Had a real nice conversation this morning with Origin Live’s Mark Baker. Mark makes some of the very best turntables on the planet and I was interested to learn more. This was our first conversation and so he was interested in me as well. This reminded me of others who have asked.
The following story is only superficially about the Miller Carbon. The larger and I would say more important subtext isyou can do it too! Please dear reader note the number of times something was tried not knowing whether or not it would work. Like all things in life: The more things you try and the more effort you put into it the better you get at it.
The Miller Carbon Story
My first turntable was a Technics SL-1700 with Stanton 681-EEE. It was 1976. Still have that turntable, anyone can see it, right there on my system page. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367. Rack on the right. Bottom shelf.
Next, after college, came the Listening Room and with it a new turntable. This was way before the internet. All we had was Stereophile On Dead Tree. After reading all the reviews it came down to a VPI package or Basis/Graham. What to do? Cast your mind back, way back, to the primitive past. Ifaxedmy question to Stereophile.
Michael Fremer called me back!
The Basis/Graham was my own decision.Fremer didn’t talk me into anything. Quite the opposite. He was a source of much useful information that helped me make up my own mind. So it was that I learned early on from Michael Fremer what it is that a reviewer really is supposed to do:provide the reader with the information they need to make their own informed decision.
My first high end mod was to remove the cheap rubber power cord from the Basis motor and replace it with an inexpensive power cord. Cheap, but proven to be better than all the freebie PCs and I wanted to find out if it made any difference on a turntable motor.
It did! Same exact improvements heard on the other components it had been tried on before. How or why, who knows, but I heard it. Other mods followed. Different belt materials were used. Silk, cotton, floss. Each had its own influence on the sound. Fascinating!
This was all part of the process of investigating turntable performance in order to upgrade. Easy to read about different materials, mass, motors, bearings- but what does it all mean in the real world? This was my way of figuring it out for myself.
Teres Audio seemed to be the value leader. A complete turntable was too expensive, but the motor could be added to the Basis with only a slight modification for the speed sensor. When this worked out extremely well it gave me the confidence to go for the platter and bearing.
But what about the plinth? Around this time I was working with DJ Casser and his Black Diamond Racing Shelf. His Shelf material was so much more effective than acrylic, it had to make a better plinth too. After a good deal more planning a BDR Source Shelf was cut into a unique sort of egg shape. Another piece was cut 4” diameter, drilled and tapped to be used as the nut to hold the bearing. Two more pieces about 3 inches in diameter were cut and stacked to make the tone arm mount. Three Round Things with Cones were screwed into the bottom of the plinth. The Miller Carbon was born. http://www.teresaudio.com/fame/40.html
Great and enlughtening conversation , while I have read many of your posts I find that your skills are much greater than mine when it comes to making / upgrading tweeks , but I do get a lot of ideas of things to try . DIY'ing has it's own special rewards and one doesn't have to be an engineer to give tweeking a try .
Everything by ear. There are times and places for everything. Amateurs messing with measurements is more often than not like a monkey trying to fix a helicopter with a ball peen hammer. Sorry. It just is.
Not that it isn't good for a lot of entertaining word salad. We had a thread one time went on and on and on, and all the guy was trying to do was check speaker sensitivity. One would think a simple dB measurement would be a slam dunk. Not even. The whole brain trust of this whole site couldn't agree on it even after a month of back and forth. So good luck.
Or on the other hand, make one change, either sounds better or doesn't, and the result is known to a certainty usually within a matter of seconds. Horses for courses.
Right. As Spock might say, "A dazzling display of illogic."
Where was I? Oh yes, the turntable.
At some point last year someone around here- if anyone knows who it was please chime in so they can get due credit - was talking about how great TA-102 fO.q tape works. So we got some and tried it. Sure enough, even a small piece makes a noticeable improvement.
This special tape is designed to eliminate micro-vibrations by turning them into heat through using the piezo-electric effect. This is different than most other materials that work on a more mechanical level. This tape is pliable but not soft, so it preserves dynamics. It does however remove a layer of grunge, leaving midrange and treble quite a bit clearer.
It was first used on the tone arm base, then arm tube and counterweight, and motor pod. Finally it was used on the bearing.
The Miller Carbon was originally designed around the idea of the best approach being to hold the bearing as rigidly as possible. So it was fastened directly to the BDR Shelf on both sides. After learning more about isolation it was thought maybe this tape would be an improvement.
A couple pieces were cut. One was cut to fit like a gasket where the bearing mounts to the plinth from above. More were used on the nut that fastens from below. Together this has the bearing held to the plinth with this tape in between. This was a very noticeable improvement for such a small amount of tape.
Another small piece went over the washer that fits around the spindle, with some more around the perimeter of the record clamp. Altogether these cleaned up a fair amount of grunge revealing greater detail.
These were the last few things to be done to the table itself. When first springs and then Townshend Pods were used under the table, and to excellent effect, that was pretty much the end of my old philosophy of how to approach the whole thing.
Not that it didn't get quite good results. The table as it is now really does sound quite good. It is more a situation of feeling like this is about as far as we can take it. Instead of trying to hold everything as rigidly firm as possible the experience with Podiums under speakers and Pods under components is saying it is better to isolate each thing in such a way that it can dissipate energy without inducing ringing in everything nearby. Another way of putting it is to let the vibrational energy dissipate more rapidly.
So, a lot of learning. A lot of changes, spread out over 17 years.
This is very cool. So I also worked with DJ on several projects very early in his business. He designed and built some very attractive free form tables for my law firm lobby out of CF that supported massive chunks of glass. Very cool conversation pieces. I already was writing for The Audiophile Voice at the time, a column called Ear Candy. DJ was prototyping cones and working on prototypes of the Shelf. I helped him with testing the resonance and bending modes for the Shelf at Newport Corporation in Irvine, CA. Worth looking that company’s products up. DJ made changes over the first year before going into production based on those tests.
I talked DJ into helping me redesign and rebuild the Casser/Goldmund Studio. We did a feature article on the rebuild for The Audiophile Voice. So the turntable has a carbon fiber wrapped Delrin lead impregnated subplinth, enlarged carbon fiber wrapped Delrin base, and Newport Corp active pneumatic self leveling suspension that runs off of a 100 psi air tank; a noise free active suspension that isolated vertically and horizontally to .5hz. We needed a massive subplinth to properly activate the Newport feet. I have not modified the Goldmund platter, but am working on the frame for the T3F pivoting linear arm now. Just recently converted the arm for balance connections. Went with a highly regulated 24 LPS supply for the motor, from a Goldmund ELIM, years ago.
I don’t have a lot of experience with other tables, but these mods elevated the Goldmund Studio significantly. And the T3F arm, even with Koetsus, sounds better, more neutral at the extremes with far better image geometry to me, than the FR-64s and Syrinx PU-4 that I have, when they were new.
This is a super fun and rewarding hobby when investing your own time to improve manufacturers’ efforts.
And I miss my time arguing with DJ over many of his early years in the business. He sent me some CF momentous just before he passed. Great guy and a true artist.
Gotta say, the TA102 on the tonearm base and the tonearm platform (for a lack of a better term) that is part of the VTA tower on a VPI tonearm and a strip along the length of the bottom of the aluminum uni pivot arm tube made a noticeable difference.
Interesting read MC. It is always an curious time when we have modified, experimented, and tweaked a piece to the point we now realize that the next logical step is to move to something new (at least to us) and start our journey over again. I have had a few quality discussions with Mark Baker and currently enjoy both an OL Illustrious mk3c and OL Enterprise Mk4 on my Soverign TT. This is my third OL table and they have always perplexed some in my audio group who mostly have higher end VPI tables and arms for a multitude of reasons. Looking forward to what will reside under the dust cover you describe as being designed for the next table. Rick
Funny you should mention, this thread is sort of a dual-purpose. People have asked me about it, and kept getting put off. Until now, when a new Origin Live Sovereign MkIV and Enterprise MkIV arm are due here next week. 😍😍
Perfect segue, as you will probably notice every step of the Miller Carbon story was in a way slowly leading me to Mark Baker's approach.
For sure the Miller Carbon is a fine table, and should provide years of listening pleasure to whoever buys it. For me it is as you say time to move on (after 17 years!) and everything learned on this table gives me a deep appreciation for what Mark is doing with the Sovereign.
Funny you should mention, this thread is sort of a dual-purpose.
For sure the Miller Carbon is a fine table, and should provide years of listening pleasure to whoever buys it. For me it is as you say time to move on (after 17 years!) and everything learned on this table gives me a deep appreciation for what Mark is doing with the Sovereign.
Now I see why you didn't want any posts by anyone who saw the failings in your homebrew turntable.
This thread appears to be purely an advertorial for you to sell your homebrew turntable through the back door via the forum.
How about listing it on Audiogon and paying a sales fee.
I wonder how others feel about attacking someone personally like that over something clearly not even ready to be sold yet?
drrsutliff-
Love my Sovereign Mk3-2 dual tonearm TT. I expect you will enjoy the MkIV as well as the Enterprise MkIV.
Thanks. Initial impression, to judge by reviews and comments such as yours, Origin Live is another outstanding UK performer that has somehow managed to fly under the radar here in the States. We will see.
When you say your OL tables have always perplexed some in your audio group I have a hunch why that might be but curious to know what it is that you think they find puzzling?
The perplexing part seems to be the Origin Live experience doesn’t have some of the low level background noise issues that they claim are intrinsic and almost expected in vinyl playback. They accuse my reproduction as being like a CD but with analogue emotion. I agree there seams to be more “excitement” in their system’s analogue presentation but in my system the OL presentation is more of what I strive for in my system at this time.
Dear @middlemass : " So if we can’t "prove" something, it doesn’t exist. ""
You are even smarter than the " smart " mc but even that and talking of what the " marter " mc posted:
" digital is noise ", well according your " great logic " as the smarter and you can’t prove it confirm that noise does not exist and is an untrue statement. Got it?
Both of you make my day, try to follow that way: smarter.
Btw, how is that been you so smarter can't turn a Dynavector into a Grado cartridge? Maybe mc can help you due that his TT mmakes " quite good sound ". Go figure a TT that makes sound. Ovbiously following your logic.
They may find that perplexing but to me it is understandable and indeed a major reason in choosing Origin Live. That was really the over-arching theme or reason for this whole discussion, to try and relate some of what was learned in order to better understand what can be.
The other main point, maybe even more important, is to encourage people to actually try and do some of this stuff. Because it is one thing to talk and think, but really we learn by doing. Without doing, anyone can talk themselves into anything. See it all the time. Narrative is the scourge of our times.
Doing produces results that cannot be denied. When your Sovereign is silent, well that is just a fact anyone can hear. It should be plain as day the turntable and arm have no way of knowing what to silence and what to pass as music. So if you hear silence from one table and not another you can be sure, absolutely certain, which one is doing it right.
The real reason then they are perplexed is they bought into a false narrative. We will know soon enough. The Sovereign is in LA customs. We will know soon enough.
I'm sorry, but how many people can say this turntable is beautiful ? I'm just curious. This taste in high-end just killing me. With all my respect I can't say it's beautiful, quite opposite.
So many years of tweaking just to have this in the system ? Even if the sound is amazing I would like to stay miles away from such turntables.
Late 1990’s. I was trying different things and his stuff was so good I had to call and guess my enthusiasm made up for not having an actual business and so he let me be his distributor in Seattle. Which really amounted to showing off to the guys at the local audio club, taking them around to try in their systems.
I was young, it was fun. Didn’t pay anything, certainly not enough to cover all my time visiting all these guys. How many people make house calls to demo $60 worth of Cones? 😂 But it was cool, I got to see a lot of systems, learned a lot, massive experience.
So working with him was all over the phone, and working with his products. He sent me some stuff nobody else got, which is how I learned it isn’t really the carbon fiber, that is almost entirely cosmetic and makes for a nice story. When I say over and over again how the "reasons" manufacturers state for performance are best regarded as nothing but stories, it comes from experience. Lots of experience. Not just DJ. Lots of em. All the same. Stories.
Audiophiles take the stories so seriously. Psych!
Back then I had a lot less experience and confidence. The idea for the Miller Carbon turntable came from using the Basis and realizing it was nothing more than a board with some holes in it. If the Basis could be that good with acrylic, which is nowhere near as good as BDR, think what it could be made out of BDR!
Being young, naive, and trusting, I discussed my ideas with DJ. Couldn’t get him to make me one. Finally decided to just build my own from a BDR Source Shelf.
That was the beginning of the end of my working with DJ Casser. First he started telling me his material was too hard, couldn’t possibly be cut except with special tools. Then even if I did the dust would kill me. When I say manufacturers exaggerate, here we go. Cuts up just fine with band saw, table saw, router, you name it. Sands out real nice too. Just look at it. Anyone but chakster can see how beautiful it is.
The end of working with DJ came at CES. I was in the Talon room with my prototype turntable on display. A friend came in said, "Hey have you seen the BDR room? DJ ripped off your turntable!" Went there and sure enough, everything I had told him that he had pretended no interest in doing, he had stolen and built into a real impressive looking table!
And interesting story for sure! I have been looking at upgrading the motor in my unit to a three phase brushless motor with much higher torque than the old stock unit. But using a DC motor is an interesting concept.
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