I bought this tonearm nearly three years ago, mounted on Nottingham Analogue's second best table from a dozen years before: 20Kg platter, upgraded bearing, upgraded plinth. Terminator's improvement over the $1500 NA tonearm was significant.
The combination now sports a high end Koetsu, and friends with Schroeder arms find the combination pleasing. Speakers are modified new Quad ESL's and electronics are to match.
I agree that set-up is CRITICAL. It's not too hard, but you need to take your time and get it right. I have sited the pump in another room.
My first pump was an aquarium pump, Rena Air 400, but I am in the process of upgrading to a Hiblow with a precision pressure regulator. I have found that the exact air pressure affects the sound substantially, with more pressure changing the sound from soft and mellow to harder and more precise. Basically, air pressure can act as a tone control. The Rena gives a neutral sound.
One great thing about the T3 is that the air is problem-free and noiseless, because it is low pressure. Another great thing is the fact that it is easy to put brass weights onto the arm wand to change its mass. That too affects the sound dramatically, and so I can use a high compliance MM when I wish (no weights), and low compliance MC (with up to 14g) when I wish. Weights too can act as a tone control.
I suggest silver wire and ETI plugs, and an extra arm wand. Go for the latest, with weighted pivots. I also prefer an aluminum tower to the Delrin tower that Vic supplies, but your mileage etc.
I think that the T3 is a superb bargain. Not least, Vic seemed to be on a mission to improve my system, and HE LISTENED to what I wanted. Rave review from this quarter. |
Spirit, now that I read my response I realize that the last sentence is misleading. True, but still misleading.
The point is that the platter is perpendicular to gravity, and so is the tonearm, by measurement, not theorem. Everything being precision machined and so forth just makes it easier to go from the theoretical optimum to the measured optimum. |
Spirit, with respect, that sounds a lot like an ad hominum sneer. We are all, I would have hoped, governed by what is observable. That is science. That is my way. The other way is superstition.
I stand by what I wrote. |
Hello Gary.
I use three arm wands for my three main cartridges: MM, MC mono, and MC stereo. It takes only a minute to change arm wands, but ...
1. with cartridges so expensive to replace, I take extreme care with stylus guards, etc.
2. each cartridge requires a different set of weights
3. it's only sane to check everything once it is installed
All in, 15-30 minutes, which is fine for an evening's listening, but not recommended after every record.
I use separate silver lines with ETI plugs for each arm wand because I really don't need an extra junction in the signal path. I expect that you will get the "latest and greatest" - but ask Vic. He is very helpful, and not rapacious in the least (hard to believe in our hobby, but there it is). |
Hello Spirit.
The thing is to get the arm absolutely parallel to the surface of the platter. Of course, it helps if your turntable platter does not wobble on its bearing!
To this end, I had an aluminum plinth and tonearm tower made up at a precision machine shop. The plinth has two perfectly parallel machined surfaces, one for the turntable bearing, the other for the tonearm tower. The aluminum tower itself has perfectly square ends. This makes it easy.
First, I level the top of the platter using three adjustable feet. I really take my time on that. I think that I'll follow TMS's advice and use a Starrett in the future - I should have thought of that myself.
Then I power up the air and place the wand carrier, without wand or cartridge, in the centre of the arm, so that it can drift either to the left or right. I adjust the levelling screws until the wand carrier does not move. Then, because the platter bearing and tonearm tower mate to precisely parallel surfaces, the platter and tonearm are parallel by elementary plane geometry.
Et viola. Music. |
Update on a regulated air supply.
More to report than I expected. I thought the results would be a matter of nuance, not a matter of dramatic improvement, but I was wrong.
I had been using a Rena 400 aquarium pump with two surge tanks, of 4 and 20 litres, with 1/8 tubing. The sound was very good indeed.
Then I moved to a HiBlow 40, a much more powerful pump. The first surge tank is a LEAKY 4 litre plastic bottle filled with cotton swabs, plumbed with 1/2" tubing and connected to a Fairchild precision regulator. From there 1/4" tubing connects to the two previous surge tanks.
The Terminator (lord, how I hate that name) runs sweetly at 9 mm of mercury (or 9/760 = 0.012 atmospheres), and has an interesting set of tracking characteristics. My Koetsu tracks the highly challenging bass tremolo on Bells of St Anne de Beaupre (Real Time Records "Power and Glory"), but not many of the soprano arias. At 20 mm of Hg, it tracks the sopranos flawlessly but not Bells.
The quality of sound improves dramatically from Rena to HiBlow. It is smoother, less artificial, more focussed, and more elegant. Improvement in focus continues, albeit to a lesser extent, with more pressure up to 20 mm.
All reports preliminary, you understand. I just set this up, and so may have to revise everything I just said. If you want to try it, let me know what you think - it's small change for a real improvement, IMO. What's more, the physics predict it, so I suspect that the improvement is real. |
Update on a regulated air supply.
More to report than I expected. I thought the results would be a matter of nuance, not a matter of dramatic improvement, but I was wrong.
I had been using a Rena 400 aquarium pump with two surge tanks, of 4 and 20 litres, with 1/8 tubing. The sound was very good indeed.
Then I moved to a HiBlow 40, a much more powerful pump. The first surge tank is a LEAKY 4 litre plastic bottle filled with cotton swabs, plumbed with 1/2" tubing and connected to a Fairchild precision regulator. From there 1/4" tubing connects to the two previous surge tanks.
The Terminator (lord, how I hate that name) runs sweetly at 9 mm of mercury (or 9/760 = 0.012 atmospheres), and has an interesting set of tracking characteristics. My Koetsu tracks the highly challenging bass tremolo on Bells of St Anne de Beaupre (Real Time Records "Power and Glory"), but not many of the soprano arias. At 20 mm of Hg, it tracks the sopranos flawlessly but not Bells.
The quality of sound improves dramatically from Rena to HiBlow. It is smoother, less artificial, more focussed, and more elegant. Improvement in focus continues, albeit to a lesser extent, with more pressure up to 20 mm.
All reports preliminary, you understand. I just set this up, and so may have to revise everything I just said. If you want to try it, let me know what you think - it's small change for a real improvement, IMO. What's more, the physics predict it, so I suspect that the improvement is real. |
Hello Harold.
Unfortunately, that listing will not load for me, but they do sound similar. Mine is Japanese, with all the best that this connotes.
I have three surge tanks. The air path is: pump, 4 litre filled with cotton, regulator, 4 litre empty, 20 litre empty, tonearm. |
|
|
A thoughtful post, Dgarretson.
Even so, I do not agree that you have demonstrated that a pump with a 1 psi output is necessary and sufficient for Terminator. First a technical quibble: as you note, P and V are inversely related, so that it makes good sense to speak of pressure at a specific load, to wit, the pressure at the volumetric load of the Terminator. I am not sure that your measurement technique accomplishes this, but have not thought about it much - is this a standard engineering technique?
Second, it seems to me that you have demonstrated that Terminator works at 1 psi (your technique), but not that 1 psi is optimal. I have measured the pressure in the line, after regulation, and this is clearly different - the saddle floats at a much lower pressure, and so my measurements are approximately 10% of yours.
My conclusions are the same as yours: just as pure DC improves amplification, pure air (pressure) improves flotation. The question arising is, what is the cost/benefit curve? Or, how heroical should we get? Since I didn't know the answer, I bought a more powerful pump so that I could waste energy in smoothing, and the results are, to me, well worth it. |
Hello Spirit.
Maybe I'm getting too old and grouchy ...
I agree that with all who say that the Terminator is a low pressure system, and intentionally low. The question nevertheless remains: "How low? On which turntable, with what cartridge, with what auxiliary weights?"
I thought to investigate this question. First, I bought a higher pressure, higher volume pump so that I could waste energy in smoothing. This has been VERY worthwhile, in my system.
Next, I tried to float a massy wand, comprised of a massy, low compliance cartridge, which is improved with extra weights adorning the wand. Naturally, this needs a larger counterweight. This floats, barely, at 9 mm of mercury. The sound is dramatically improved. I attribute this to smoothing.
As expected, the sound changes with pressure. Higher pressure sharpens the focus, lower pressure dulls focus. Now, the question of system integration arises, and that depends very much on the turntable.
I had deliberately softened the sound of my turntable by interposing cork discs on the shelf supports, but this appears to be no longer necessary, as I can now modulate this factor with air pressure. I will remove these as soon as I can get a mover in to lift the components, so that I can get at the supports.
Specifically, the schematic is:
PUMP --> 4 l surge tank with cotton --> regulator --> pressure gauge
--> 4 l surge tank --> 20 l surge tank
--> Terminator
YMMD |
DG, I don't think that air volume is constant over a pressure change of an order of magnitude. But I have no measurements to back that up.
I agree that pump output pressure is largely irrelevant, unless you have a leaky system. Which I do - leaky tank and pressure regulator. That extra volume has to come from somewhere.
As to the leaky tank, I am pretty sure that a leaky tank smooths out pulsing. So do cotton balls. Think automobile muffler, especially like those on my first cars. |
Hello Harold.
I have not tried a large tank alone. I recalled the days of my mis-spent youth, and cars with leaky mufflers, which absolutely smoothed the exhaust emitted at the tailpipe. So I decided to add to this with another piece of muffler technology, the so-called glass-pack, in which a perforated tube runs inside another container packed with glass fibres. I simply substituted cotton fibre, and added a filter.
I don't think that yours is a stupid question at all. Why don't you try it, and let us know how it works? I have foolishly decided that the experiment is over for the moment, and closed up the cabinet. Until you find something better for us to try, that is. |
Hello Spirit.
Yes, he suggested that I post photos and suggestions. I will probably do that at some point, but I am working on an air bearing turntable at the moment, so ... |
Changed the mounting options on my turntable. On the turntable itself I changed the sorbothane pads to aluminum spikes resting on aluminum pucks. The shelf which supports the turntable is now supported by hardwood pillars all the way down to concrete.
Took a tip from TMS and used a Starrett level, another improvement.
Results are good. Soundstage focus is improved and so is accuracy, without deleterious harshness. An old angel recording of Satie has the introductory percussives which are not too far off the piano upstairs (which some more modern piano records cannot match, which is interesting). |
Dgarretson, I noticed that you posted on the stability of the Terminator saddle, and that the stability decreased with increasing air pressure. I noticed the same thing, even with a highly filtered and regulated air supply. In my case, it seems to be a vertical movement rather than horizontal. What were your observations?
Again in my case, it seems that the trade-off is saddle stability vs lateral friction, as the latter clearly decreases with air pressure. And this is where we find an interesting benefit of the Terminator design, that the cartridge is almost immune to vertical saddle movement, because of the point bearings which support the wand, leaving wand inertia to filter out the saddle movement.
Lateral friction, of course, will affect trackability, and so higher pressure will tend to reduce that distortion component. The sweetest spot for me seems to be about .3 to .4 psi, measured according to the pressure in the line, just past the regulator.
Have you had any more thoughts? And thanks for posting about the saddle instability. |
