Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Hey Jean,

The stock Lenco has a sprung suspension which you wisely recommend defeating. I know first hand that the Lenco is no great shakes with the suspension engaged. Now the Lenco is quite susceptible to foot-fall without a massive plinth, so it's no wonder that the suspension was regarded as de rigeur back in the day of stock, lighweight plinths and dancing in the living room. But the heavy plinth is pretty crucial, by your account, to the superiority of Lenco/idler performance over belt drive. Maybe LP12 belt drive plus sprung suspension beats Lenco idler plus sprung suspension.

My point is this: possibly *you* discovered the combination of idler/nonsuspended/heavy plinth design which is what really makes the Lenco and its similar brethren so superior (as the Lenco Green Monster you made me proves nightly). Perhaps, back in the day, the LP12 really did trounce the competition, suspended and lightweight as it was. If that's so, there was something more than noice reduction theory and cost efficiency that led to the rise of the belt drive.

And one would think there would be more than just theory. After all, Ivor the Linn guy made his case back then by the same sorts of emprical means you recommend -- indeed even more extreme. He went aroud to Hi Fi stores and challenged the staff to put his TT at the front end of their cheap rig, and test that combo against their own best TT in front of their best rig. LP12 reputedly won enough of those battles to become the reference deck, and solidify the belt drive as the system of choice.

What say you, sage of the platter spinners?

Hi all,

The Green Giant Lenco -- no longer so giant, in comparison to later designs -- that Jean built me, is, with its modest compliment of SMEIII/Shure M97EraIVHE and AT1005mkII/Denon DL103, FANTASTIC. Just fabulous, and every one I play it for flips out with how top to bottom, side to side, micro to macro, whisper to thunder good it is at making music out of tiny bumps on vinyl grooves. I've had it better than a year now, and am amazed everyday, whether it by playing Bach, Bartok, Beatles, Basie, Bluegrass, whatever.

Jean has also always been personally generous, helpful, and friendly to me as well.

Now, is his rhetoric in favor of the Lenco hyperbolic? I am in no position to say. But the evidence so far seems to be that it has beat all comers up to 20k. One would think that if there are counterexamples, then they would be reported (and those reports multiply iterated) by the defenders of the belt drive hegemony. After all, they would be reports of opinion ("I thought my INSERT NAME HERE belt drive system sounded better in this and that way than the Lenco"), and you can't argue with those. (I've never noticed Jean dispute any such claim of personal opinion.) And those who have spent big bucks on belt drive systems, either as desgners, manufacturers or consumers, have lots of interest in making such reports, candidly or otherwise. But you JUST DON'T SEE SUCH REPORTS. That is really something. So maybe his claims to absolute superiority of the Lenco are not hyperbolic.

His packaging his claims in terms of "science" is rather grandiose, to be sure. Here "science" just seems to be good old reasonable judgment, based on weighty evidence rather than hearsay and biased propoganda. I haven't heard of any of Jean's evidence consisting of double blind control group studies of statistically significant numbers with the sort of protocols and quantificational methods that make for SCIENCE in the sense in which it goes beyond just good old decent thinking. But decent thinking is all the reason one needs to take the kinds of evidence Jean adduces -- uncontrolled and anecdotal though it is -- seriously.

This "political correctness" stuff, however, is hooey. Jean seems to equate it with relativism -- the view that good, best and better are entirely in the eyes of the beholder, and not objective matters of fact. Such relativism is dangerous, and at bottom quite unintelligible. But it is neiher the same thing as "political correctness", whatever that is, other than a Limbaugh-esque vacuous slander word, nor what's at the bottom of whatever resistance the Lenco and Jean have encountered on their way to recognition. The resistors I am quit sure believe Hondas (objectively) better than Kias, Ellington (objectively) better than Brittney, Tiger woods (objectively) better than Mike Weir, and love (objectively) better than hate. It's just 35 years out-of-date, relatively cheap, discarded and DIY-ified record playback technology promoted by a, um, charsmatic cyber crank, shall we say, that they don't think is better than new, expensive, nearly universally embraced and lauded, 100% professionally engineered, produced and marketed record playback technology.

They need to have an open mind and an unbiased listen. Given the market forces at work here, that may be more than one can expect in most cases. But that's entirely understandable without appeal to sinister cultural forces of political correctness.

Anyway, I love my Lenco!

Happy listening!

Richard

Hey Jean,

Just exactly what do you mean by:

"But, my own Mr. Red is also overweight and oversized, and I cannot hear any appreciable difference between it and the "regular/classic" size"?

I though the giant giant plinth Lenco's were supposed to be yet way better than the "regular/classic" size.

Hi,

I have a replinthed L75. Love it. But I am getting a kind of rhythmic scraping noise which is audible, though pretty quiet, with motor on but no record playing,and can definitely and distinctively be heard through the speakers when the needle of a moderate microphonic cartridge is in some dead wax. I have removed the platter and found that when the power switch is fully in the "on" position, so that the idler wheel (with the help of the spring) contacts the edge of the cut-out in the top plate in the space of which the wheel moves back and forth when being being engaged or disengaged (and in and out when changing speeds). It definitely makes the scraping noise with that contact. The power switch can be partially turned on so as to move the wheel over far enough to engage the moving spindle without hitting the edge of the cut-out. Then I do not get the scraping sound. But when I then put the platter on and try to move the "on" switch only as far as needed to engage the spindle, but not far enough to contact the edge of the cut-out, I get the scraping sound again.

My own surmise is that the wheel should not have been contacting the edge of the cut out, but that in doing so, it got somewhat worn, and that that wear is causing it to make noise when it contacts the either or both of the underside of the spinning platter or the edge of the cut-out. No part of the edge of the wheel seems bare, so far as I can manage to inspect it. But when I cleaner it, rubber residue came off the edge.

Can any of you Lenco experts out there tell me if this diagnosis sounds plausible, and what, if anything, can be done about it? It sure seems like that wheel ought not to contact the cut-out edge, but it also seems inevitable, given the range of motion of the power switch, the location of the fixed parts relative to the moving ones, and the spring's tugging on the wheel arm.

Any help at all appreciated!

It's not bad science to invent an hypothesis to suit your observations. Of course that's what one does. But it is bad science (and an abuse of common sense) to do so without bothering to learn about the mechanisms at play in and around the phenomena under investigation, and it's bad science to promote your hypothesis as a result without testing it in a variety of ways. I've no idea whether Jean is at all guilty of this. Carry on all of youz.

I said:

"I've no idea whether Jean is at all guilty of this"

So you should not have said "Jean does propose his hypotheses as facts, without having done the experiments necessary to prove the hypotheses, as you also suggest".

And FWIW, and it's worth a lot, proof is out of the question here. This is the real world, not math.

Lewm: I just didn't want to leave intact the impression I was suggesting anything fishy on Jean's part.

Gadfly: Does anyone welcome your interjections?

Lonely voice, so far.

Simple: Jean is on hiatus, so he's not here inspiring queries or quarrels. raves or outrages! Without his prodding, we're probably all just listening to our Lencos instead.