Maplenoll fans Iink about Bob Dilger

I wonder if the car floats on air!

Back in 19?? I bought a new Maplenoll Athena. That had an air-bearing, tangental arm (similar to the ET) and air-bearing platter. It was the best sounding tt/arm I'd heard up to that time. Unfortunately after about one month of use it developed problems. My dealer tried to repair it but failed so gave me credit toward another table and arm.

Later on I read about more filtering added for the air lines and assumed that was the problem with mine. Too bad as it had great potential.

Anyway, sorry to read about Robert's issues now.

In the late 90s I had the Athena Special Edition with the 50 lb platter, 500 feet of air tubing from the Ir pump to the turntable and two air buffers, the Maplenoll itself was up on a modified version of my Nimbus sub Hertz iso platform with 150 lb of dead weight for ballast. BWS modded Tube Amps with regulated everything. Naked '57 quads on Arcici stands. Sounded pretty freaking good as I recall. Lol

I also had an Athena back in the day! I think it was Fred Kaplan who rated it as one of his favorite products of the year. I also had problems with it and later sold it. I now have an Ariadne Signature that I bought about 3 years ago and the first night I had the table it sounded great and the pump blew up! Bought another pump and keep threatening to get it back up and running.

I read some crazy stuff about Col Robert Dilger transporting an anti tank gun he was trying to sell the military to the Pentagon and the gun went off at a gas station and blew up a gas pump causing a number of injuries. He had some sort of alliance with Pierre of Mapleshade in their Defense Department days. Really interesting stuff if you google Col Robert Dilger.

Didn't Lloyd Walker Audio buy out Maplenoll? Pretty sure the Walker table is the evolution of the Maplenoll. Walker also being a friend of Pierre. The plot thickens...

Lloyd worked for maplenoll in its last days. I have two maplenoll's that were modified by him and some of the old stock. Not sure if he bought the company but he did buy some of the stock. His design is similar to the maplenoll though more refined and advanced