rock mkv

frank
decoupling the armboard has been a question i have pondered for many a year.
it seems to me to make such LOGICAL sense but manufacturers
seem to ignore this i guess because of installation
i did build a tt out of old roksan spares and mounted the arm on a small wall shelf behind the deck
the results were certainly positive until the wife used to clean/polish
she always managed to move the deck!
i may in the future try this again with the rock
the rock is heavy enougth to not give the same problem
maybe great minds do work alike
but some say fools follow blindly!
good luck with the system
ps
heard an orbe with tom evans dc motor power supply and it sounded superb!

Uktel,

Yes, the ribbon tweeter is "fast" and is able to cleanly reproduce fast percussive transients. It's also quite airy when the recording contains that information. I think it's a very good tweeter.

And I totally believe that the damping trough does work. I used to have one on my Mk-III Rock. In fact, one of my friends made one for his SOTA and liked it; although now he has a VPI TNT and doesn't use the trough.

It would be difficult to mount a trough on the Orbe. So I'm thinking that the Riggle VTAF device, which decouples the tonearm from the armboard and allows quick and easy VTA setting may be a good thing for me to try.

But I have to tell you that even as things are, with the Ebony L on the Orbe I can clearly hear very low level details (echoes, spatial effects, and low level hums from electronic instruments) on some of my records that I never knew were there. And these are very interesting effects that add a bit of nuance to the recordings. Even hard to make out backing vocals that are lost or garbled on other tts can now be heard clearly.

I can tell you that keeping platter-bearing and motor noise from getting to the armboard is another area that can lead to considerable sonic improvements... And I have a couple of tricks for accomplishing that which work very well on the Michell.

frank
heard some good feedbacck regarding nu force 9s
siltrains swears by his and uses the same phonostage as myself
how are those ribbon tweeters?
at a guess i'd say your'e response will be FAST!
I used my rock today with and without the damping trougth
that trougth really dors work
the most noticeable attribute is better control of sibilance
thus making the human voice seem more natural and real.
pehaps you could optimise one to work with your orbe?

Uktel,

Yes, my RM30's have the 10" side-mounted Mega-woofers, as my wife doesn't want me to put separate subwoofers in the room. The woofers get down strong to the 30Hz range, and that seems to work well for most music.

I recently sent my NuForce Ref 9SE's back for the V2 rebuild, and I'm looking forward to their return around Wednesday. Meanwhile, I'll be listening to the Orbe in my upstairs system... I made a unique speaker system for that room by blending a pair of Silverline Preludes with a pair of the new Minuets sitting on top (tweeter down, bi-wired with the Prelude tweeter disconnected. It sounds better than either speaker alone. I call it my Silverline "Supertower."

Both speakers cross at the same frequency and slope and the Minuet tweeter sounds a bit more detailed and transparent than the Prelude tweeter, plus I get an extra mid-woofer to top off the resulting array...

Sorry for meandering off topic.

Best regards,
Frank

love the look of those vmp 30s
are they side mounted woofers?

I don't know... I think I'll stick with my Michell Orbe SE with Wilson Benesch arm and Benz Ebony L. I performed a great fixed suspension mod on my Michell and it sounds fantastic... detail, dynamics, slam, musicality, soundstaging, you name it!

I'm presently waiting for a VTAF device from Pete Riggle Audio, which may improve it even more. I have to admit I'm pretty happy with this setup and I've heard a lot of analog setups.

Not impressed with the Linn either.

Cheers!