garrard vs clearaudio innovation

Clearaudio is obvious winner, no question, not even in the same stratosphere.

http://www.dagogo.com/View-Article.asp?hArticle=768

A fully sorted 401 with an upgraded platter and bearing such as Artisan Fidelity will easily beat the table you mentioned. I’ve heard that Clearaudio table including all the way up to the Statement.

My sorted 401 easily outplays the Innovation Wood which I’ve listened to multiple times. The Innovation is a nice enough table but my 401 with the Artisan Fidelity Reference Platter and bearing is all together on a higher playing field.

A restored 401 using the stock platter and bearing may sound more exciting and flat out more fun than the Innovation but it will not be able to stage, layer and expose details and minutiae on the vinyl the way the Clearaudio will.

Depends on the 401. An okay example in a hollow plinth on a credenza won’t cut it. But as @audiofun said, a tuned 401 is very capable. My Audiograil 401 in a slate plinth with Artisan Fidelity idler, PAC platter and SPH bearing is astonishingly good. And cost about $4000.
EDIT: That's an old thread!

Hi orionpcgames, several considerations. If you are using a subwoofer you really have no choice. The Garrard will drive you nuts with rumble. Even if you do not have a sub the magnetic bearing on the Clearaudio is handily better. The Clearaudio is not a suspended turntable (neither is the Garrard.)  It will work well when placed on a solid footing from floor to stand. The usual problem will be a wood floor. Wood floors bounce and this will unsettle just about any non suspended turntables even the heavy ones. Fixed tables need to be on concrete floors. Some people will use wall shelves which can help but may not be perfect depending on the construction of the house. If you have wood floors you will be much happier with a suspended turntable like the SME or SOTA tables. SME tend to be very pricey but I think the 15 is in your price range. SOTA's are American made and much more reasonable. The new ones have a magnetic bearing just like the Clearaudio, vacuum hold down and an extravagant DC motor drive. The Cosmos is about the same price as the Clearaudio. The Clearaudio is a cool looking table and very nicely made. Their cartridges are top notch. The SOTA in the right wood like cherry, rosewood or Ebony are plain beautiful. You can jump up and down on wooden floors and neither the SME's or the SOTA will care at all. They will just go along like nothing happened. Put a Kuzma 4 point 9 on any of them and you will be in heaven.

Mike

Pretty darn happy with my 401 in 40lb birch and curly maple plinth with Micro Seiki ma505ls arm.
As far as I am aware it is stock idler, bearing and platter. Although all cleaned up, lubed and fresh setup.
Sits on my rack on solid tiled concrete floor.
No rumble I have ever heard even with ml Dynamo sub.

Last time I looked the Artisan Fidelity platter, bearing and idler upgrade ran out to $3900 parts only.
Not going to happen in my lifetime......

Well uberwaltz, you have an exceptional one I guess. The three that I have been witness to have had that problem. None of these people had subwoofers but if you watched their woofer cones at volume they were dancing around like man men, probably almost bottoming out.
Try turning up the volume and play a dead groove if you have one and watch what the woofer cone does. With a quiet table you will just see a little motion with a noisy one the cone will be dancing.
Back then their solution to the problem was a rumble filter. All the old high end preamps had one. 

Then after the AR turntable popularized belt drives and with the invention of electronically controlled motors and direct drive tables there was no longer a need for idler wheels to change speed. Idler wheels and rumble filters disappeared from the market. I'm all for nostalgia but if I ever get another TD 124 it will be for display only.

Mike
I do not have any woofer cones to dance.
Maggie's in my system.
Maybe that is the key here?

IF there is low frequency rumble, that fact that you don't have conventional woofers will only save you from having to observe the cone dance that might otherwise result.  However, the rumble would still eat up amplifier energy and possibly cause distortion in upper frequencies.  I say "if".  I don't necessarily agree that the 301/401 cannot be modified to eliminate or at least ameliorate that problem, without going all the way to the Artisan Fidelity set of solutions.

Instead of Artisan Fidelity, here’s what you can do for less money:

• 1. AudioSilente idler - $110
• 2. PAC 20mm oversize aluminum platter from CTC in UK - $750.
• 3. SPH bearing - $250

These 3 options will take your 301/401 to the next level. Huge improvement.
The SPH bearing reduces wow and flutter from 0.14% to 0.06%.

All I am saying is that if there is any low frequency rumble I do not detect it in my listening sessions.

And yea I am from the days of receivers from the 70,s where the rumble and the hi filter were de rigueur.

My fathers Rek O Kut Turntable not only rumbled but it fed back like crazy. On the HH Scott Preamp the rumble filter was always turned on.
He had a custom cabinet made for the whole system and looking back the turntable was mounted poorly. It looked nice though and was hidden under a hinged cover. The end result was that he got a bunch of prerecorded tapes and listened mostly to his Ampex and what a wonderful machine that was. Instead of scratches you got hiss. No dolby back then and the prerecorded tapes ran at 7.5 ips. Other than that the sound was wonderful. I was in charge of demagnetizing it once a month.
Anyway, many modern subwoofers have room correction with equalization to push the driver as low as feasible. If there is any noise below 30 Hz it can get magnified as much as 10 dB. So you can see what turntable rumble might cause. My system is digitally rolled off at 80 dB/Oct below 18  Hz. If I remove the filter and play a dead groove the woofers will flap a bit even with the SOTA. When I turn the filter on the woofers go almost dead in the water. 
Uberwaltz, if you can look closely at your woofer membrane and play a dead groove with the volume up you will see it flapping back and forth. Shine a flashlight in there! I've never seen one strike the magnets but I suppose with enough power it could happen. Anyway because the Maggie is a dipole it has a lot of trouble producing sound below 30 Hz. It just cancels out. But the membrane is still flapping which is why I really like to see subwoofers and high pass filters used with Maggies. You have to use two subs and cross at 100 Hz or even a little above. I have used JL Audio Subs under Maggies with great results. Of course if you only listen to digital files none of this matters but then what are you doing on this thread:)
Lewm I think you are basically right about wasted energy and distortion.
You can make a bunch of improvements to those old tables and they are serious metal having been designed for commercial use but you still have two more bearings, the idler wheel itself and the capstan mechanically connected to the platter. In a belt drive you only have the spindle. Even assuming that all the mechanical part were as good as reasonably attainable the idler wheel table is still going to make more noise than an equally machined belt drive. Can you make an idler wheel table quiet enough to function well with corrected sub woofers? I don not know. I can only say that I have not seen it done yet but it is not impossible but probably very expensive:) 

I had a Clearaudio Innovation on a cheap rack (Lovan) on suspended wood floor (but much more sturdy than that of a typical residence, which are impossibly flimsy), and I would experience nasty woofer flapping at times. It was very easy to see on my Tannoy’s big 15" drivers. I upgraded to a high-end rack (CMS Maxxum) and Clearaudio Master Innovation at the same time. No visible woofer flapping at all since then, not even a tiny bit. No more feedback issues of any kind. I listen at loud volumes, too. Sounds wonderful. I think these Clearaudio tables are capable of being extraordinarily quiet, but you must provide them a proper platform.

I'm also on the Garrard train, 301 in my case but, i have not had issues with rumble at all. I think like others have said it depends on the table you get and what your prepared to do to it to make it legendary. 

The Clearaudio is going to be a drop down set up and forget table the Garrard is going to require maintenance and updating to make it epic but if you take the time and money it will be much better then the innovation.  It's just how much time and money are you willing to put in to get to the holy grail of rim drive , think Shido here and the $30k Garrard. 

The ClearAudio will be the same for ever (maybe minor upgrades) the Garrard has a clear upgrade path if that's something your into. 

Also the Garrard's are only getting older but still sought after how many other 50+ year old tables get $2k plus for a basic table that needs a refurb.   

To me it boils down to easy or hard. easy ClearAudio, hard Garrard. hard things in life always seem better in the end, maybe, are you willing to put in the effort. 

Glen.

Glen and just how will the Garrard be "much better" than the Clearaudio which not only is a belt drive but also has a magnetic bearing. It certainly is not going to be better on the rumble front. If you put the same tonearm and cartridge on both tables convince me that the Garrard is "much better."
Mulveling, my point exactly. Any fixed, un-suspended turntable needs a firm footing from the floor up. If you have it great, you have much more choice in fine tables if not a suspended table is mandatory for trouble free high performance.

I’m not a fan of belt driven turntables.  I have a 301 in a walnut plinth, and the 301 sits on springs in the plinth.  Similar to my modified Dual 1229.  I also had a EMT 927 which is the best table I’ve ever heard period.   Never any feed back or woofer dance with any of these tables.

Properly set up, I would run with the 401.  It’s actually a better table then the 301, and because it is idler driven, it will have more pace and power musically speaking.  

Bur with any of us, it’s really up to what YOU like, what YOU enjoy.
You may prefer the Clearaudio, and if so that is what you should buy.

You will always turn a profit on the 401.  They are in high demand.  In five years time your Clearaudio will be worth a fraction of what you paid. Something to factor in.

I am going to stick with my 401 as it is by far the best sounding tt that has been in my system so far.
Very musical and dynamic.
No need for anybody to be telling me what i must be hearing  thank you.
Everybody to there own and just enjoy your music, I certainly am!

Moving one of my 401s to a concrete block "rack" on a concrete floor wrought a substantial improvement over a metal one.

Isn't that something noromance. I am not here to upset anyone or tell them what they should buy. By all means buy what you like. However, turntables are very simple mechanical devices. The simpler the better. No turntable can beat the laws of physics.
Norman, if you like dinosaur turntables knock yourself out. I can't use them because I have very powerful corrected subwoofers and a turntable like that would ruin everything. Garrards are cheap. I can buy over 5 of them for what my Cosmos cost and the Cosmos is a very fairly priced table given the competition. So maybe they will be worth a little more in the future. Still Cheap. None of the ultra high end turntables use an idler wheel drive. Do you think Tech Das would not be capable of making an idler wheel drive if they wanted to?? What about Walker or Clearaudio, or Basis, or SME. Watch what happens to VPI's half baked attempt! It will be gone in a few years. The idler wheel is a dinosaur. I'm all for collecting dinosaurs but I don't care to use one. If using one suits your purpose, wonderful.

Having said all that. The fact that there are so many still around speaks for the build quality of the Garrard and there is certainly a retro cool about them. Given the right Plinth, arm and cartridge I'm sure they can sound great. But, even brand new they rumble more than a belt drive.  I have a few 180gm pressings that most likely have more rumble than the old Garrards. Some hot shot gets his hands on an old lathe and thinks he is going to make high quality pressings on it never mind the thing has been in storage for 20 years an bounced all around town with it's 100 lb platter on. I have 6 "Audiophile" pressings like that and three of them are Ryko Discs. 

I used to own an Innovation Wood, which I ran alongside a Nantais Reference Lenco MkII. Had it on a Minus-K platform with a Phantom Supreme and Universal arm. Sold the Innovation and its arm, kept the Lenco, added a Brinkmann Oasis and a Phantom III. I don’t miss the Clearaudio. It’s a good table but never really satisfied me, just never felt organic and always seemed hard and lean. Its time keeping was quite good (via KAB) but so is the Lenco’s--maybe not quite as rock-solid but certainly very good. The cantilevered armboards needed careful shimming to achieve level, which bugged me. For all its magnetic/ceramic bearing, the motor noise was far more audible on its armboards than the Lenco’s (via stethoscope), and at a higher pitch. My Lenco has better grip and drive, or gives that impression, anyway. People like to diss idlers but done right, they are very satisfying decks. YMMV. BTW, I prefer the Brinkmann (on a Minus-K; without, like the Clearaudio, it’s a touch hard and lean) to the Clearaudio.

Mijostyn what cartridge are you using on your SOTA and Kuzma?

jam759, In the arm now is a Clearaudio Da Vinci v2. I have an Ortofon Windfeld Ti in the second head shell.

How good is speed accuracy and rumble on Idler drives?

I have four Velodyne dd18+ subwoofers, in stereo bass stacks outside of my Focal Stella Utopias. Turntables are Kodo the Beat and Artisan Fidelity 301 Statement.
I get zero rumble from either, and i play bass driven electronica - deep house, drum and bass, hip hop- at valley-shaking volumes.
Rack is an Artesania Esoteryc (sic)

tzh21, speed accuracy can be excellent but they will always be noisier due to the multiple moving parts. Even if they start off relatively quiet wear on the idler wheel will eventually increase the noise (rumble).
Idler wheel tables persisted in the commercial world because it is easier to cue an idler wheel table. If you don't know how disc jockey's cued records, they held the platter still with their left hand, placed the tonearm on the record at the beginning of the cut they wanted to play then "jockeyed" the platter back and forth to the very beginning of the cut and right on time they let the platter go. Finally the idler wheel tables were replaced by direct drive units which were even better at this. You can not use belt drive tables this way. 
gavman there is no such thing as zero rumble in a turntable.

mijostyn

If you don't know how disc jockey's cued records, they held the platter still with their left hand, placed the tonearm on the record at the beginning of the cut they wanted to play then "jockeyed" the platter back and forth to the very beginning of the cut and right on time they let the platter go. Finally the idler wheel tables were replaced by direct drive units which were even better at this.

Actually, the pickup speed of a good idler like the old QRK broadcast tables is faster than a DD, and why idlers persisted in broadcast well into the DD era.

You can not use belt drive tables this way.

Sure you can. You "slip-cue" by using  a slip mat, which lets the platter spin while you hold the disc steady, and then release the disc when needed. Many radio DDs had slip mats on them for just that reason.

Slip mats were used on direct drive tables cleeds. Belt drive tables generally do not have enough torque to get started IMMEDIATELY like a cuing table needs to. You need to practice your disc jockey exercises cleeds and stop sticking your nose into things it nose nothing about:)

On my phonostage there is a 'low cut' facility to remove rumble. 
I don't need to use it with either deck

I think the point is, that well implemented design and upgrades mean that rumble is not necessarily the problem you claim it to be

mijostyn

Belt drive tables generally do not have enough torque to get started IMMEDIATELY like a cuing table needs to. You need to practice your disc jockey exercises ...

Nope, no practice needed. Belt drive tables can easily be used for quick starts by using a slip mat. It's called "slip cueing."

... stop sticking your nose into things it nose nothing about ...

I'll post here as I see fit. If that's a problem for you, it's your problem and not mine, sir.

mijostyn"cleeds and stop sticking your nose into things it nose nothing about"
Cleeds knows nothing about turntables or Music Reproduction System components of any type, function, or design. AHe comes into this group to argue, defy, and obfuscate, and to correct, insult, and debate with users who are serious, knowledgeable, and expert. He does not own a turntable he "nose" nothing about audio and I applaud, congratulate, and honor you for recognizing that cleeds should be permanently banned, disbarred , and ejected from this group.

clearthink

Cleeds knows nothing about turntables ... He does not own a turntable ...

Actually, there is a photo of my turntable on the "Friendly Forum for High-End Audio" site, which doesn’t allow this sort of nastiness as we see here from users such as clearthink and mijostyn.