Clearaudio Emotion CMB Upgrade

Thanks! Good to hear it worked out for you. I'm not sure the money wouldn't be better spent elsewhere in my system but it sure is a neat piece of engineering... I really like that Clearaudio provides an upgrade path like this.

Ben_mijts,

I got the part installed last night. It is an extremely easy upgrade for the Emotion table and looks to be slightly different design than the higher end clearaudio tables' CMB upgrades. Basically the upgrade consist of three parts; a tool to remove the ball bearing from the base of the bearing assembly (the part attached to the plinth), a magnetic ring that fits around the current bearing base (it fits snug around the base but also attaches to the plinth with some adhesive), and the upper portion of the bearing (which attaches to the platter) that is very similar to the non-CMB exept it contain a magnetic base and the ceramic shaft. Install takes 2 minutes.

In terms of functional improvements it is clear that this upgrade reduces bearing friction considerably. Without the belt attached, a manual spin of the platter doesn't stop for a good minute or two. With the belt attached I noticed the platter gets up to speed with greater ease; especially on heavier 180g and 200g records.

As for the sound improvement... I only had a chance to spin two records but it seemed like a fairly significant improvement. This bearing has a much quiter noise floor/blacker background. As such the images seem to be more focused and the soundstage more expansive. The speed appears to be more accurate as well. I noticed this most on sustained notes (opening seconds of U2's joshua tree). Listening to Plans by Death Cab for Cutie, I noticed the tables PRAT seems to be much better as judged by the extremely scientific "toe tapping" scale :)

Overall I would say the upgrade was worth the price. I now feel the table can do justice to a more expensive cartridge. I also feel that based on the simplicity of this table (which I always liked) combined with this excellent bearing, I won't feel the need to upgrade for a very long time.

SB

Ben_mijts,

My dealer expects the part in tomorrow so I'll let you know.

SB

I'm thinking about the same upgrade path so let us know how it works out. My understanding is that the 20mm bearing is designed to work with the Emotion.