that the 'table remains level so as not to wear the bushings out on one side. Of course, if a ring-clamp, it can't foul the Garrard controls, measurements must be closely calculated.

On this subject, I cannot emphasize enough just how important Direct Coupling to a high mass is!! I point again to the beating the Sony 2250 served up to the Technics SP-10 MKII in identical plinths (i.e. size and make-up of burch-ply/MDF), despite the Sony's significantly inferior torque. The Sony can be Direct Coupled, the Technics cannot. And the difference between Direct Coupling to a 60-pound plinth and Direct Coupling to a 30-pound plinth is MUCH moroe than a simple doubling of sound quality, the Lenco crossing over into a whole new and unbelievable league.

On this point of Direct Coupling and mass vs inertia, AND quartz-locking, I also cannot believe just how musical the quartz-locked Technics SP-25 is when Direct Coupled to a high-mass CLD plinth. So this makes me wonder: why is the Technics SP-10 MKII so [relatively] unmusical (and inferior in every audiophile sense) to the Sony 2250, and the SP-25, also quartz-locked, ends up being so musical? Given the latest Garrard vs Lenco experiments/experiences, I point to the issue of torque vs inertia. Not only can the SP-10 MKII not be Direct Coupled, it also has MUCH more torque than the Sony 2250. But then the SP-25, which is also quartz-locked, CAN sound musical. So quartz-locking is not inherently a-musical, as I previously thought. What is happening is that the SP-10 MKII's drive system is, like the Garrard's, SO powerful it is imposing its sound on the music, resulting in the quartz-locking being audible (not a pretty picture). Given more inertia (a more massive platter, with mass concentrated on the rim) and Direct Coupling (which absorbs/eliminates noise AND further immobilizes the 'table), the SP-10 MKII should preserve its advantages (all that torque/control and superb build quality) and achieve a high level of [relative] musicality. As to Relative Musicality, a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco has to be heard to be believed, and to understand just how musically-powerful vinyl can be, I believing the Lenco is currently at the top of this heap as well.

Further on this point, the previous owner of the Shindo Garrard is also the owner of a second-from top-of-the-line Maplenoll with massive platter (40-pound graphite/lead platter) and Corian body (his current 'table), and like me years ago when I first heard the humble Garrard SP-25, understood within three minutes just how superior the Lenco was (in my case, I understood, given just how humble the SP-25, that the idler-wheel principle was superior). The Lenco has its powerful 1800-rpm motor and an eight-pound platter. While the Lenco's motor is not as powerful as the Garrard's, not too much can be made of this as the Lenco's motor is still very powerful, spinning at 1800 RPM and weighing in at roughly 4 pounds, and once actually having lifted an 80-pound Lenco off one foot when I accidentally engaged it at 78 rpm from stopped!

Anyway, I'll have to get my hands on an SP-10 once again and see if, after all, something can be done to Direct Couple it, and see about a ring-clamp or substitue heavy platter.

Finally, on the Budget Reference System Front, I cannot believe the results I am currently getting from my current system, which was assembled on a hunch: of course the Ultra Lenco (even larger than usual), followed by the MAS 282 tonearm matched to my Grado Woody (they ALL have the same basic character of super-exciting dynamics, irresistable musicality, retrieval of air and resonances which allows accurate identification of acoustic instruments, wonderful vocals, powerful bass, and so on) and the Sonus/Mayware/Satin M-117HZ, then via the Sony 2000F preamp to the Dynaco ST-120 (!!!) and out via the Klipsch Heresy speakers. We're back in the Kundalini Effect days, and here I now stay, afraid of messing with this latest recipe to achieve the Kundalini Effect. Come to think of it, the last time I had this effect/sound, I also used the MAS 282/Grado combination. The MAS seems to be the secret ingredient in achieving Full Grado Potential, but I'll do further experiments and see if there are alternatives. I also managed it with a Denon DL-103 on various tonearms, particularly the SME V. Anyway, I cannot believe just how wonderful the little Dynaco - available usually for $200 - is via the Klipches (running somewhere arornd $400 usually)!! The magic is stupendous, the SLAM limitless, the delicacy endlessly inviting, and informationally superb, if not state of the art (perhaps the Sonus/Satin will give me this, I'll check it out). A Super Budget System for peanuts!!

On the subject of the Denon DL-103, I was shocked, in a high-resolution system (tubes/Quad ESL63s), at just how vastly superior the Denon DL-103"E" (elliptical tip, new aluminum cantilever) from phonophono in Berlin was to the regular '103, in the bass as well as in terms of detail/clarity, which was in an utterly diferent league. And the Denon magic was completely there to boot. Highly recommended, send your 103s to phonophono for retipping!!

Anyway, have fun all, winter's almost over!!

To join in on the discussion of alternate drive systems, I want to remind everyone that I have never written that one cannot obtain good results from a belt-drive, just that they are inherently inferior to the other two drive systems (once the bugs have been worked out), and that from an engineering point of view - that is engineering TO A PRICE, as engineering is meant to be - belt-drive is a failure as it requires a much larger investment to achieve idler-standards (assuming they can be achieved) than a sonically equivalent idler-wheel drive. I've often been on record praising the AR 'tables, Roksans, and such-like. For producing decent 'tables on a budget, the old platter/bearing, motor/elastic band solution can't be beat, nor profits, which is why they dominate/d (coming soon to a theater near you ;-)).

In this vein, I just picked up an irresistable belt-drive: a very rare "Unity 1 Rotary PLatofrm", which is as impressive as it sounds. It sports a solid brass platter, with most of the mass concentrated on the rim, which weighs in at 15 pounds! Worth its weight in gold. It is fixed to a truly superb main bearing, made of a sort of steel of extreme hardness, as neither it nor the bushings show any sign of wear whatsoever. Something is laser-imprinted into the metal of the shaft. Other than that, it is a classic belt-drive with a motor and belt. Story is it was manufactured in the '80s, was too expensive to manufacture (brass alone worth its weight in gold) and so carried a higher price-tag than people were willing to swallow, and the fellow went bankrupt. But, some day when I'm done with other experiments, I'll rebuild it into a plinth, polish up that brass, have an acrylic mat made, and set it up with a tonearm. It'll be fun, and hopefully musical!

There are all sorts of problems with slate - marriage of surfaces - Lenco-to-slate (regardless of the CLD nature of slate, it is still stone and so hard, which means metal slapping against stone as no surface is perfect) and slate-to-plinth - the inability to Direct Couple, not to mention the long list of perils listed by Mosin and so on - but I'll give it a go when I have time (still working on Reinderspeter's top-plate). The traditional recipe, i.e. wood, still represents the best real-world solution, and though this requires quite a large platform, the Direct Coupling absorbs the noise away from the 'table AND the vinyl (magically ;-)) to excavate the mighty Lenco/Idler and DD and even belt-drive potential. One gets used to the size: way back when I built the Canadian Rustic I thought it was huge (now seems quite puny), then came the Giant Lenco which now in the context of an even larger plinth (and certain humongous belt-drives) looks just reasonable, and now I have the Ultra Lenco which now seems just normal. Of course, carrying it is a bitch, but I wouldn't want to sling a Walker into my car either!!

I hooked up a pristine H-K Citation Twelve Deluxe (powerful vintage dual-mono SS amplifier) to my Yamaha NS-690s, hooked THAT up to my Ultra Lenco/restored main bearing, fired up Nine Inch Nails "Pretty Hate Machine" and thought I was being hit by an earthquake (I rushed to the volume control) the house shook so hard!! The dog ran for cover. Astonishing how much powerful and DEEP bass (like fleets of submarines sailing at depth among depth charges in my living room) the Lenco can force smaller speakers (the Yamahas are average-sized 3-way stand-mounters) to produce!! Meanwhile, all the itty-bitty details continue to remain clear above it all.

Anyway, have fun all, more to report soon-ish!

Well, joining in on this Slate-o-Fest, I'm arranging to have a slab cut so I can test it (thanks Harvey), and we'll see if there is "no contest". Already, the simple baltic birch-ply/MDF recipe has beaten the fabled Shindo plinth (at least in terms of drawing away and killing off resonances/noise acording to the Shindo owner, no direct comparison on other sonic grounds yet) which everyone was hot to imitate back in the early days of the thread; and beaten, and by a fair margin, the EMT 'tables which were only spoken of in hushed whispers by Garrard fans who treated Lencos with extreme condescension (as I also found out at phonophono in Berlin when I was there, "the Lenco is not a serious 'table"). The upshot is, that in order to help catch up to the Lenco Direct Coupled to a birch-ply/MDF recipe, it is now becoming practice to couple the EMTs to a high-mass plinth Lenco (an admission that the Giant Direct Coupled Lenco was in fact superior to an EMT as it is being used)! For those who haven't seen or handled an EMT, they really do make both the Lencos AND the Garrards look like cheap toys. But sonics is another matter.

The sound of a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco is truly astonishing, and we haven't even begun to measure its true standing/ranking, as it is very difficult to get the owner of a $50K belt-drive (or $20K DD) to agree to a comparison. There are ways to do this, but it is taking a lot of time, I'm working on it ;-). Then there are relatively cheap ways to greatly improve the Lenco which does not require herculean efforts: intense treatment of the main bearing (VERY effective), installing new bushings in the main bearing (tricky but VERY effective), platforms (essential, I favour acrylic over stone which makes a HUGE difference), footers, and so on. Addressing the use of acrylic, it is as effective, if not more so, to place it under the Lenco as in it, as it isolates in platform form (when bonded to stone) the Lenco and actually focuses up its sound/performance across the spectrum. The combinations and permuations possible in plinth-building are literally infinite, and it is easy to make the error that because something is "effective", it is the best solution. For instance, back in the day of Jeff Day's write-up of a Garrard bolted to a low-mass complex plinth, I wrote that the Garrard would sound good when bolted to a pile of dogshit, not because the dog-shit was superior or effective, but because the Garrard was inherently an incredible-sounding machine. Low expectations (especially on the part of an audiophile steeped in the belt-drive dogma) leads to incorrect conclusion (that low-mas/complex is the way to go). It suddenly became de rigueur for everyone to rush out and build complex low-mas plinths in imitation of the 6moons plinth, and the philosophy was changing around the world as well as vinyl audiophiles the world over began to turn their backs on high mass as a philosophy, reviving that old "mass stores energy to kill musicality" canard. I had to fight battles on forums around the world (in order that idler-wheel drives be heard in all their glory and not hamstrung, which would lead to incorrect conclusions) in order to get them to reconsider, have a second look, and make comparisons (and indeed now the high-mass CLD plinth dominates). Context (experience and comparisons) is necessary for judgments to be meaningful. Then there is the phenomenon of the "new", making the latest new recipe (plinths)/product (SETs)/philosophy (low power/high efficiency) the end-all and be-all until the dust settles and everyone begins to hear what is actually going on.

There is also a desire on the part of many people, not only audiophiles (but nevertheless many audiophiles), to favour the extremely difficult, complex and/or expensive process/product simply bcause it is difficult, complex and/or expensive. This does not mean necessarily superior (as the Shindo owner - another extremely time-consuming and complicated product even if wood - attests).

The issue is not whether or not slate has internal resonances, but whether or not slate can draw away and kill noise from the 'table as effectively as a wooden plinth, and even if so, without recourse to extremely expensive/time-consuming procedures. Slate may have no internal resonances (I'll find out), but it is the metal of the top-plate - regular or Reinderspeter - vibrating against the slate, a hard surface - which will cause noise/resonances in the metal itself, without being drawn away, to cause problems. There are no perfect surfaces. Imagine metal hitting wood: you get a dull thud. Imagine metal hitting stone: it sets up a high-frequency ringing. Which is why I referred earlier to the ceramic ball phenomenon: an extremely hard material (harder than metal), which seemed like a good idea, but which in the end fabricated the illusion of increased detail rather than its reality (the metal-to-ceramic created a disparate-material barrier which filtered out the bass frequencies in order to unnaturally highlight midrange and high frequencies). Such a ringing from metal slapping stone would imitate this phenomenon as well. I can see, on the other hand, that stone/slate is much heavier and less flexible than wood, so we'll see anyway what happens when I receive the slate.

Finally, is slate truly more effective than other types of stone - like marble or soapstone for instance - or is this simply another mythology arising, like that created by Origin Live for the RB-250 (marketing their product, which worked), created by Shindo for their fabled plinth (marketing their product, which is at least half the price, which worked), created by Garrarders concerning the grease-bearing (I and many others prefer the oil-bearing of the 401, yet grease-bearing Garrards continue to command the highest prices), and so on. It would be instructive to have a similar marble plinth built and see what happens. Marble does itself have certain interesting structural properties, and even more limestone, and sandstone, and so on. Soapstone is soft and easily worked, and has been used to build speaker cabinets by a company up in Scandinavia. Before the rise of the slate plinth, there was a granite plinth marketted in England (again) for the Garrard, which was highly-regarded.

But are any of these stone alternatives superior to Direct Coupling to a high-mass CLD wooden plinth? In order to find out, I'm having a slab cut large and thick enough to test out on its own without coupling to a plinth, but thin enough to afterwards be coupled to a wooden plinth. I'll mount my handy-dandy RS-A1 tonearm so I can swap back and forth instantly to get an accurate idea of what's going on. As always, you can depend on me to report honestly, if slate is as incredible as everyone makes it out to be, then I'll incorporate it in future plinths.

Getting to Reinderspeter's top-plate, this does indeed address one of the Lenco's main weaknesses, that [relatively] flimsy pressed top-plate: the thick and strong steel will be harder to move, will not flex nearly as much, and couples VERY effectively to a wooden (or stone) plinth. Traditionally, simply stacking up audiophile ideas (such as adding Reinderspeter's top-plate to slate) leads to sonic disaster, systems have to be balanced. But, it will be easy to simply marry a Reinderspeter top-plate to the slate slab I am having made. Of course, this all takes time, so be patient!!

Getting back to other issues, hi Mariusz, don't worry, I'm not accusing you of promoting belt-drives, my adding a belt-drive project to my long list of projects reflects my support of all turntable designs, which is why I am investigating, for instance, the issue of quartz-locking versus servo-controlled DDs, and the issue of torque (a bare minimum is necessary) versus inertia (improtant to have enough inertia to overcome the motor's sonic signature/imperfections). The Rotary Platform is truly a beauty, with a solid brass platter which is i 1/2" thick at the rim, and some 3/16" thick!! Feels like much more than 15 pounds, in the same way the Lenco's 8-9 pound platter feels like much more than that. I'm actually looking forward to hearing it once done, I LOVED my Maplenoll turntable back in the day, which amongst belt-drives was King for SLAM, bass and PRaT (which is why Walker took it as his basic platform for the pricey Walker turntables). Until I tripped over the litle Garrard SP-25 in a Helsinki fleamarket, that is. I'll be coupling it to a high-mass plinth, as always, haven't heard a 'table yet which didn't benefit from this. The Technics SP-10 MKII mythology, for instance, already in the long-ago said that a minimum 60-pound plinth was necessary to extract performance from it.

I've recently gone back to the RS-A1/Denon DL-103"E", that is a Denon redone by phonophono in Berlin, and Boy is this the most perfect match, still, that I have found for it, though there are strengths in some other matches. The phonophono '103 has MUCH better bass, detail, and high frequencies than the conical-tipped one, and is less bright to boot!!

Anyway, have fun with your repsective projects all, getting close to realizing the Reinderspeter Project, and working on getting that slate slab done!! In the meatime, my "regular" Giant Direct Coupled Lenco continue amaze and delight!! LOVE the Trumpets of Leipzig LP (Baroque) I picked up for 25 cents recently!!

Thanks for the positive vibes, those who are positive, and thanks again to Mario for, first of all bringing back Da Thread (as it was known back in the days when it was the longest in audio history), and secondly for trying to keep Da Spirit alive!!

Now I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to battles and some people find this offensive, and many find this offensive for the precise reason I do it: it works. They would rather I carry on quietly in relative obscurity and leave their various prejudices and illusions alone, a common human desire: the world is stable, everything can be counted on to have been done right, let's leave it to the experts. Unfortunately the experts are often wrong, because they do not themselves investigate the assumptions on which their conclusions and context rest. So with the idler-wheel drive system (considered bad), so with the belt-drive system (considered good). When I started the original thread, the experts started from an assumption that the belt-drive system was inherently superior (and most designers still start from this as a fundamental and unquestionable assumption), and from this platform came up with various answers to various problems. Now we have reached a point where $100K belt-drives are increasingly common (along with billionaires).

The very posting of the original - and this - thread was and is a declaration of war of sorts, since its purpose is to challenge the Status Quo, and to stimulate debate, in the Public Eye, as well as having fun and experimenting, and the resulting discussions. Many would like to see this thread disappear (and indeed it did at one point, but Mario wouldn't let it be ;-)), and the participants, likely especially me ;-), relegate themselves to quiet obscurity on dedicated forums.

In the original thread, when the first offspring, Lenco Heaven, and later with its spin-off Lenco Lovers, sprang, I warned participants that if everyone amscrayed willy-nilly to that thread, then the belt-drivers will have won, as the whole Lenco/Idler phenomenon, now safely out of the public eye, would become nothing more than an interesting eccentricity/hobby to most, like AR 'table fans, or Thorens fans (both being belt-drive designs as well and so "safe" and harmless). If now there truly is an idler-wheel and indeed drive system revolution (DD as well is now being taken seriously once again) going on in audio, with its attendant serioius discussion of PRaT and musicality, it's because of threads in general public forums liike Audiogon and Vinyl Asylum. In turn these public forums are the prime recruiting ground for the specialized websites such as Lenco Lovers and other audio discusion websites. Would Teres and VPI curently be marketing forms of the idler-wheel drive if this thread and others weren't out there challenging the Status Quo in the Public Eye, where it counts? Not likely, as I don't see respected belt-drive designers signing up for Lenco Lovers without the public exposure/grass-roots movement afforded by Audiogon and Vinyl Asylum and others.

It may be taxing to have to get involved in dust-ups in public forums, but it's also exciting and rewarding! All those who have participated on both the original and current thread and other similar threads in other general-exposure forums, pat yourselves on the back, the industry is changing, and the Idler Movement irresistably gaining ground! Ahhhh, doesn't it feel grand to affect audio history? Of course, the specialized forums also have their place and influence, and participants there quietly in the background get friends and relatives involved, and there's a big cycling of influences which makes itself felt, as some of thsoe participants go on to post and add their weight in the more public/generalized forums. What I'm saying is that public/general forums like these are the Engine of Change. I thank all those who dared listen to me in the beginning and report in their various - universally positive - experiences, the whole reason Lenco today just won't go away :-).

Now getting to those who have repeatedly tried to jam a stick in the wheels of the JN/Lenco/Idler phenomenon (I'm not saying Major Phenomenon, just a phenomenon) have done so not out of objective and logical reasoning and experience, but out of a desire for recognition, and, it needs to be said, envy at my success in achieving a measure of recognition, which has so far escaped them. When I started my activities, I did so out of a desire to expose an injustice - the death of the idler-wheel drive system as a serious drive system - and a desire to positively affect the development of analogue history. I had no desire for "fame" (such as it is), and was frankly surprised that my second attempt to get this particular Idler-Wheel rolling succeeded. The first clumsy and unsophisticated attempt was a resounding flop - FLOP! - and so I devised a sneaky way by advertising (not bogus however) high-end 'tables cheap. I remember chuckling as I posted the outrageous title, tweaking the noses of the Status-oriented audiophiles. However, the appeal of the advertised intent - building true high-end 'tables cheap - worked, and I eventually admitted that it was a ploy to get the idler-wheel drive system taken seriously via the cheap but excellent Lenco 'tables.

Which is to say, this is all an accident of history, no one else stepped forward to make the PUBLIC point to say A) the Lenco was not the worst tunrtable in the world but in fact one of the best (now it turns out possibly the best, currently) and B) the idler-wheel drive system had been and was the superior drive system for vinyl playback, and the belt-drive the worst. That, my friends, is thinking out of the box, if we're to talk about that. Now, I may eventually be proven wrong on these points (but it certainly looks like I'm being vindicated), but given their outrageousness at the time, and the success of my appeal to the grass roots/DIY movement, I've achieved a measure of recognition. Get over it, it was never my intention to offend (and it was inevitable that some would be offended given the inherent controversiality of the subject, that the experts had been wrong for 40 years) either those who disagreed or those who sought recognition. My only aim all along, and still, is to positively affect the audio industry/audio experience and bring truth/justice (as I see it anyway: the idler-wheel drive systym is incredible) to light.

Those who've followed my writings over the years know that I don't offend people personally on a whim, I do it inadvertently, or in response to attacks posted here or elsewhere (in other forums). Often those who attack me are outraged that I defend myself or respond in kind, to these types this is the ultimate inexcusable act, and it earns their undying enmity (we are supposed to simply take our lumps). Often, I see those whose agenda is simply to try to hurt me by either personal attacks, or by attacking my conclusions or reputation. And so they try to restrict my activities to just the Lenco (which I have always made clear was simply a way of bringing the idler-wheel system to the fore), and tell everyone all I did was to discover the Lenco, nothing else. They try to hijack the thread in various ways and claim what isn't theirs to claim. They report falsely on their results (or are simply incapable of reaching the same results I do), for instance one fellow who goes on record to say that the Nottingham Hyperspace is the equal of the Lenco (thus undermining my claim for Idler Superiority and limiting the Lenco's appeal to potential newbies), while a Lenco I sent out quite simply outperforms the Hyperspace in every area, and higher models too. Another writes and tells everyone generally that the Lenco motor is mediocre at best, and needs to be replaced, thus undermining the Lenco's appeal to newbies, and damaging the Lenco reputation generally (thus seeking to unermine me personally and pull the rug out from under me), despite repeated posted results of Lencos outperforming everything thrown against thus far (so how bad can the Lenco motor - actually proven to be superb in actual comparisons - be?). These attempts negatively affect the positive momentum of the movement, and for no good reason, being purely destructive. I recognize these attempts, but rather than recognize their authors (I recognize their motives), I respond to the charges. I leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions, but often they simply don't see it.

I've gotten as much as I gave in starting my little Idler War, as participation in the debate thus started and rolling thanks to the participants, I was forced to step-by-step improve the design/maximize the Lenco potential, both in response to the critics and due to reported experiments. I was perfectly happy with my early smaller Lencos largely unmodified, but have now reached unbelievable sonic heights due to the stimulus by the other participants. Thank you all!

But I'm still at the root of it interested in the simple/elegant answers, and by Common Sense. Look at the fundamentals, use your heads. This means this: whatever the properties of slate, it is stone. Hit a metal plate with stone, and you have effectively created a bell. Now perhaps slate really does have properties that more than compensates for this simple fact, and I'll find out and report on it thanks to Harvey. The other aspect of this particular debate with respect common sense and slate: I am not going to begin to compare 150 different types of slate to find the one that does, indeed, perform as advertised, I believe that slate can be generalized by a decent example from anywhere in the world. Whatever the case, I leave it to someone else to find various examples and report on their findings (honest findings), I'll try the BC variety and rely on that for now. Given the incredible results of birch-ply/MDF, which is being cast aside unfairly (it has beaten what was considered unbeatable), there's no need for so much trouble.

As to birch-ply/MDF, in the early days of Da Thread I was on record saying that it didn't really matter what the plinth was made out of, as results should be similar. So my early plinths were made of various combinations, including MDF/Corian, birch-ply/pine-ply, birch-ply plasterboard/chipboard, and so on. But when I finally heard the birch-ply/MDF recipe which I had been recommending (on the grouns of simple mass/weight and strength), I really did hear something special and extra: more dynamics, deeper and more powerful bass, higher highs, and a more powerful musical presentation. I parked my ass there, there are ways to continually improve this simple buit extremely effective recipe (i.e. ensure there are no stresses, clamping techniques, design and construction. etc.).

Anyway, that's more than enough for now, thanks all for your continued support, and don't be shy, participate in this envigorating activity and watch and see what further Idler Developments and drive system developments/philosophies there may be!! Vive la Lenco, Vive la Idler-Wheel!!!

Hi Lew, I don't doubt that in some systems these devices, and even clamps, might work positively, given the incredible complexity of system ecologies (getting it right - musical magic as well as all the audiophile goodies - is like finding a needle in a haystack), as I wrote. I am just cautioning against unexamined assumptions: i.e. compare/test before assuming/accepting. Phase could very well be the saving difference of these devices, this is what Rega does to improve their motors, and it could well reduce motor vibrations. Next step, find a power conditioner that does phase so I can test this aspect out!! As to the clamp, why use it at all if it makes no difference, and you aren't using it to actually clamp? The Lenco spindle is slightly oversized, and achieves thusly what it normally takes a clamp to do, hold the record in place with no slippage. Another clever innovation by the brilliant Dr. Lenco, who was either the Leonardo Da Vinci of the record player world, or just incredibly lucky!

Speaking of synergies and ecologies, I am testing out a recent-but-vintage Dolan PM-1 preamplifier, famous about 15 years ago for it's phono stage (very adjustable, and on the front panel!). In my system as it stood it lost out in terms of detail and transparency to my vintage Sony 2000F, but it restored the bass of my Klipsches! I let it cook a couple of days, then I thought: what if I matched it up to my vintage Citation 12 Deluxe (dual mono) and the Yamaha NS-690s? Bingo-Presto Reference/monitor quality detail and separation, with bass and incredible imaging, AND musical!! It's fun to have an arsenal of amps, preamps and speakers to play mix 'n match and so make it easier to find working /combination ecologies!! Successful ecologies are more important than the quality of individual high-end items, which mismatched can lead to musically-disastrous results. But still, I am waiting for my fully-restored Leak (just spray-painted the new filter caps gold to match the chassis) to run my Klipsches. And I may have scored yet another vintage high-sensitivity speaker: a pair of Electro-Voice driver/speakers. It never ends! It sounds like I change systems like others change socks, but once I achieve that Ultimate System (and by this I don't mean the ultimate audiophile system but one which can achieve the Kundalini Effect of actual shivers and hair-raising, which I've achieved two or three times), my system stabilizes for months and sometimes years until I am forced to move (due to my Gypsy nature).

I'm currently testing out an electronic speed controller for the Lenco, courtesy of Sander who loaned me his. So far, at 33 rpm anyway, it has no negative effect on the Lenco's sound. But further testing ahead, both for 33 and for 45. Have fun all!

Hi Lew, I hope yout records haven't flown off into space since you removed the clamp/weight!! I have tried all sorts of electrical tricks with the Lenco motors so far over the years and have found no difference. I'll wait for a motor controller with phase adjustments, simply flipping the plug results in no difference to my ear. The Speed Controller I am playing with doesn't have these adjustents handy anyway, I'll propose it to Sander.

On the Lenco adventure front, I brought over my Demo Lenco (Giant Glass-Reinforced Direct Coupled standard L75) back to the fellow living in Montreal on a sunny "summer" day (22C and ah the beauty of the women and the food!!!), he of the 100-pound acrylic/lead/glass French belt-drive, and I thought I would have to fight him to get the Lenco out of there! He was grinning from ear to ear to hear Harry Belafonte Live at Carnegie Hall (one of the TAS must-have reference LPs), it is SO great to see a Music Lover (first) and audiophile (second), simply playing discs with musical presentation foremost in his mind (all the other LPs he played were just ordinary pressings, Deutsch Grammophone, CBS and so on). This is the fellow who was obssessing over the gestalt the Lenco achieved, and not the usual qualities of detail and slam (though he was delighted with these too). He's asked for one and wants to tool around Montreal showing it off to others in their systems, so the Idler Revolution is poised to sweep Montreal too!

I stopped by another audiophile's place who was curious (a Blue Circle/Monitor Audio system), and he found the Lenco to have vastly better bass, realism and even detail than his Audiomeca Mephisto CD player, and he has asked as well for a second helping, to be arranged in the future.

On my Personal Audio Journey, I have found THE Speakers of my Lifetime, in the form of a pair of antique-looking Electro-Voice speakers in relatively enormous cabinets (about half the size of a fridge, and with filigree wooden grills with arches looking like a Turkish bath-house or wooden cathedral). They are made up of a pair of alnico-magnetted 12" dual concentric drivers, augmented by a pair of roughly 18"-long horn-loaded Electro-Voice tweeters, with an Electro-Voice X-8 crossover, looking very impressive in a square power-transformer-sized potted case. WHAT sound, I have NEVER heard bass like this, not from subwoofers or from extremely high-end systems with woofer towers, I don't know how it is done! Of course, it is very high sensitivity, and it has those fab alnico magnets (reputedly anyway, will have to do more research). The PRESENCE was astounding, only being beaten with the actual instruments by the actual musicians could beat it, I have NEVER heard anything like it! The PRaT was Reference quality, the SLAM unbelievable, but the quality of the bass, the extreme detail, definition and speed, and the reach and POWER was simply unbelievable, in all these senses well above what I have ever heard, and by a HUGE margin. The midrange, highs, lows were all stunning, detail could have been better, in some ways more detailed than what I have heard (hearing some things I have never heard), in others less (not hearing some things clearly which were clearer in other systems), but I believe rewiring and careful reassembly will improve this aspect. All this played via a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco (this the secret of the bass, as only an idler can retrieve this sort of bass information and POWER) mounted with a Grado PLatinum on a MAS 282 tonearm, played via a Sony TAE-5450 preamp, and through budget ASL Wave 20 monoblocks, cheapies, still can't understand how that BASS emerged from this. All this shows that bass is not a tube weakness (relative to solid state), but instead that tubes require the proper speakers to show just how good their bass is (i.e. vintage and not modern designs)! The build quality of the Electro-Voice drivers has to be seen to be believed, the "legs" of the woofer basket are 1" cross-sectional castings! I'll take photos of the drivers and place them next to modern high-end drivers to show/reveal the concept of "Progress".

Of course, all these astounding sonic and musical qualities were there to be heard due to the presence of the source, the Mighty Lenco. Thinking about progress, I pondered the fact that this was a Fifties/Sixties high-end system: large Electro-Voice speakers (making the giant-screen TV in the room look suddenly much less large and cheapish/toyish) with tubes, and backed-up by an idler-wheel drive. The PRESENCE was SO FAR above what I have ever heard from ANY system it was laughable (not to mention that supernatural bass), we have given up a tremendous amount in the search for "information", i.e. controlled detail, digital-inspired "neutrality" which is in fact music stripped of music to end up being sound. Add to that the move to tiny slim cabinets with tiny woofers: speakers get smaller and smaller in the search for domestic harmony - unobtrusiveness - while TV screeens get larger and larger, showing that the search for domestic harmony has nothing to do with unobtrusiveness but instead simple arbitrary fashion, as the TVs are anything but unobtrusive these days! This vintage system (admittedly with the idler-problems stripped away and the Idler Potential realized, which it wasn't back in the day) was like being immersed in MASSIVE tidal waves of music, washing endlessly with endless power over the listeners. Almost too much, sensory overload!!! A guy could get addicted to this :-). WARNING, this could lead to the end of marriages and family life, exposure will have to be restricted and controlled.

Anyway, though I have found the speakers I want to marry ;-), I'm not out of the woods yet, as I haven't the sound-room needed to set them up, NO WAY they can be assimilated into apartment living (I'd be evicted after the first night of listening), and not where I currently am either. So it looks like I'll have to settle down, abandon my Gypsy ways (after my next trip ;-)) and buy a house (with a BIG soundroom)!

Anyway, working on that Lenco vs SME 30 showdown, I'll take this challenge seriously enough to take over the best I currently have, rather than my Bauhaus Lenco I'll bring my own Reference Ultra Lenco (almost too large and heavy to even consider carrying, but Mass is Class) with JMW or RS-A1 tonearm, and appropriate cartridge. In the meantime, have fun all, I'll be listening to those Electro-Voice speakers at my buddy's place later this week (where they currently reside), I can't wait!!! Have fun all!

Getting back to normal, I have some big upcoming news to share: the owner of a SME 30 has agreed to a Spin-Off against my Bauhaus Lenco (arranged by a friend who is currently borrowing it)!! Not threatened, he is only interested in sound quality and curious, and so it will happen in the near future. Watch this space.

I'm currently working on a Reinderspeter top-plate/CLD Giant plinth, and will report on THAT as soon as it's done too. Boy, lots of work ahead, and added to that the slate plinth. I'd better hire someone ;-).

I've recently scored a Leak Stereo 20 amplifier, considered the best Leak ever made and currently being restored, and I'll be matching it to, of course, my prized Klipsch Heresies MKIs (metal horns). Might even update the matching Leak Point One preamp, considered crap, but I've heard THAT before ;-). Also scored a pair of Coral Beta-8 full-range drivers, considered about the best vintage Japanese full-range drivers ever made. Beautiful drivers with cast baskets finished in pebbly coral paint and incredible chromed magnets, will be great to match these as well to my Leak. Will see what the full-range/high-sensitivity thing is all about. A very busy Spring/Summer ahead, and hopefully another voyage on the horizon as well, what I live for!!

Anyway, have fun all, keep reporting in your idler experiences!!

Thanks for that Rf, I can't wait to try out the finished Leak, which is being completely revamped. Bought a quartet of matched JJ tubes as well from an instrument store, MUCH cheaper than the same thing from a high-end audioshop! Feelin' good about this project. Won't have time to update the preamp, thanks for the warning anyway, but has anyone tried to replace all the parts with high-tolerance parts to see how far it can go? Seems a shame to waste such a cute all-tube product (WITH tube phono stage!!).

In the meantime, I have to say the Lenco/MAS/Grado Woody/Sony 2000F/Dynaco ST-120/Klispch Heresy set-up is still sounding magical, just something here - gestalt, beauty, PRaT, excitement - is sooooo RIGHT. Only weakness is the bass (not horrible, just not stellar), the Klipsch somehow just not melding on this point with the sound-room (they were gangbusters in this sense in my last sound-room). But the rest is so right I just don't care for now. Hopefully the Leak will make them dance in this sense.

Demonstrated a Giant Lenco to a fellow with a 100-pound belt-drive (something exotic from France, lots of lead and acrylic, and a platter made up of three stacked glass platters with some sort of damping material in-between), who pronouced himself smitten and fascinated by the Idler Sound, which STILL, despite the size/weight/impressiveness of his belt-drive, blew him away with the bass and richness of the sound. Wants to hear more some day, and given he lives in Montreal, a terrific city with fantastic food and sexy women, I'll oblige ;-).

Back to my MAS/Grado/Dynaco/Klipsch magic!! Have fun all, Vive la Lenco, Vive la Idler Wheel...and, FINALLY, Spring!!

The Idler Wheel Revolution continues to gain steam, new products being released at a steady pace! Consider the Teres rim-drive, and the VPI rim-drive, which as I understand it is actually a quasi-rim-drive like the Thorens TD-124, an idler driven by a belt. This gives only quasi-results, as the true idler force is mitigated by this over-caution approach (i.e. potential dynamics and transient response mitigated), originally (TD-124), and one assumes currently (VPI), due to the lingering perception that idler-wheel drives have inherent noise problems which obscures fine detail. No, these problems are part of the ongoing campaign against the Idler, both Direct Coupling to a high mass and careful restoration eliminates noise and exposes the true idler strengths in the areas of detail (stunning detail retrieval, and in an entirely matural presentation) and organization (the ability of the Idler Torque to keep the various musical strands easily separated, with the interrelationships clearly audible and magical).

Now Arthur Salvatore's website (news/upcoming section) features the following tasty tidbit, with at least a question mark next to the word "inherent", which means we are making some SERIOUS inroads against the usual anti-idler dogmas!: "Next, there may be a new turntable, coming out soon, with an advanced idler-drive system, that finally avoids the (inherent?) problems with these systems; mainly the higher sound-floor, which obscures subtle musical information. This could mean the best of both worlds (dynamic force combined with subtlety). The source of this turntable will prove surprising to many audiophiles. I'd spill the details now, but I'm sworn to secrecy, which should end soon."

Of course, all those who have actually tried a properly restored and set-up idler-wheel drive know that idlers excel in the retrieval of subtle information (micro-detail and imaging, etc.), and retrieve some - such as proper timing relationships, proper and full restoration of dynamics (incredible), and incredible transient response (ultra-fast, giving them ironically a more modern sound than belt-drives) - which seem to be beyond the abilities of belt-drives (at least those mere mortals can afford). The Uber Idlers advertised in Salavatore's website already exist: Lencos (which may after all be the best of them all due to the excellent torque/inertia balancing act); Garrards and EMTs, just to name three which can do all the amazing Idler tricks, and do it quietly, with the subtleties intact.

Thanks for the post Chad, I still have that Gray tonearm in my sights!! Just waiting for one to swim by ;-). And glad to hear that I scored such juicy drivers Harvey! Hope I find time to match the newly-restored Leak to newly-cabineted Corals! The Leak only has 12-15 watts per side, and delicate ones at that, this should suit the Corals just fine. In the meantime, it'll be the Klipsch Heresies.

I spoke with the Montreal fellow again very recently, and interestingly he focused not on detail, bass and SLAM (though he did comment on them), but is fascinated by the more subtle issue of gestalt/organic wholeness. Incredible that he fastened on this aspect of the Idler Experience (against a context of a 100-pound lead/acrylic/glass belt-drive). Of course, this aspect of information-retrieval indicates just how "right" the idler-wheel drive system is, and this particular aspect, which is a timing issue - along with the associated issues of transient response (keeping perfect speed in the face of the braking action of stylus force drag), dynamics (ditto) and bass (ditto) - is why I believe the idler-wheel drive system is the superior system for vinyl playback. These issues are where the musical POWER and MAGIC reside. The other audiophile obsessions - detail and imaging - are an inherent result of superior speed stability, along with the stabilizing and quieting effects of Direct Coupling to a high mass (black backgrounds), and simply add icing to the cake of the more important/visceral issues of SLAM, timing, gestalt, and so on.

Back later with some recent idler experiences, to wit the use of clamps!! Have fun all.

As this and the last thread are mostly about preconceptions/Dogmas, I have to relate my recent clamp adventures while visiting various soundrooms including various of my 'tables (Garrards, Lencos). My own experience/experiments with clamps (I have several, ranging from one in metacrylate through lighter ones to a solid lead one by Maplenoll) and Lencos were uniformly disastrous, as I had related back in the days of the original thread, and I had forever turned my back on this particular "improvement". Visting one, I saw the fellow using a clamp and asked him if it helped. To this I received the "news" that clamps more securely coupled the record to the platter/record player to achieve an improvement, as if I had never heard of a clamp (this the result of The Clamp Dogma, in which a person steeped in it, hearing me ask about it, must assume I had never heard of a clamp or I would know it HAD to be an improvement). He didn't answer my question about whether or not it was an improvement, and tired, I let it be.

The next fellow had an extremely high-end system, and hearing my Lenco (Dynavector 507 MKII/Dyna 17D MKIII) sounding so pedestrian (I was actually falling asleep in the listening chair), I said, fed up, "Let's do a before and after listening test!" He agreed, we played one track, and then played it again sans clamp. WHAT a difference, the Lenco POWER returned in all its Mightiness, with incredible dynamic spread (from softest to most SLAMMING) and bass (DEEP and powerful), the difference amounting to the difference between an eagle with pinned wings to an eagle soaring among the mountain peaks, the Lenco was now unfettered and ALIVE. The music became entrancing and irresistable with that familiar Amazon in Full Flood sense of limitless untapped fluid power in reserve, and the fellow was delighted and behaved as if he received a whole new high-end system! He had been listening to the Lenco (fettered) for weeks, due to his unexamined assumption (that clamps automatically improved the sound). I wonder how many fellows are listening to crippled 'tables (heavily or lightly modded without first hearing the Lenco "au naturel") due to unquestioning attitudes?

The experiment with the ceramic ball bearing shows just how sensitive the Lenco is to any "interference", the Lenco being evidently a SERIOUS case of the whole being MUCH greater than the sum of its parts. I now understand that this is due to a series of "accidents" which focuses in on a perfect balance of torque (a lot but not too much via its heavy 1800-RPM motor and delicate - as opposed to rim-drives - idler-wheel coupling) vs inertia (just right). In my experience as well, the Lenco seems immune to power conditioning - I've heard it in a few systems with some pretty exotic waveform regenerators - though usually not hampered (it just ignores them). Lenco advertising claimed a no more than 1% deviation from "perfect" for up to a 13% fluctuation in voltages!

In fact, being the sum of a variety of parts with astonishing results, the Mighty Lenco is the 'table the Supreme Being designed and listens to ;-), a happy accident of a variety of accidental parts which amounts to a near-supernatural end result, when properly restored and replinthed. I am now very curious to see what the Reinderspeerter top-plate brings to the party, as it leaves the Lenco parts untouched, and adresses the one "weakness" (the relatively flimsy top-plate, hleped along by glass reinforcement and Direct Coupling).

Now, systems being a case of various synergies and organic balanced ecologies (when successful), it is possible that clamps might help in some cases, and power conditioning in others, but I advise all to actually listen to the effect of any modifications before making any assumptions, as the Lenco is itself a balanced ecology (and with no context, how does one know that one's modification hasn't in fact killed the goose that lays the Golden Egg of Audio Bliss, and end up with something sterile and thin?)! In designing your various "Super Lencos" as well as simple tweaks (like clamps), always compare to an "unfettered" Lenco (i.e. with minimal intrusive mods).

Anyway, have fun all, and never stop questioning!! Now, I'll get back to my latest successful venture in synergies! More audio adventures to relate in the near-future of course.

One of the biggest problems with the Lenco (this being relative, as membership in Lenco Lovers now hovers around 1000) is just how incredible-"y" good it is. I use the word "incredible" literally and accurately, as it describes the problems audiophiles and music-lovers have believing the reports of the Lenco Mightiness, which so far FAR outstrips every legendary belt-drive, Direct Drive and even Idler-Wheel Drive so far thrown against it, up to the $20K barrier, this being the ceiling it has hit so far in its quest for definition. By "definition" I mean as in an idea of just how good the Lenco really is, where it measures up. Best in the World? Good as a $30K turntable? Good as a $40K turntable?!? Good as a $100K turntable????!!???? Better than a $100K belt-drive (only belt-drives so far reaching these stratosperic price points)!!??!!??

Now audiophiles and music lovers have to bear something in mind, which I have always emphasized, and which has always represented a significant roadblock/wall in the Irresistable Lenco's Path: if the humble Lenco may be better than the best belt-drive in the world, it is NOT because claims for the Lenco are exaggerated, or a reflection of how literally unbelievably good this particular not-so-impressive 'table is, but instead that the drive system - which just happens to be the most evolved idler-wheel drive ever manufactured - is quite simply superior to the belt-drive system AS A SYSTEM, which in turn means the Lenco is inherently superior to belt-drives because it is not a belt-drive, but instead an idler-wheel drive. Which is where "inherent" comes in. Like pitting a car with round tires against a car with square tires: the round-tired car will win every time, even if in every other respect the square-tired car is its superior. To reiterate, it is not that the Lenco is so good, but that the drive system which the Lenco uses - Idler Wheel Drive - is so good. It's just that the Lenco is the most evolved idler-wheel drive ever manufactured, if not the best/most impressively-built (the EMTs make it look like crap). But, to caution against yet more undeserved conclusions, though the Garrards and EMTs (especially) make the Lencos look like relative crap, the Lenco design (vertical idler-wheel and relatively light platter) ensures that the main bearings remain practically pristine/untouched (no lateral push/friction, mimimal wear) ensuring decades of reliable use, the idler-wheels themselves practically NEVER show signs of wear (the metal ones in fact never in my experience), and the massive motors can be relied on as well for decades, or centuries (considering 40 years of use, another guaranteed forty years after reconditioning, we're not so far away from a century), of use. The platters of course do not wear out.

Well, finally, we will have a showdown between the Lenco and a $40K turntable, that being the SME 30. This means more than the $40K price tage suggests, as the SME 30, despite being less than half the price of some of its competitors, is considered by some The Best Turntable in the World. But, this SME 30 has been modified to accept the Graham Phantom tonearm. Now, if I were to mount a simple Rega RB-300 tonearm on a smaller Lenco, which well might outstrip even the SME 30 (I have a feeling that the EMT 930, outstripped by the 100-pound Ultra Lenco, would itself make mincemeat of the SME 30), then the usual problems with credibility would arise, and this would show as well a certain amount of disrespect, which while useful in the early days of Da Original Thread (there was nothing to lose and everything to gain as the idler-wheel system was Bottom of the Drive System Heap, and the Lenco was bottom of THAT heap, and so disrespect and outrageousness had great PR value), is no longer so useful or constructive now. So, I will consequently take this Showdown VERY seriously: I have bought a SME IV tonearm (used, of course ;-)) to mount on my best Lenco, the 100-pound Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Ultra Lenco. The fellow who owns the SME 30 is admirably in search of the simnple truth, he is simply curious and interested, and is not threatened in the least by this comparison. What a chance is given here, and to him we should all be eternally grateful!!

So, today I mount the SME IV to my Ultra Lenco, and I will play with the variety of cartridges I have to see which will be included in the demo. I may even buy a cartridge specially for the comparison. I'll also lift weights and train in preparation for carrying this monster around :-).

Speaking of lifting weights, it looks like my Leak Stereo 20 will be ready this week, which means schlepping the monstrous E-Vs back to my own listening room, I have no idea how I got those monsters into the basement of my buddy's place all alone (he has a broken leg, lucky him ;-), must have eaten my wheaties that day! Not looking forward to lugging them UP the stairs, MEDIC!! But O the Sound I look forward to! If the E-V sound SO incredible with budget tube stuff, how much better with the legendary Leak?!? I feel faint!

Good luck in finding/choosing a good vintage system Lew, I'm sure you'll be loving every minute of it!! And great to hear you having so much fun Mario, thanks as always for backing me up in my outrageous claims! I'll be opening up and dissecting my E-Vs to write accurately on the drivers and their standing, and may do some things to improve the crossover, wiring and cabinet too. Have fun all, and back later with more Lenco/Idler news!!

Super jumbo jet Lenco, what a hoot! I'm working on getting access to high-speed internet and a high-speed computer out here in the country, as soon as I've done this I'll once again be able to post photos, and I REALLY want to do this, if only to snicker at current high-end drivers sitting next to vintage high-end drivers ;-)!!

I've just set-up the SME IV to the 100-pound Super Jumbo Jet Lenco, and mounted my Monster Cable Sigma Genesis 2000 to that, and heard a significant darkening and dynamic flattening of the sound as compared with the same cartridge on both the stellar JMW 10.5 and the stellar RS Labs RS-A1. Now, as context, the Monster Cable kicked the ass of the Denon when set up on the RS-A1, jury's still out on the JMW, as it sounded great with both the Denon and the Monster (and the fab Ortofon Jubilee, which I mistakenly sold....I'll buy another one soon :-)). So, disappointed, I remembered my experience a while back with a SME V I had the opportunity to play with (thanks Bob!), which I wrote about at that time: I found there was a special synergy between the SME V and the humble Denon DL-103 (mine having an elliptical tip from phonophono in Berlin). I figured this would also apply to the nearly-identical SME IV, and mounting it, I found that the Denon now kicked the ass of the previously-superior Monster Cable, in every single audiophile area as well as in musical terms. There was more detail (on other tonearms the Monster was always significantly superior to the Denon in this sense), MUCH better, deeper and tighter bass (on the RS-A1 the reverse is true) and MUCH MUCH more musicality, PRaT, gestalt and overall dynamics! As I wrote back then on a completely different system, the Denon DL-103s, likely in all their iterations, are waiting for the SME IV/V to show just how good they REALLY are (and musically-speaking, vice-versa, the SME IV/V are wating for the Denons - AND idlers - to show just how POTENT they are!)), this match-up being one of those unbeatable synergies, like the air-bearing MG-1/Dynavector 17D MKIII, or the JMW/Decca combinations. For the better off, I say it makes sense to match up a $4K-$5K tonearm to a two hundred dollar cartridge (plus 80 euros for retipping), as this particular cartridge is in many ways one of the best, and on these tonearms even in audiophile terms becomes something much much more (as do the SMEs in question, actually)!! To the less well-heeled, I say the SME tonearms usually go for between $1400 and $1800 used, and with the Denon still comes to less than the price of a currently "reasonably-priced" high-end MC!! I was thinking of selling this tonearm after the Showdown, but now I think I'll keep it. The Ultra Lenco is a two-tonearm Lenco, and the second for now will be the RS-A1/Monster combination.

With the RS-A1 we have a similar story, but in reverse. In this case, the Monster LOMC usually sounds a bit dead and lifeless in comparison with Deccas and Denons, and the RS-A1 can sound too exhuberant. But, the Monster becomes extremely musical, and preserves its super-detail (a high-end MC with a micro-ridge stylus) to become a great combination, having amazing bass, great musicality/PRaT and amazing dynamics to boot! So, there will be a flexibility of options to go against the SME 30!! It's all unexpected synergies fellows, excepting for the universal and across-the-board improvements wrought in every system when a high-mass idler-wheel drive is inserted!! Have fun all!!

Well, at this end I've been bootin' it to get that Lenco vs SME 30 showdown set-up, which apparently happens this week. It'll be set up over a week and played before a line-up of various excited witnesses. So, to recap, it'll be the Mighty Lenco - excepting for proper restoration, and some tweaks, "Au Naturel", but Direct Coupled to a Giant Russian birch-ply/MDF plinth - with a variety of tonearm/cartridge combos, vs the SME 30 set up with a Graham Phantom/Benz LP combo. We'll also likely simply move the RS-A1/Monster Cable Sigma Genesis 2000 from one turntable to the other, as the RS-A1 makes this easy.

In other news, I finally received the rebuilt Leak Stereo Twenty, which turned out to be astonishingly detailed and fast. I've now got it set-up with the Mighty Electro-Voice three-way speakers of mine, which belong to the Patrician era. The combo, with my ultra-quiet Pioneer C-91 preamp, is incredibly dynamic, quiet and detailed, with amazing bass, PRaT and gestalt, even with only the "humble" replinthed Technics SP-25 in heavy plinth, with Sumiko FT-3 matched to a cheapie - and not very good - Supex MM!! I cannot wait to hear it with a Giant Lenco tonight, don't even know what to expect given the irresistable results I already have as-is! Holy Crap! I'm also installing a beer fridge, and will be inviting the interested to come and hear what vintage items (mixed in with some modern) can REALLY do! Being in a garage/workshop out in the country, there's no limit on SPLs too ;-).

Too bad what should have been great news is severely mitigated by petty politics, axe-grinding, and the need to create neurosis as to a certain Mighty record player ;-). Nevertheless, cause to celebrate the Ongoing Idler-Wheel Revolution, let's hear it: Vive la Lenco, Vive la Idler Wheel!!!

Hi Mike, "voltage divider" huh? We're already into problems ;-). Sorry, I pour most of my energies into understanding and playing with turntables, tonearms, cartridges and phono stages, though I have assembled some tube amp kits and done my share of simple mods (replacing caps and so on), and of course am endlessly playing with interesting speakers and amps....of, forget it, I'm into everything (but minimal attention spared for digital media).

Ah, the Conrad Johnson PV-7, THERE's the rub!! There's a BIG problem with semantics in audio discussions, due to the fact than many simply have not heard a truly musical, "magical" component (just as most haven't heard a truly capable CD player or a true high-end record player), and so confuse "accuracy"/information-retrieval with the concept of musicality. I would say most audiophiles fall into this category, and so are driven to endlessly seek that which they avoid so assiduously, in a never-ending cycle of buying and selling and upgrading: "coloured" components like the CJ PV-7. "Magic" in the sense of utterly compelling and seductive, like watching Anne Margret in her prime doing a slow strip-tease just for you!! Raise the hairs on your arms, give-you-the-shivers, keep you entranced rooted-to-the-spot magic!!

Anyway, the PV-7 goes WAY beyond and much deeper than being simply "euphonious" or "listenable" or "coloured", it makes everything sound good not because it is coloured (its bass - so far - is weaker than many other preamps, and its high somewhat rolled-off) but because it is doing something very well that very few components can do (excepting certain components like the ARC SP-8 and, the Spendor BC-1s, and of course, the Lenco ;-)). Meaning that its colourations are NOT connected to its magic, which is something that was done extremely right in the circuit. I've argued this point for years in various threads on this forum: pieces like the CJ PV-7, the Lenco, the Denon DL-103, varous MMs, should not be avoided due to perceived "colourations" (i.e. it sounds too musical and enjoyable therefore it MUST be coloured, thinking which rose to full force with the rise of digital media/computer approximations of music, the "scientific" approach favoured by dissectionists/vivisectionsists which is itself a GROSS colouration, as real, live music is anything but analytical), but instead closely examined to see why they sound so musical, and design it into the next piece to achieve true progress.

In a related vein, I have never, personally, had so many moments of intense musical experience, of actual shivers, hairs rising on the body, virtual hypnotism and long nights of "conducting", dancing, borderline or actual crying as I have since I discovered the idler-wheel principle and more specifically the Lencos. And many many Lenco-ers (and Garrard-ers and so on) report the same thing, meaning that it is not so subjective, but is due to an underlying objective reality. All CJ PV-7 experiences are via the phono stage of course ;-). I see various discussions STILL on various forums as to why the Lenco sounds so good and conquers most of those who hear it, or own it and favour it over large collections of various high-end and classic record players. The answer - as for the PV-7 - is simple: because it is doing something right. Meaning that, though its speed stability - as with belt-drives and direct drives - may not be perfect (nothing is in this world), its imperfections do not detract from the musical experience, while the speed imperfections of BDs and DDs ARE more intrusive, and so more destructive of the musical experience. But, unlike the PV-7, the Lenco has no weakness in audiophile terms: its retrieval of musical information/detail is astonishing, its frequency range is limitless, its dynamics unsurpassed, its bass deep and powerful and again limitless, the soundstage it produces is HUGE and cavernous, and this is all done with a high degree of refinement (none of the coarseness of other idler-wheel drives, though again this can be mitigated to a large degree by Direct Coupling and bearing upgrades).

Anyway, get yourself a PV-7 Mike and play, they're cheap'n cheerful, relatively common (unlike the much-rarer PV-8), and unbelievably good, in the sense of sheer enjoyment and magic. The CJ PV-8 is also incredible, and will also root me to the spot, but for different reasons: its sheer dynamics, combined with clarity and detail (more detailed than the EAR even with the better tube complement) and superb bass shows things in recordings (also due to the dynamics which help "reveal" the minutiae of recording and production) I have never heard or noticed before. For instance, the other night I played the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams are Made of This" LP, and though I've owned it since it came out and have owned various high-end turntables since that time, I have never heard it like this: every song was excellent (I previously only truly liked the title track), due not only to the music, but to how the Lenco/JMW/Clearuadio Concerto/PV-8 clearly showed how the recording/production was done, a integral part of any Eurythmics piece. It was exciting, superb, informative and MUSICAL all at once. Evidently this quality could be heard out on the street, as some sudents walking out in the street in front of my house stopped (the windows were open) and I could hear them say "Let's stop and listen to the party". They sat on the steps (giving out onto the sidewalk) through the two-hour "concert" while I worked on my soundroom. And the PV-8 handles low-output MCs with ease, the Concerto's .5 mv still too much for the PV-8 (via the sensitive Technics SB-4s) so that I still cannot raise the volume beyond 9 o'clock on the volume control. A bunch of 5751s instead of 12AX7s will tame this, AND increase resolution.

But, all that said, the PV-7 is STILL the PV-8's superior in the sense of that high degree of magic. So, I'm keeping them both :-), and will switch back and forth. Can you tell I'm a vintage CJ fan? Haven't heard the new stuff.

Anyway, let me know how the 5751 works out in your EAR Mike, thanks for the compliment on the Lencos, I really like that green and cream combination!! And have fun all, the new soundroom is REALLY an important part of the musical experience!!

Dung Beetle is back, proving my point, it'd be nice if my opponents were of higher quality. There a bug zapper available in this forum?

I got around to hooking up a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco into the ultra-slammin' Leak/Electro-Voice garage system and I was astounded to discover the system had TOO MUCH dynamics!! And I don't mean distortion, hardening or brightness, the usual hallmarks of overloading. The sound is smooth, with no hardening, no brightness, but still, the sound emerges with SUCH slam and speed it's just too much! I've never heard anything like it. The actual model of the E-Vs is still a mystery, but they share the same type of cabinet-work as is visible on the fabled - and MUCH larger - Patricians (with 30" woofers!!!!). The Lenco was set up with a re-wired Rega RB-300 and a plain vanilla Denon DL-103, and that running into the ultra-quiet Pioneer C-91, which has state of the art detail via the Leak/E-V system. So, I do believe this system will be an MM-only system, as MCs simply have too much speed. That was the vintage balance, which were used with either MMs or rich-sounding MCs (i.e. Ortofon SPUs) and rich-sounding tonearms. Or, alternatively, I may source a tubed preamp, or try out something more vintage, or perhaps SETs!! Anyway, next project: try to tone down those ear-slammin' dynamics.

So, this definitely demonstrates the effectiveness of the "humble" (but ultra-effective) Russian birch-ply/MDF recipe, as well as those older idler-wheel drive machines, which even in this VERY high-efficiency system, with their tendency to amplify noise such as tube roar, and with awesome deep bass (12" HEAVY woofer in a large box) has NO 'table related noise, as if it wasn't already well established literally around the world. The ultra-revealing Leak/E-V system is indeed a mighty testing tool, especially as concerns the relative dynamics of 'tables (the Technics had nowhere near the Lenco's SLAM and speed) and materials. The Lenco, in turn, when mounted with modern tonearms and cartridges, serves to beef up modern sound systems with their relatively limited dynamics and speed. Again, this vintage system shows just how modern-sounding vintage equipment (like idler-wheel drives) is, in the new digital-inspired paradigm shift towards speed and clarity. What goes around comes around!

Ah, and MORE developments in the Idler-Wheel Revolution, or the Continuing Adventures of the Myth of Progress: the latest recipient of the old "create a neurosis/unfair picture of the older technology/machine so as to promote your new product" award (I'll REALLY have to start up the assembly line!!), which lately went to Teres with their claim that idler-wheel drives had speed instabilities which their solution addressed, goes to Harry Weisfeld of VPI for promoting his new external rim-drive (same as the Teres in this sense): "With the rim drive, the Scoutmaster acquires a kind of "digital" (in the best sense of the term) clarity and control at the bottom of the frequency spectrum. Rim drives were, once, common in turntable designs at the beginning of the stereo era, and they were both noisy and not all that reliable - and they were, to boot, on the underside of the platter, not, as in this case, an external drive. The Rim Drive is, for the Scoutmaster series, a major advance."

A victory for the Idler War nevertheless, as all such news is!! But, I wish they didn't feel the need to revive and promote the old Dogmas I worked so hard to slay in the original thread in order to, ironically and in the first place, promote the idler-wheel drives they are now promoting due to my slaying of the Dogma!!! Oh the HUMANITY!!

So, to be clear, I have made HUGE claims for the rebuilt Lencos (which, being cheaper, served as the needed Ambassador to my claims for the superiority of the idler-wheel drive system, which was then dismissed as "not serious" and passé by the modern press/consumers) Garrards, and other vintage idler-wheel drives, and having done such, have put my name on the line with each one I sent out to make my point and each one which is built by readers/partcipants themselves. And the result?? A "sudden" return of the idler-wheel drive by current manufacturers, a multiplication of reviews of vintage idler-wheel drives (and quasi idler-wheel drives, as Art Dudley's report on his now-darling Thorens TD-124 attests in the latest Stereophile: he's finally turned his back on his dear Linn LP12!!!!), the increasing domination of idler-wheel drives of vinyl forums, and the rise of dedicated Lenco forums. It doesn't take a genius to see that these old machines are POTENT, can be integrated into modern full-range system with NO noise penalties and with a minimum of tweaking (apart from replinthing and restoration with better lubricants), with the astonishing revelation that these old machines have state of the art detail, imaging, dynamics and BASS.

Not that the return of the idler-wheel drive to the market isn't good news, it is, after all, what I was after all along: for the benefit of audiophiles around the world, a BIG increase in the more fundamental musical aspects of PRaT, gestalt, and excitement (with, however, a coomnsurate increase in detail, organization and imaging). It would be nice, however, if due respect and, yes, gratitude, were paid to the older machines. Let us bow our heads and acknowledge the miracle of the development of the idler, which was developed specifically to deal with the issue of Stylus Force Drag, which was SERIOUS back then with cartridges tracking at 10 grams!! But, this, it turns out, was the right approach to the biggest problem in vinyl playback all along, the braking action of the stylus in the modulated grooves, the greater the modulations (big dynamic swings, bass, complexity of large ensembles), the greater the braking action, and the effects on speed stability (belt-drives losing power exactly when the biggest modulations occur).

Anyway, Vive la Lenco (An Instrument in the Return of the Idler), Vive la Idler-Wheel!!!

Ah Dung Beetle, you know, I used to fight like a demon on all sorts of forums, like you, the difference being that I fought for a cause, the Idler Wheel Revolution which I was trying to make happen at the time, which consisted of righting a wrong: the unfair characterization of the idler-wheel system, and the error as to its ultimate merit and position on the Great Ladder of Audio Being. You, on the other hand, only attack your betters, The Mighty as you so generously call me, dig up dirt, manufacture dirt, misinterpret what you think is dirt, misinterpret the actual landscape (because you can't, being an insect, see above the dirt) are obsessed with dirt, and take pleasure in spiteful attacks, like the insect you aspire to be. Success, yes, but wrong insect, you'll always be only a Dung Beetle.

As always, my opponents, "men", for lack of a better word, being motivated not by constructive desires but by base motives, aren't too bright. As such, uh, insects, commonly do, you've got it Bass-Ackwards, it's not that the Mighty (thanks again for including me) have fallen, but that the Mighty Have Succeeded, as even Win's activities attest, which only furthers my own desires. Now that the Idler Wheel Revolution is truly underway, what left do I have to do? We'll get back to that at the end.

As to your ugly crowing and prancing about, I was there first, as this attests: first there, thanks a bunch for the opportunity to remind everyone. As to the dirt you imagine you've dug up on me, try using your tiny little insectile mind (can't expect much here): 6moons/Srajan Ebaen lives on Cyprus, and living on Cyprus must process many audio pieces through Customs in order to continue producing reviews. Given the volume and work involved in navigating Greek-speaking government bodies, he uses a full-time professional Customs brokerage firm to retrieve said pieces for review. It's his Customs agents, under his instructions, who handled the whole thing, and who could not retrieve the item from Customs...until the review was cancelled six weeks later (may be connected to that 6 moons thing), to the day as it worked out, interestingly enough. In fact, one of the ugliest experiences of my life, which is why I balk at discussing it, but, like the Dung Beetle you are, you keep digging and bringing it back up, your specialty. There's be nothing to help your cause here, so you'd better shy away from this particular topic, as it won't redound to the name of those you currently promote (but will likely turn on later, being who and what you are) but instead blow up in your and their faces. I kept records of the whole thing, as I do of all e-mails I see will later lead to trouble.

In fact, I have e-mails from Win (older than the ugly crowing one he sent me just recently), in the days before he clambered onto the Idler Wheel Revolution I was leading and directing at the time via the Lenco, with the help of other participants, the days when he was promoting his Pabst motors and thread-drive vintage juggernauts. I kept on telling him to proceed with the Lenco asap, and it evidently turns out I was right, as where is the Pabst motor-driven thread-drive now? So, thanks for giving me the opportunity to remind him, and others who have dedicated their lives to being a nuisance to me over the years, that their current status as Defenders of the Idler Faith (having in a sense become me, the man they did and continue to oppose and attack) traces back to me and my activities and plans: the Idler-Wheel Revolution which is now truly underway. So, here's your dirt, eat it and eat well, every victory of theirs becomes, ipso facto, a victory of mine, maddening isn't it? ;-). So how do they - and fellows like you - handle this? By going around the 'Net trying to erase memory of my history of battles (check out my postings, under the monicker "melomane", and battles on VA back when my claims for the Lenco and idlers in general receivbed nothing but vicious and ugly attacks), victories, writings and conclusions (many of which they steal outright), and distorting the facts (i.e. like the fellow about to unveil an exciting new product telling all who will listen that the Lenco is really not such a good machine, and has a truly questionable motor, as if my activities were restricted to only Lencos). Someone ALMOST succeeded with the accidental deletion of the original thread, which at that time was the largest ever in audio history. But, Mario, and others who had grown accustomed to my "Rants into the Void" and the generally positive exchange characteristic of the Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot - when fellows like you aren't involved - wouldn't let it be, even though I was prepared to "retire" due to the ugliness (reminiscent of your own) which was likely behind the deletion of the original Titanic thread (which is why it was Mario who brought it back and not me).

What have YOU achieved, Dung Beetle? Perhaps you should do a little real digging and aspire instead to the Socratic search for truth you claim to aspire to, and read this: The Record. Lenco Heaven was the first dedicated Lenco forum, which as the dedication proves, was a direct result of, and inspired by, my thread on Audiogon and overall activities (I posted often then on VA), which from the first - and still thanks even to postings by such insects as you - dominated the Analog section of Audiogon, for well over four years now? You got anything similar under your belt, Dung Beetle? And that dedicated forum led to another very sucessful one, now numbering over 1000 members. Blinded by the usual spite, as such opponents of mine through the years have been, you miss as well the obvious, the dedication to this part two of my original Building high-end 'tables cheap thread, read it again: "“For those who want the moon but can't afford it or those who can afford it but like to have fun and work with their hands, I'm willing to give out a recipe for a true high-end 'table which is easy to do, and fun to make as sky's the limit on design/creativity! The cost of materials, including 'table, is roughly $200 (depending, more or less), and add to that a Rega tonearm. The results are astonishing. I'll even tell/show you how to make chipboard look like marble and fool and impress all your friends. If there's interest I'll get on with this project, if not, I'll just continue making them in my basement. The next one I make will have a Corian top and have a zebra stripe pattern! Fun! Any takers?” The Lead in “Da Thread” as posted by Johnnantais - 2-01-04
Let the saga continue. Sail on, oh ships of Lenco!
Mario_b"

Look at the date, check your facts. As Lenco Heaven attests, I made the Lenco a worldwide phenomenon (with the help of those supporters who either had faith in me or were just attracted by my sheer cussedness) by my PR idea to disguise my Idler Wheel Revolution agenda as a budget DIY Super Project (which in fact I was also doing and believed in as well, one of my pet peeves being overpriced crapola), and so lauch it into the general population - as again the evidence supports (First Try. You, or Win for that matter, achieve anything similar? While you crow about a product, I helped change the stream of audio history, killing a Dogma, and helped create and make the Idler Wheel Revolution which is now truly currently underway. Many of the current "captains" of said revolution will sadly be found to have tried their damnedest to stop me by whatever means possible in beginning days, when someone bothers to write and research a real and accurate history of the Return of the Idler Wheel.

To those who wish to launch a new product, I offer the following, now tardy, warning: Don't launch an exciting new product on a foundation of dirt, before a review, backed by Dung Beetles, this is no way to make a fresh new mark. ESPECIALLY don't crow about such a fact. You should have immediately dissociated yourselves instead of embracing him/it. Instead of fresh steak, you now have on your hands rotten meat.

So let's do a little media analysis, my "gagne-pain": The announcement of said exciting new product was by Dung Beetle, who many remembered was here previously digging and promoting dirt, as Mario's response attests: "09-24-07: Mario_b...OK Gadfly, do as your handle implies and buzz off to snipe somewhere else. You’ve become repetitive in your negativity, so maybe you’ve convinced yourself that there’s good reason to hate others more than yourself." The fact he was recognized is indicated by the way the announcement went up like a lead balloon. In fact, I deliberately did not post for ages following the announcement in order to make clear to all watching that something was fishy in the state of Denmark, and that the smell reached many. One posting, and that cleverly mitigated, when usually such an annoucenment would be greeted by a great congratulatory clamouring. The product is the brain-child of yet another [recently-exposed] opponent with an axe to grind, Mosin. The product is made of slate. In a big foofarah just a few posts above, Mosin, being coy and not announcing the pending review, promotes the incredible superiority of slate over wood as a material given secret processes he would not share, and cautions readers not to believe everything I write because I sell some of the products I describe in great detail so any who can can follow (and in turn go on to feed their audio habits by Re-building these Mighty Machines for others).

Let's look at this claim, by the same fellow who cautions aginst believing those who are selling a product: "Hello again, "Is slate better then combo of MDF, ply baltic birch ???" There is absolutely no contest. Slate has properties none of those materials can match. Wood can be used to make a very nice plinth material, but slate has it beat. "What I do know is that making plinth for Lenco or any other turntable from slate can and probably is pain in the A$$ to execute successfully and effectively." True, but worth the trouble. Using slate is a simple case of careful planning, and proficiency with tools. It is definitely not a material for those who do "get by" work, however. Still, I believe it can be handled by most who possess rudimentary skills, and have a few decent tools at their disposal. A $300,000 water jet CNC and a crew to run it does help. ;) mosin"

Finally, the announcement and following (and previous) posts makes much of the fact the review is to occur in the same publication as that in which my own projected review was cancelled, said inept and destructive Dung Beelte revelling in the assumed fact this is a major blow. Do any of the parties involved come out looking good, excepting, perhaps, me?

Evil (to use an appropriate but perhaps too-large term), they say, is stupid. It works against itself, and so inevitably will never completely conquer and succeed. Here is that saying demonstrated and proven. To those involved parties who imagine this is only a thread with no reach, you better hope so, but, judging from the fan-mail I continue to receive, even long after I have seriously curtailed my internet activities (following the deletion of the original thread), this isn't so. Teres uses a term I coined and created to explain how to achieve incredible results from Idler Wheel drives: "Direct Coupling." VPI now has introduced the ilder-wheel principle as major upgrade to their products (as did Teres). A new dedicated Lenco forum has arisen, with membership reaching 1000 and likely growing. There's gonna be a serious rotten-egg smell aboput this whole affair and assocaited products and writings. What you all need as a PR expert, to prevent such titanic cock-ups and blowing-up-in-your-faces scenarios. But, evil is stupid. Enjoy your "victory" all, does it smell good?

Dung Beetle, perhaps you are an adult, but I picture you as an overweight, self-loathing, stringy-haired, pimply adolescent giggling as he posts on his parent's computer, that's how you come across anyway. I'm going to post a photo of myself - for the first time ever as I have always shied away from public exposure, believe it or not ;-) - and for your edification, since you seem to revel so in others', and espcially my, "misery," of me being miserable in Egypt, part of a four-month tour of Greece and the Middle East, as I wait for the Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Lenco. Check it out under my "system", entitled "Waiting in Egypt for 6moons Lenco".

Now, getting back on-topic, which is "Building high-end 'tables Cheap at Home Despot", the showdown between, in THIS corner, The Mighty Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Lenco (with "humble" MDF/Russian birch-ply plinth recipe) with a variety of tonearms and cartridges, versus, in THAT corner, the Pricey, $40K SME 30 mounted with a Graham Phantom/Benz Ebony combo, happens this coming week!! The comparison will be set up over a week or more to allow various local audiophiles to attend and witness the Big Event. Watch this space!!!!

As written for 4 years now, let's all sing along: Vive la Lenco, Vive la Idler Wheel!!!

Hi all, hope you're enjoying the summer! Just reporting in on my Ortofon 2M Black phono cartrdige: it sounds GREAT!! It has the detail of a good (but not great) MC, but with the PALPABILITY, PRaT and gestalt traditionally (in the Audio Undergorund) the strength MMs.

Aw GAWD it feels good to be back in MM Land, at least for now (while my Clearaudio Concerto - the only MC I've heard which actually rivals the best MMs for PRaT and gestalt - goes for repairs as it was defective). The Ortofon is a fitting successor to the Shure V15Vx MR in the sense especially of PRaT, or Pace, Rhythm and Timing, an area where the Shure was unsurpassed in my opinion, and an area where too many audiophiles still have no idea which way is up. I believe many hear it, but since it isn't something as easily identifiable as raw detail - like tinkling bells in the background and so forth - they dismiss it as pleasing but not important (NOT!). Of course, prolonged exposure to idler wheel drives eventually leads to a state of NEED of PRaT and gestalt (all the musicians following the same beat at the same time to sound like a "tight" and communicative band/single element). Anyway, the Ortofon FIRST does these extremely important musical things right, THEN presents great detail, dynamics, deep tight bass and imnaging and so forth. Excellent. I'm running mine on the SME IV for now, as it turns out that so far the SME IV (and by extension the SME V) ALWAYS sounds great with MMs (PRaT, gestalt, dynamics), while being VERY hit and miss with MCs.

It turns out the incredible dynamics of a Lenco is too much for the Spendor BC-1's, which bottom out with a sharp CLACK! quite often, so I'm thinking of augmenting them with a Vandersteen subwoofer to preserve the excellent sense of transparency and PRAT the BC-1s do so well, and be able to beef up the sound without bottoming out the drivers.

And speaking of Lencos - of COURSE - the Lenco magic way with music - incredible gestalt, PRaT, flow, dynamics macro and micro, bass - is slowly percolating through my area and conquering folk willy-nilly, convincing them of the importance of MUSICALITY (as opposed to information, at which the Lenco is nevertheless superb/State of the Art)...and I have nothing to do with it (not much anyway apart from setting them up), as simple repeated exposure to Lencos allows them to work their musical magic and conquer by musical charms while I sit out in the country oblivious with a beer in my hand watching the lovely lasses ride by on their horses.

A fellow who had just bought an Ayre CX-7e CD player - considered one of the most musical CD players ever built by many - says he can no longer listen to it since setting up a Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Lenco in his system, set up with a JMW 12/Van den Hul MC-10 combo. And another who had received the less-performant but still excellent Direct Coupled Technics SP-25 DD wrote the following, showing just how effective Direct Coupling, AND vinyl, is, also and especially in the area of musicality: "Hats off!! It was an absolute pleasure to listen to the turntable in my system. Everything from Beatles to Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony made music as never before. Even with a humble Cambridge Audio 640P phono amp and the table sitting on the floor the turntable beat the proverbial pants off my Stereophile Class A transport and DAC. I think the CDs are going to gather dust for some time. The turntable is giving me better sound than the Roksan Xerxes/Rega RB300/Dynavector DV10X and Dynavector P75 phono stage. Add to this the sheer ease of use and I would count this as one of my best..." Just goes to show the magial properties of Direct Coupling, and potential of both Idler and DD done right, and of course, the infinitely Mightier Musical Magic of Vinyl!! Vive la Vinyl!!

And I'm still working on my Mighty Vintage Garage system, centred at one end on the Lenco, and the other with the Leak Stereo Twenty/Klipsch Cornwall combo, still searching for just the right preamp. Right now with ANY preamp the POWER and ruler-flatness of the end result is awesome to behold, these Cornwalls REALLY are tonally neutral (not too bright, everything in its place, bass deep and awesome but not overwhelming), but neutral without being boring, they ROCK!! I'm thinking I'll have to score another ARC SP-8 soon, THE most musical phono preamp/preamp I've ever heard (the Kundalini Effect!!). Have fun all, more big news very soon with the Reinderspeter Lenco set up and playing in the garage system!!

Speaking of building and testing, here are the preliminary results of the Mighty SME 30 vs Mighty Lenco Shootout!!

As you all should know by now, the Lenco in question is a standard Lenco L75/L78 (same difference), with its cavities filled in with marine-grade glass-epoxy in order to kill resonances without sacrifing dynamics (by using energy-kiling materials such as sorbothane & etc. which also indiscriminately kill off natural musical dynamics), Direct Coupled to a massive Russian birch-ply/MDF plinth for a total of 100 pounds. The Lenco itself has had none of its parts replaced, only restored by various manners. The original mat was glued in place, the main bearing is orginal with no tweaks, the motor is restored and rebalanced with no replacement of parts or power conditioners. Basically an original Lenco, restored and Direct Coupled, set on a marble/acrylic slab. The tonearm is a SME IV and is combined with a Clearaudio Concerto cartridge. Why it you ask? Well, the SME 30 is after all a $40K turntable from a very serous engineering company, and is furthermore mounted with a state of the art Graham Phantom tonearm and a Benz LP cartridge, all VERY heady stuff. The tube preamp/phono preamp was set for low-output MCs only, and so I couldn't bring in my JMW/Decca combo. The Concerto was the only available high-end MC in the shop (and I got agood deal for the SME IV ;-)), so I trusted myself to the Audio Gods and bought it: turns out the Concerto/SME combo is superb, Hallelujah!! The system consisted of top-of-the-line Atma-Shere electronics (BOY was it hot in that listening room!) matched to Sound Lab ESLs.

Good thing I went to these lengths too, as it turns out the SME 30 is after all a superb, World Class turntable (but said owner, Rick, being extremely generous of spirit, instantly deemed the Lenco World Class too), and the results were very close indeed in audiophile terms, and in fact is not yet settled on many counts: the cartridge loading was right for the Benz LP at 500 ohms, but badly off for the Clearaudio Concerto, which requires 47K into a tubed preamp according to the manual, we'll attend to that in Round Two.

The shootout was very good and favoured, musically-speaking, the Lenco, which it was admitted by the owner of the SME had superior rhythm, SLAM (punchiness), musical excitement and gestalt/music-as-an-organic-whole. But, the SME 30 was much better than I thought (it being a belt-drive and all ;-)). The bass was pretty well a toss-up for now, with the SME being superior on some recordings, and the Lenco being superior on others. Overall, the Lenco's bass was, given the right recording, more powerful and deeper with more impact and detail. But on other recordings, the Lenco was less well-defined and the SME took the lead. The Lenco was superior on all records in terms of PRaT, or Rhythm, Pace and Timing, admitted by the owner of the SME 30 as well (did I mention he is extremely genrous of spirit?). The owner, a bass player, thought the Lenco coloured in the bass and the SME neutral. I thought that this was recording-dependent, that the better the bass recording (the deeper and more natural), the better the Lenco retrieved it over the SME. Seems as well to be an issue of neutrality vs colouration: if your definition of neutral is more on the dry side, then yes, the Lenco's bass seems more tube-like. If your definition of bass is that it should be naturally "juicy", then the Lenco's bass is more natural and so neutral. It is not known how much of the Lenco's bass in the Shootout is in fact attributable to both cartridge loading, and to the natural sound of the Concerto (which is found by some to have "loose" bass, but which is not evident on all recordings, the bass on some records being superb and astounding). Same applies of course to the Graham/Benz combo.

Both 'tables were very detailed, but in the midrange the Lenco was the clear winner, resolving detail better, revealing relations both in terms of timing and raw detail/separation of instruments. Also, there was more "swing" and dynamics, and a more overall natural sound and gestalt/magic. Again, judgment came down to what was more neutral, and what was more coloured (transparency and detail-retrieval aside). Should music be as magical as it was via the Lenco, and was the SME in fact telling the truth/being more neutral? We'll get back to that, and the Shootout continues for a couple of weeks.

In the highs the SME was the clear winner, being more extended and resolving more air, but we'll hopefully address that by correcting the loading issue.

Now, both turntables were declared by all present incredible and World Class, the question being that vexing question of neutrality vs colouration. Now, the owner of the SME 30 felt the SME was more neutral, that the Lenco was coloured, but freely admitted the Lenco was superb and World Class, and both were about even overall. And here I will make a stab at some Socratic argumentation in order to effect a Paradigm Shift in his thinking. To wit: what is music's most immediate and obvious characteristic? Answer: musicality. According to this iron-bound logic then, it is the 'table which transmits less of this musicality which is the more coloured, and the table which retrieves more of this characteristic which is more neutral.

We have all undergone an incorrect Paradigm Shift in recent audio times with the rise of digital, and have equated this far more dry and matter-of-fact presentation
(and seemingly more scientific with the inclusive complex mathematics and computer/elctronics trickery) with neutrality. This is a faulty yardstick, the real yardstick should be live music, as The Absolute Sound suggests, which is NEVER dry and analytical. According to this, the Lenco, juicy and magical and entertaining as it is, is in fact more neutral, while the more matter-of-fact/cerebral SME 30 is more coloured/digital. Of course, everyone will draw their own conclusions and express/yield to their own tastes. And, furthermore, the Shootout is far from over, more conclusions, feelings and so on ahead as we next tend to the Concerto's cartridge loading and open the doors to more witnesses.

This is all very exciting, and I would like a BIG round of applause to Rick, who is extremely generous of spirit and open-minded, and who made this all possible!! Wish there more out there like him!!

Have fun all, I'm hoping the Reinderspeter top-plate Lenco will be ready in time to throw into the ring as well!! Have fun all!

Hi Mike, the proof that it was never hyperbole is here!! And I always wanted to know what the Lenco as-is could do, Direct Coupling and all that leaving the machine itself untouched, more in the way of "excavating" the Mighty Lenco's capabilities, like excavating a lost city from a mound of rubbish, than modification. Once one interferes with/replaces the original machine's parts, then one loses sight of what it could do all along, of the context.

So, further developments: the owner of the SME 30 now also concedes the Lenco superiority in the bass, though there are now newer mitigating circumstances even here. In removing the loading resistors from the phono stage and so going to a 47K loading for the Concerto, he found that both machines improved vastly (as per Harry Pearson's preference for loading ALL MCs at 47K), so now we have a whole new shootout! I'll find out more tomorrow when I go in for more auditioning myself.

Peter's top-plate will be Direct Coupled to the usual Russian birch-ply/MDF recipe, so I will hear exactly what it brings to the party. THEN I will slowly replace parts with improved bearing kits and so on and climb the Idler Ladder and report in detail. As written, I hope to finish the Reinderspeter top-plate Lenco in time to match it against the SME 30 as well.

A buddy of mine who had my Electro-Voice speakers in his system can no longer live with current speakers, and is preeparing to buy a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls. Hooray for Progress ;-)!!! Have fun all.

Hi Lew, no you don't sound negative at all: my answer to you is that we take what we can get. Rick is an incredibly generous fellow, and who knows, maybe he will even be willing some day to transfer his tonearm/cart to my Lenco, I'll have a blank armboard ready and a drill-press!! But, I totally understand him if he doesn't want to start discombobulating his pricey SME to further the experiment. I have no cartridges which can compete with the Benz LP and Clearaudio Concerto in my arsenal which are not tapped and so useable with the tapped RS-A1, I will have to finally strip the threads in my RS-A1 and make it useable with tapped cartridges: THEN we will be able to perhaps simply plunk the RS-A1 on one turntable and simply swap it over to the other for a fair comparison (but given the SME 30's suprisingly compact dimensions, this necessitates complete removal of the Graham Phantom). He is certainly curious, so who know? But, our neutrality vs musical truth dichotomy continues, and so is the Shootout which continues for Round Three next week!

It turns out my Lenco has a faulty idler-slide mechanism, too loose and no way to fix it without replacing it, seems there was some variation in these and we must be careful in swapping parts from one Lenco to the next (there is also some variation in the length of the idler-wheel arms as I recently discovered as well). The result of this will be further improved speed stability and even better sound. We also discovered that the Concerto was MUCH happier in his system on the JMW tonearm than on the SME IV tonearm, which was killing the highs (this may be due to the complex wiring arrangement for the SME, as his preamp accepts only balanced Neutrik connectors, which necessitated complex connections, some of them plain cheap and bad (no way to find special female RCAs for cable termination). This in turn meant: SME tonearm cable to cheap female RCAs, in turn soldered to three-conductor balanced cable to Neutrik. Perhaps the changeover too from SME cable to Cardas via the cheap RCA created a high-frequency barrier. Or the JMW is quite simply the better tonearm ;-) (in my system however, the SME was superior, but this with the cable direct to preamp). The cable I made for the JMW, however, goes direct from the RCAs at one end to the Neutrik at the other. Incredible that Rick lets me take care of these various issues and come back with a fresh Lenco next week! In the interim, while the Lenco is still more powerful and "musical" (in terms of dynamics/punchiness, gestalt and PRaT) - which some dismiss as a colouration/distortion and so of no consequence and in fact a negative (I believe that PRaT and gestalt, the sense of all the musicians being on the same page rhyhmically, IS viable, neutral information, and that this information is far better conveyed by the Lenco/idlers, than by even the mighty SME or any belt-drive, due to the differing drive systems); and some don't question as anything other than musicality and so viable and acceptable "information" (so overall in terms of witnesses we have a bit of a draw) - it was discovered that the Benz LP improved quite a lot when loaded at 47K (while the Concerto barely changed...again might be due to the complex cabling), and a change in VTA made it even better, so it was time to attend to properly setting up the fab Clearaudio Concerto and recover its quickly fading high frequencies (in relative comparison), which is simply THE most musical cartridge I've ever heard (and it's a high-end MC!), and in terms of the usual audiophile area stupendous. More next week when all is attended to!

And speaking of blogs, I AM working on setting up my own website, where I will continue my Rants into the Void, at some point this summer, and continue to report on and share various experiments with various 'tables and other equipment, and more Idler Conquests, Conversions and Competitions! The Firewall will be provided by Raid ;-). Have fun all!!

Hi Lew, everyone seems to agree with you, including me! We'll see how curious Rick gets in the end, already this is a fabulous experience on all sorts of fronts, from straightforward audiophile experiments through philosophy to exposing the different ways people perceive and experience sound!! I couldn't give a damn about "neutrality" (beyond retreiving as much of the information as I can from the grooves with all its natural energy and timing intact, and actually proper tonal balance too which DOES contribute to the musical experience) as I focus on enjoyment/my definition of musicality which I consider paramount (I want that "frisson"); while Rick's Holy Grail is precisely the reverse in his main system, with a focus on revealing what is actually on the pressing and nothing else (we disagree on what is actually in the groove, as I believe these "colourations" are supposed to be there...once the high frequencies are attended to). Not that he doesn't intensely appreciate the "magic" of the Lenco as I witnessed, and so, as I understand it, is now toying with the idea of a specialized UN-neutral vintage system for this very reason, he just doesn't want it in his Reference System.

There's another area here too, as this high-frequency rolloff in Rick's system is quite pronounced, he reports measuring only 10K. Though the Concerto does roll off at 14K (and so highlights this loss), I also have a hard time believing this leads to the loss of air and high-frequency minutiae which I do indeed retrieve in my own two systems, but which disappears on Rick's. Where'd the missing 4K go? I have heard Lencos in almost-countless ribbon and electrostatic systems, in high-end dynamic driver systems, NOT vintage, all of which are said to extend well beyond 20K, and never a high-frequency rolloff reported or heard (in fact improvement), as those who have heard Lencos before or currently know VERY well. Lencos and Garrards in the same plinths have replaced all sorts of current high-end belt-drives, from the "usual" Linn LP12s and others at this size/price-point, also NOT considered rolled off in the high frequencies, through several VPI TNTs and, Platine Verdiers and various Nottinghams up through the top Dais (I think top), the top Der Plattenspeiler - also considered one of the most neutral belt-drives ever made - and throw in a SME 10. Are we to assume these are set up in frequency-limited systems which don't reveal the Lenco's limitations? No, since Lencos are set up in identical systems to Rick's, even with some improvements/upgrades. So, is this due to the Cardas cable I was forced to rely on as well? A cable burn-in issue? There's some mystery here, I'll need to do some research. I may in fact make balanced cables from scratch this weekend using my fave ultra-thin solid core, which is not rolled off, at least in comparison with Cardas, and burn it in in advance.

Evidently Rick's system is ultra-high resolution, enough so to make cable issues ultra-obvious. I went in, evidently overconfident, and didn't think any obvious bottleneck like crappy cables (but I did spend real money on the best I could get, hence the Cardas) would impede the Lenco's inexorable advance ;-). But, as written before the SME is a VERY serious Contender, as one would expect from a real engineering company's Statement on record player design, and one cannot be cavalier on ANY issue (and I Thank God I took it seriously enough to buy the Concerto, otherwise it really would have been a slaughter).

On the Lenco Front, I took care of the faulty slider mechanism (replaced it with another) and now it is solid, and the resulting sound is incredible (it was before, but now with CONTROL) via my Electro-Voice system: ultra precise and fast, with incredibly focused dynamics (meaning it is concentrated and controlled in bursts of intense energy). The highs are there, air in abundance, and high-frequency minutia obvious and precise, using my usual Petra/Music Boy interconnects (the VPI JMW has RCA's on the back). It's possible that the wobbly wheel smeared and exaggerated certain effects leading to Rick's current judgment, and of course switching to the fab VPI tonearm makes significant changes too, from the bass, which now sounds very precise and controlled, through to the highs, which sound extended, airy and delicate, in MY system. Let's hope this translates to Rick's. More and more I see no choice but to make new Neutrik balanced cables, home-made style, and burn them in using a tuner, in order to remove this possibility.

O, and Mario, sorry I forgot about your question: you have the process exactly right, I simply use a caulking gun (acrylic/fast-dry) to make dikes around the needed mechanisms, which I simply leave in place after the glue has hardened. I don't fill up to the rim as the threaded inserts for the bolts go only about half-way up, so I fill up to the rim of these inserts, after levelling (this is important). It takes about 12 hours for it to harden, 24 to cure completely, and I use the quicker dry (but given the amount, it takes much longer to harden). It's the marine-grade stuff which sells in litre bottles or bigger, not cheap.

Anyway, for all the nay-sayers out there, those who damn with faint praise, those who accused me for years of hyperbole, the Lenco has now duked out two rounds with the SME 30 for a draw so far overall (and this with a seriously faulty speed issue/mechanism I wasn't aware of until the Shootout), I defy you to throw in the ring your Well Tempereds, your VPI TNTs, your $2K-$20k belt-drives from whichever company, against the SME 30 and get even close to the same results. As reported, in terms of actual information-retrieval, the two were SO close it took days and days of back-and-forth A-B-ing in order to get a more precise idea of what was actually going on (even with a 10K rolloff), and led to a comparison with Master Tape in order to settle the issue (which in fact is not settled yet). I'm REALLY curious to see if Master Tape does indeed convey the PRaT and gestalt/magic I love so much (or is it an artefact of the Lenco/Idlers and possibly the vinyl itself), I have no doubt as to the results reported in terms of high-frequencies and their effects on the overall sound of the Lenco in Round Two, but I do have questions as to these particular aspects of musicality, which are my stock in trade ;-).

As always, I am SO grateful to Rick for enthusiastically signing up for this Great Experiment, more later on how the two drives systems impact information-retrieval: in a nutshell I had claimed that the Idler was quite simply the superior system, and here we have a mass-manufactured 15-pound Lenco with a minute so-so main bearing and 8-pound platter Direct Coupled to an 85-pound chunk of wood outperforming the SME (about 120 pounds of precision-machined and balanced metal by one of the premier engineering companies of analogue, with I think an 18 kg platter) in terms of what Rick considers colourations (dynamics, attack, transients, bass reach) and about equaling it overall in terms of detail (better in the midrange according to my ears and others', lesser in the high frequencies for now, a toss-up in the bass). Stylus Force Drag is an MUCH more serious problem than audiophiles assume, and it takes real torque of the sort offered by idler-wheel drives to overcome this; belt-drives in comparison loose the ball precisely at the moment of greatest groove excursion/transients/dynamic swings, regardless of platter mass (this is not the same as active torque), which is why Idlers, as this experiment shows so far, do a better job of transients and dynamics (though Rick believes this is due to the Lenco's top-plate resonances). Even if the final judgment goes to the SME, and given the improvements we'll see about that, I think I have already proven my point. And to give Rick even more credit, he is VERY interested in seeing what he perceives as this resonance problem taken care of via Reinderspeter's top-plate (and actually this is precisely what the top-plate will do), and sees himself as a help in the development of the Lenco, as indeed he is!

Now, to the soldering station :-)!!

Oops, simultaneous postings! Hi all, just to clear up what may appear to be incorrect conclusions, with all due respect (and more!: who else would sign up for this out there? Any takers??) to the incredibly generous and helpful Rick: what I reported on was Round One, no misprepresentations, and what - for fault of a better term - was Round Two (I don't really count Round Two as Round Two as this involved me, Rick and the fellow who acted as go-between to hear what 47K did to the contest in poreparation for the real Round Two, so this involved no independent witnesses). Since I did not attend the real Round Two and did not report on it or its conclusions, then I could not misrepresent it. During the not-actual Round Two, Rick did say the bass on the SME had improved (after changing the cartridge loading to 47K) and more closely approached the Lenco's bass in terms of reach and power, which implies the Lenco was the standard here and not the SME. I am guilty here of perhaps jumping the gun on this conclusion only in reporting on Rick, which evidently changed again in the actual Round Two, so sorry about that Rick.

I do look forward to doing and hearing the tape vs turntables comparison, which I will report on: I believe, all due respect to Rick, that had I been there, and some others from Round One, conclusions would have differed, as I (and they) hear some things Rick does not hear (i.e. such as the matter of 3D "presence" which Rick perceives as forwardness, which may be on the tape and communicated via the Lenco but not the SME, and the matter of PRaT/timing, and so on). Definitely no contest on the highs, but there are reasons for this. To expand on the matter of timing, while I agree with Rick on the matter of the bass being better via the SME on some recordings, and the matter of high frequencies (which I could clearly hear and so I knew something was up, as Lencos have never been criticized by others in the matter of high-frequency extension, including some who own either the same Sound labs or even the same Atma-Sphere/Sound Lab system as Rick); I DID hear, on every single recording (and this was agreed on by at least four of us in Round One), a very wide gap between the Lenco and the SME in terms of PRaT (Pace, Rhythm and Timing) and gestalt. By "gestalt" I mean essentially timing, it means all the musicians are following precisely the same rhythm at the same precise time, so that they are evidently in chorus/symphony on this point: one organic whole. So, on this score, unrecognized and perhaps simply dismissed by Rick and the others in Round Two, did the SME preserve its superiority to the Lenco vis-a-vis the Master Tape? Does Master Tape even have this "artefact", and do the electronics inside the tape machine convey it if it's there? There are no absolute standards in an always imperfect world. I'll find out and report on it honestly in Round Three and it precursor (the not-actual Round Three/set-up ;-).

So, in Round One, Rick's first and immediate reaction, after only one or two minutes was to exclaim "Man this is a good turntable!" (not precisely the right words I believe, but an honest reporting of the facts). So this can sink in, this is in context of Rick's living daily with his SME 30/Graham Phantom. There were five of us there, four of us preferred the Lenco (Rick preferring the SME), and I actually sided with Rick against the others on the matter of bass (which was pretty well uniformly preferred by the others on the Lenco, including what had been a professional musician/drummer, while I agreed with Rick that the SME favoured certain LPs while the Lenco favoured others) and the matter of highs (which again the others preferred on the Lenco I believe). We were forced to go back and forth again and again on certain recordings, which shows just how close the contest really was in audiophile terms (i.e. information and not music). All was as I reported in Round One, with the midrange via the Lenco having more presence, impact, snap and even better separation of instruments (of course Rick can disagree here), and that the highs via the Lenco were indeed rolled off as compared with the SME (pretty well only me and Rick agreed on this, as the others found the smmooooth Lenco highs still there and quite good/pleasing). The end result of that Round One was that all agreed, including Rick, that the Lenco was World-Class, that the SME was also World-Class, and that it was a close-run race, so no misrepresentation. This evidently changed in the real Round Two.

If one reads Rick's posting, our dichotomy as to "neutrality" (which I consider actually a colouration) vs musical truth is even more starkly highlighted, and progresses/expands as time goes on, as every single superiority the Lenco has over the SME is dismissed as an aberration. So, the Lenco's evidently debatable "superiority" in terms of the SLAM I always write about, transients, presence (a three-dimensionality I hear but which Rick describes as "forward"), and bass weight and power get described as : "The Lenco has a pronounced bass boost that is a little fast and heavy, a warmer, livelier midrange that may cause snare drums and percussion instruments to leap out in stark contrast to the background music, and a pronounced rolled off top end that tends to take some of the life out of the music and reduces the subtle room interactions that are present on the recording. This provides slam, impact, and a snap to every recording you might want to throw at it but it is not an honest reproducer. These issues may also be arm, cartridge or set-up related. It’s not an exact science here." Two opposing judgments of precisely the same sonic artefacts/experiences.

Musically-speaking, all present in Round One agreed the Lenco was superior, and even Rick found it pleasing, but we evidently have different definitions of "musicality/musical". I define this in what I consider the usual/normal way, as in the phrases "music to my ear" (which means the "pleasing colourations" Rick is talking about) and "music to sooth the savage breast" which again points to beauty and not information. The Oxford Dictionary defines it thus: "Having the nature or characteristics of music; tuneful, melodious, harmonious; pleasing in sound, euphonious." This closely parallel's Rick's own description of the Lenco: "What the Lenco is is a very good vintage turntable that has very pleasing musical colorations that deviate significantly from the very neutral and musical presentation of the SME 30/2." Rick more closely ties "musical" to information and accuracy, such as pleasing definition of high-frequency detail and "neutrality," I believe. So a semantic disagreement as well, this hobby is a mine field! But, perhaps with the matter of the Lenco/?/Clearaudio's highs attended to and so a more balanced comparison achieved, this will change the descriptions.

So more and more the differences between the two, in strict audiophile terms (musicality aside), veer towards the matter of high-frequencies, already explained/described in my last post. Rick is going out of his way to help here with a proper Shootout: I actually relied on Rick's aural memory in our quick experiment to see if the Clearaudio's highs improved on the JMW (he said it did and it seemed so to me as well, and furthermore the bass changed too, seemed tighter to me, so expect new developments here too), and Rick actually held the Lenco top-plate for me while I examined and tried, unsuccessfully (because it simply didn't fit, first time in my experience so I never assumed/considered this as a possibility), to repair the faulty slide mechanism.

To end, we are both reporting honestly on the same series of events, but are in disagreement as to what it all means. Furthermore, there is the problem with the idler mechanism, which means the Lenco was not performing even near to spec (and yet this STILL forced resorting to Master Tape in Round Two, in order to decide, I leave it to the readers to recognize the implications of just how good the Lenco is in strict audiophile terms, i./e. detail, imaging, information and so on), leaving musical issues aside. And furthermore and added to that is the matter of the Clearaudio I took a chance on as it was the only one I could score (and I'm happy about that as it is my favourite cartrdige ever!), an unknown quantity, untested (I should never have sold the superb and neutral Ortofon Jubilee). The accompanying graph shows it drops off precipitously at a frequency of 14K instead of the 20K the factory says it should measure at (which makes one wonder why Clearaudio even released it), and me and Rick discovered that the Clearaudio favoured the JMW (which, to hand it to Rick, he predicted). Actually, this drop-off is a good thing in the context of the horn-loaded Electro-Voice system I am building. Anyway, Rick is very constructive, he suggested the Clearaudio would improve on the JMW and wanted this (so he does really want to know the truth of the matter of Lenco vs current Contender), and actually suggested on-the-spot remedies to the matter of the idler mechanism while I held it, and is looking forward to Round Three, where hopefully the matter of the high frequencies will really be ameliorated, and with correct speed with no wobbly-mechanism-induced speed variations we will hear the Lenco for real.

So, stay tuned to Round Three all, I'm sure the audiophile comunity is as divided overall as me and Rick are as to what constitutes "musicality" and what "neutrality" means and what we are aiming for in the construction/assembly of our sound systems!! Have fun all, and don't forget to thank Rick's endless generosity of time and effort, and the search for musical truth (and the different meanings attached to THAT ;-))!!

Dear Rick, it's really too bad we couldn't continue the experiment so we could actually hear the Lenco fully adjusted/dialed-in with its problems removed, Murphy's Law strikes again that the one chance for this sort of thing is marred by problems I didn't know existed, thanks anyway for your immense generosity and helpfulness. This has been a REAL learning experience, which will lead to many new ideas and a MUCH better undertanding of all the issues, and I can't thank you enough for the opportunity.

To those watching, I didn't see this as a battle of 'tables, but instead a battle of drive systems: what is arguably the best of one type vs what is arguably the best of another (though the Lenco is built to relatively crappy standards, it is likely the most evolved design of yesteryear). As always, I see the Lenco as only a tool in the furtherance of placing the Idler-Wheel System in its rightful place amongst the pantheon of drive systems. The experiment certainly highlighted various issues MUCH more starkly than I had ever experienced before! And my Gigantic Lenco sounds much better now than it ever has before, thanks to the experience with Rick, which paid unexpected dividends in learning more about Lenco mechanisms, and the success of various tonearm/cartridge combos in differing systems (i.e. don't assume that what works in one system will work in another), a great learning experience!

And to those who may be traveling in the area, I invite you all to come hear for yourself the best I can currently do with Lencos (and Sony's and Garrards) in a special vintage Super-System I have assembled, thanks to those wonderful Electro-Voice speakers from the legendary Patrician line! Exposure to Rick's system will help immeasurably in adjusting/balancing this system for maximum neutrality/effectiveness, changes have already begun!