Thanks for the correction, Larry. You are quite right. |
Wow, Terry, that is a really interesting sounding DIY table. The platter is about 100 lbs! With that kind of weight, an air or magnetic bearing is the way to go. NICE!! By the way, the material for your cantilever does not have much bearing on the compliance of the cartridge. The amount of force needed to deflect the stylus to a specified distance (compliance) is really determined by the cartridge suspension. Mulveling, it must be great having three different Koetsu cartridges, including the top stone cartridge. Do you have any other cartridges? I have sometimes been tempted to get something radically different just to mix things up. Have you been tempted to get something like a Colibri, just for something completely different? (I like spending your money for you). |
Should mention that my KRSP has the diamond cantilever - can't imagine a much lower compliance than that.
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Hello Karl.
I bought a Trans-Fi for my modified Nottingham Analogue Mentor, with the Dais bearing, new motor, and matched power supply. Great improvement.
Only with time did I realize just how good the Trans-Fi really is. Every adjustment possible, all of them intuitive, but only VTA easy and on the fly. VTF fiddly (remove wand, slide a counterweight and tighten) but positive. Azimuth fiddly (remove wand and rotate set screws) but very high precision (repeatable 7 minutes of arc, IIRC), and highly stable. The wand assembly has the highest integrity and stiffness.
The wand has holes machined into it to reduce mass. But these are ideal for adding brass weights to increase mass as needed. The wand is flat, so that anti-resonance material can be laid upon it. Air pressure can be manipulated to change damping. Versatile - the thing should be called the Versatile. Just by tweaking you can significantly change the characteristics of the sound to suit your mood - high precision, or soft and romantic.
So I bought another one for my DIY turntable with aerospace air bearing and 45kg composite platter. I doubt if a significantly better tonearm is available at any price, if you are willing to put in some time setting it up. But I've got more time than money these days. So it's Trans-Fi for me. Times two.
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Karl,
Have you considered the Moerch DP-8? I think that it is at least an interesting design. The arm has weights on outriggers located right at the vertical pivot of the arm. The weights substantially increase the horizontal effective mass of the arm, but, because they are located around the vertical pivot, they don't increase the vertical effective mass substantially. What this is designed to do is to use the higher horizontal movement effective mass to resist movement of the arm from side to side in response to horizontal modulation of the groove. Very low bass is typically mastered in mono so that the groove motion is primarily side to side (if mastered as a stereo signal, the vertical depth change would be too much for the thickness of the record). By the arm not moving in response to the bass modulation, the full measure of the bass is outputted by the cartridge. By keeping the vertical effective mass reasonably low, the arm can still effectively handle warps.
I have not heard the DP-8, but, those who have say the bass response is very strong with this arm. It should be particularly effective with somewhat low compliance cartridges, like Koetsus.
While this purely speculation on my part, high effective horizontal mass of air bearing non-pivoting arms might also account for why they too have strong bass response. I heard this with arms like the Mapenoll, Walker and Kuzma arms. |
Terry, I read a lot about the Trans-Fi arm and think it is brilliant. Interesting to know that it does well with low compliance cartridges. For whatever reason I have only used pivoted arms.
I have an U/S cleaner, the cheaper one by CleanerVinyl. Works great so far. Makes a big difference on some of the used "VG+" records I buy. |
On the Ortofon website they mention a special Japanese geometry which does not directly fit the Baerwald alignment. Is this true of the FR-64? I seem to recall a thread about the FR-66/64 that mentioned an alternative mounting distance. It was a dertonearm recommendation. |
My local dealer is a BIG Koetsu fan, particularly the wood and lacquer bodied versions. He likes the top end Ortofon arms. These are the arms with the square pivot assembly (e.g., AS-309S 12") that is available from Japan, but not commonly available in the US.
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I didn't think I would be the type of listener to appreciate a saturated sound but I hear the differences in instruments so much better. For example, the different sound of Cannonball Adderl's sax compared to Coltrane. More information? More body for sure. Other than my tuner, the system is all solid state Pass so maybe that is why the RSP is complementing everything so nicely.
I was going to try out the Jelco HR-30 Rosewood headshell with the Koetsu/FR-64S. Lew, why not put your Urushi on the FR64S and report back! I don't know of any Koetsu haters but I know a certain "distortion" hater who has no love for the lack of damping on the FR-64S. Its actually reading his comments on it that convinced me I should try it.
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It is said that the FR64S and 66S are great matches for the Koetsu cartridges. It is also said that the FR headshells are not so great, so I would consider finding another headshell to use with the FR/Koetsu combo. But high tonearm effective mass afforded by the FRs is good. I own both a Koetsu Urushi and an FR64S, but I have never yet mated them. (I use a Dynavector headshell on my FR64S.) You actually own two products that are both loved and hated by different factions among the cognoscenti: Koetsu and FR64S. |
The entire Koetsu line has a saturated, harmonically dense sound that is quite musical sounding. If you want it slightly leaner and a little more like other top end cartridges, then the stone bodies Koetsu would do the trick. The wood and lacquer cartridges are a little warmer sounding. If there is any shortcoming with their line, it would be that they don't track quite so well with some of those freak records designed to torture test cartridges; but with regular music, they track perfectly. There are not that many other cartridges that have the same sort of warm and relaxed sound that also manage to avoid sounding muffled or soggy. Allaerte, comes to mind, but, some of those make Koetsu cartridges seem bargain priced. Perhaps the Ortofon SPU models, but, they require arms designed for the integrated headshell. |
Got to hand it to the ladies - my KRSP came the same way, but for a major birthday.
I use mine on a Trans-Fi air bearing tonearm, and a DIY air bearing turntable. What I like best about the Trans-Fi Terminator (don't blame me, I didn't name it) is the low cost / high quality, in which clever use of standard material is used instead of exotic machining. Second best, is tweakability. Third, it's a low pressure system using an aquarium pump, so none of the oil-filtering hassles. Fourth, you buy direct from the owner, who promptly goes on a mission to make the tonearm work for you.
I adjust the mass of the wand with brass weights to accommodate different cartridges. For the KRSP, I use two 5 gram brass weights and one 2 gram weight on the front of the arm wand, and that seems to work well.
May I also suggest an ultrasonic record cleaner? My dealer could detect no wear whatsoever after 400 hours of use - which means that the increased sound quality is just about free.
Good luck!
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Interesting story mulveling. Glad she bought it, I could never bring myself to do it... and I'm the crazy audiophile guy!
I am going to try to align using a custom Accutrak arc protractor which I have used for other arms. Like the MINT LP, these are printed out for each tonearm based on the tonearm geometry. The advantage of the MINT is surely the mirror. I let you know how I fair.
noromance, from what I see, the Rosewood Headshell is actually a hybrid with metal interfacing with the cartridge and rosewood and brass on the top. The wire connections are supposed to be of a higher grade as well.
Exciting... |
That’s awesome! She did amazing choosing a Koetsu Platinum. I love my Platinums (Rosewood, Onyx, Jade, Coralstone); stuck with Koetsu ever since I discovered I had a hard time warming up to the upper range Ortofons (Windfeld, etc).
I’ve got a Fidelity Research FR64fx that sounds awesome with ’em; the F64S should be even nicer (and looks cooler too). Alignment can be tricky on these 10" FR arms; I really like my Mint LP protractor for that.
I also really like these carts on my Graham Phantom Supreme.
And I DEFINITELY remember first seeing Koetsu carts advertised in needledoctor / music direct around 2006 -- that $15K Coralstone, $8K Onxy. 3.8K Urushi Blue -- and thinking how stupid that pricing seemed, especially when the main differences seemed to be wood vs stones, paint colors, etc. I wondered why would anyone pay thee prices when carts like Ortofons are much higher tech. Years later I actually got to HEAR a Koetsu (I didn’t seek out the audition), and then it was all over for me. |
Nice. She's one in a million. Interesting info on the Koetsu. I wonder if you should try a harder headshell on the Jelco.
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Congrats, Karl. Your wife is a treasure.
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