A local fellow who has asked me to build him a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco has just left after an afternoon of listening, and in leaving (and in the context of an extremely high-end system) admitted to me that the day he first heard one of these rebuilt Lencos (last summer), was the day he started to hate his Wilson Benesch turntable.
Oh yes, the Lenco is Mighty, but I have some bad news to impart to all Lenco followers, and Yea, it is this: the Lenco is severely coloured. Yea and Woe!! In every system I hear it in - and I get the opportunity to hear it in many in my favourite sport, Crush the Belt-Drive (and my second-favourite sport, Crush the DD) - the sound of a Lenco is unmistakable. In fact, every time I hear it in a different context I laugh as I hear the Unmistakable Ingredient, the sonic signature of the Mighty Lenco. What is this colouration, this sonic signature?!? It is the Ultra-Fluid, Unstoppable quality/character, the sound of perfect speed, like the flowing of the Amazon into the Atlantic at full flood. It is the sound of transients perfectly captured, of the utterly natural presentation of unthinkable and unbelievable amounts of detail, thus managing the very difficult trick of not sounding particularly detailed, but instead simply like the music it is playing. It is the sound of large-scale dynamics growing at the speed of light, limitless, when required, of all the little micro-dynamics, which nail the organization, perfectly preserved and retrieved. It is the sound of a perfect image, with TONS of atmosphere, of endless decays and echoing chambers, of air moving, changing pressure, expanding and contracting. It is the sound of intense musicality squeezed out of even the worst recordings (especially if the artist, like Nina Simone, is truly great). This colouration, O Lenco Followers, is this: Perfection. Yes, the Lenco sound SO perfect it is almost a violation of the laws of physics, which allows no perfection in this, the physical world. And every time I hear it, there it is, unmistakable, the sound of a Lenco, and I laugh as it pierces through the masking influence of alien systems and makes itself known, whatever the context. Incredible. Sorry to have steered you all down this path of severe colouration, this sound our brains scream is impossible, and which thus always manages to amaze us, through the years without stop, my apologies.
And my apologies as well to those belt-drivers who have sunk huge amounts of dosh into their sources, as they are eventually going to have to face the music, so to speak, face the Mighty Lenco, as I send them out to do battle in no-holds-barred systems, in the systems of designers, in the systems of distributors, in the systems of retailers and in the systems of the well-heeled (or simply obsessive) and make the point. My ambassadors are Out There (there's more than one way to skin a cat, in the face of unscientific political correctness which makes the following Statement of Faith, no different from religion: I BELIEVE all systems are equivalent - not I KNOW all systems are equivalent, an impossible statement to make truthfully, since the fellows peddling this have not tested the claim), and they'll eventually be knocking at your door. Welcome it in, you can only gain. That nagging voice that tells you, no matter how far up the ladder of belt-drive-ness you've climbed, "something is yet missing", will be vindicated, but the answer will be there: Lenco (or Idler-Wheel).
So, to answer your question Easytune, if you click under my "system" you will see at the top of my list the first Lenco I ever rebuilt, in which I indeed, due to all the propaganda about noise, built with the motor completely removed from the top-plate. But, it turned out, the whole noise issue was grossly exaggerated, and was due also to improper set-up. When I started the original thread, I wanted the design as simple as it could be in order to gather fellow experimenters, and in the process discovered myself that it was not necessary to remove the motor. In fact, I discovered mass and Direct Coupling (the two go together) make a FAR larger difference to the sound, and make such acrobatics as split plinths moot (as the annihilation of the low-mass two-tier Cain & Cain plinth by my single high-mass plinth makes clear). In addition, the least difference in the geometry of the motor relative to the workings will be detrimental to the sound. Nevertheless, until I started the original thread, I had listened to my two-tier Lenco for close on 12 years. Of course, everyone is free to design as they wish, it's your baby, and the Lenco will not disappoint, as its essential ingredients will remain, all tied to its amazing speed stability (which, however, improves by Direct Coupling to a high mass).
Hi David, your Audiogon "system" is a hoot, I was rolling on the ground as I clicked on each different item listed to find in each case a photo of a Lenco!! For a Good Time, click on Gilbodavid's "system" :-)!
