I knocked out a dimensioned drg for my Mounting Plate, in Coral Draw. Its linked on my website and also below. Feel free to use this in a non commercial way, if you so wish. DRG
|
Hi
On the subject of wands and upgrades......
I’ve been a Terminator user for over a decade.
Back in the day, when Vic at TransFi was fitting steel pivot pins, running directly in the Aluminium "V" of the Strap extrusion, users like myself were experiencing chatter based distortion. I discussed this with Vic and mentioned I was going to try lining the "V" with various materials including Silicon and Nylon. This would not be easy to achieve as a production feature and I mentioned that an alternative might be to use Nylon pivot pins, which are available off the shelf, just requiring a point to be added. This is where we followed different paths, Vic followed the plastic pin route and I followed the plastic "V" route. I removed material from the bottom of the strap extrusion and let in some Nylon 6 strips.
This works very well and by pressing down with finger pressure, the steel pins leave impressions in the Nylon, which stops the wand moving around in the "V" or sliding out when I return the slider to its resting position a bit to enthusiastically.
Another issue I had, was the Mounting Plate was flexing/bending when I tightened the Pivot Bolt. This made levelling the Sled almost impossible, so I designed and made a stronger Mounting Plate.
This mounting is much stronger.
I will be turning my attention to smoothing the air supply next, maybe filling the tank with Polystyrene beads.
You can see my whole project, including my method of wire dressing, on my Web Blog Here:
|
I did a long post explaining why I cant make for others and how to go about making one yourself, but it did not publish and was lost.
|
Sorry I can’t help folks out with these, but some details of the Bracket and other tweaks can be found Here:
And my purpose made Turntable for the Arm Here:
I don't have CAD files for the part, but I will see if I can knock out a dimensioned drg.
I got a local machine shop to mill the three slots, I made the rest using hand tools and a belt sander.
Note the mounting slots are specific to my DIY deck and may not suit others.
|
I noticed the Mounting plate twisted when I was levelling the manifold/Slider. I would get it just right, hovering in the middle and when I tightened the Pivot Bolt the plate twisted and the slider moved at speed to the right. So almost impossible to set accurately. Every time I adjusted VTA it would throw it out.
If you notice, I have turned the slots through 90 deg.
This allows me to position a cartridge anywhere in the long Wand mounting slots and make adjustment at the Mounting plate to accommodate this.
The stock slots are about compatibility with the most number of decks.
Make the slot positions to suit your own deck and run them front to back, in my opinion, this is more useful. I used M5 bolts in 6mm slots. This gives more than enough wiggle room to align the manifold angle.
Wow, I don’t think my Missus would go for a 150L smoothing tank in the living room.
My pump has two outlets, the output oscillates from one to the other.
Common practice is to use a "Y" connector and join the two, before entering the tank at a single location. I am going to try feeding the tank with both outputs individually. Joining two 4mm tubes into one 4mm tube must restrict flow or cause back pressure.
Then I’ll try filling the tank with Polystyrene balls 4 to 6mm diameter.
The air will have to find its way through all the fine passages between the balls, or it may even act like a fluid bed, the air lifting the very light balls. I’m not sure if the flow/pressure is sufficient to do this, so its a suck it and see.
I will fit an inline filter, after the Tank, to stop any small particles going down the line into the manifold. It wouldn’t take much to block the holes in the manifold.
|
Yes, you're correct, I fell out with the Terminator, due to difficulty in setting it up and then maintaining this correct set up. I was never happy with the silk covered Litz wire or the recommended way of dressing it. Also I took my gear to HiFi meetings at least a couple of times a year, and a set up, every time I moved the deck didn't suit. A pivot arm just worked out better for me, the wife was scared stiff of touching the Terminator. Having said all that, when it was on song it bettered anything else I had owned.
During a recent bout of inactivity, with no other DIY HiFi projects on the go, I decided to have one last go at sorting my Terminator. It was during this set up, that I realized the cause of many of my woe's, the Mounting plate was flexing when levelling the Manifold/Sled or changing VTA. Once I realized this, it gave me some new impetus to sort the arm out.
I used to swap ideas quite a bit with Vic, he loaned me his rubber band Slider, were the pivot pins sat on rubber bands.
I have seen his latest wand on his web site, but like with the rubber band Slider, it doesn't sit well with my way of thinking. To much damping and ways of errors creping in to VTA, Azimuth and VTF.
I don't like the Nylon Pivot pins, I prefer Steel pins running in a Nylon "V".
I tried to contact Andrey, re the Carbon wand, but he is not answering emails from the West, he may not even be receiving them.
|
I got the modified Terminator Arm finished and mounted to my DIY DD Turntable.
It's rock solid, with the new Mounting Plate.
I need to fine tune things to find the sweet spot and make up my mind if I prefer the sound with/without the 3mm Copper mat.
I mounted the cartridge as far forward as possible, to reduce the effect of different record thickness on VTA.
The external power supply I made still works fine after more than a decade, it’s the only clue that the deck has a Technics SL-1200 DD motor and control circuit in it.
The Platter and its Bearing came from a Pro-Ject RPM9 deck, I made an adaptor to allow it to work with the Technics motor. The platter and bearing is much, much superior to the basic Technics SL-1200 or the SL-1200G_ _ for that matter. The bearing is the one used on the current top of the line Pro-Ject Turntables.
|
Actually I suggested Nylon Pins to Vic, not saying Owen didn’t have the same thought though. I was discussing the Chatter based distortion with Vic, with the then steel pins running direct on the Aluminium "V" of the Strap. I mentioned I was going to remove material from the Strap and line it with Silicon or Nylon. Vic thought this would add to much extra complexity/cost to his production. So I casually mentioned an alternative could be Nylon pins, as they are available off the shelf and just need a point adding. I never actually liked the idea myself but Vic ran with it and it did cure the chatter. I always felt the pivot bearing needs a firm almost sharp point to work best. The Nylon is a bit to soft in my opinion.
I like your thinking, but I think anyone, not just design professionals can see the benefits of keeping things simple. The low tech approach of the Terminator has less to go wrong or maintain.
Actually I would have designed the mounting and VTA system completely differently. To me the fundamental flaw with the Terminator is the single pivot bolt that locks off the VTA adjustment and the Manifold/Slider levelling. Adjust one and you effect the other, I would have had separate methods of adjusting each.
But it is what it is and it kind of works so I can live with it. Designs are never finished, Vic still tinkers with his, as do I, its all part of the fun and it keeps the old grey matter ticking over.
Tip:
The Screws for levelling the Manifold/Slider are very sensitive in their adjustment, I tend to get it somewhere close, lock off the pivot bolt then do the final adjustment using the feet on my deck. It only takes a fraction of a turn on the feet but it is much finer adjustment and I can get the Slider to float stationary much easier this way.
Sound:
I tried with/without the Copper mat and preferred it with the Copper.
I put the Technics/Terminator with a lowly AT33PTG II up against my heavily modified Lenco idler drive with original Mission 774 arm and much more expensive VDH MC One Special. I preferred the Technics/Terminator.
I put the VDH in the Terminator and this confirmed it was the better set up.
I love the sound and my mods make the arm nicer to use, its the best sound I’ve had from Vinyl. See more comments Here:
|
@ledoux1238
The distortion, was vibration feeding back through the stylus/cartridge into the Wand/pins. When steel pins were running in the Aluminium "V" of the straps this vibration caused them to wiggle about or chatter. This noise or distortion could be heard through the playback as a break up of the trailing edges on vocals etc. Vic added weights over the pivots to try and stop this, which was partially successful, then went to Nylon pins as a more pliable contact point, giving some degree of damping, which worked better. I went for steel pins running in Nylon "V" which I think works better still, both sonically and in a practical way, as the pins can be pushed into the Nylon, making a small depression and they stay in these, rather than slide along the "V" in use.
Yes setting the VTF is a pain with these disc weights, but sonically better than the original boss and threaded rod with a screw on weight. This was easy to adjust but didn't sound as good. I reset my VTF yesterday and it took me about 20 attempts to get the 1.42g I wanted, must have knocked the wand out of position 3 or 4 times in the process. I set the VTF with the air off and I get repeatable measurements. If yours is varying, I would question your wire dressing, it may be causing slight drag.
|
@ledoux1238
0.02g is a tiny amount, but I am getting exactly the same reading every time.
There is a blue sticker in the centre of my scales measuring pad. I do get slightly different readings outside this zone. I stand my gauge on a wood block next to the platter, it brings the measuring pad up to the exact height of a record on the platter.
I am using VERY light and flexible wire, which has improved things in this area. When I used the silk wrapped Litz wire, my readings were all over the place.
Check out my blog for details of the wire I use.
|
Hi @ledoux1238
Been away for a few days. What gauge and type is that wire, looks like thick, Silk wrapped Litz?
I hate that stuff with a passion and is the reason I almost gave up on the Terminator, horrible, horrible wire. Kinks and twists and isn’t very flexible.
That "O" ring crimp looks suspect, an unnecessary weight dangling on the wire.
Your bundle of four wires, seem to be fouling the slider and possibly the manifold, there is no slack to allow for vertical Wand movement.
I’m not surprised your readings are not consistent.
Wrapping or twisting all four leads together makes a stiff bundle, better to let them separate. Get rid of that crimp and put a small piece of heat shrink on there if you have to, but I leave them loose up to the top of the slider. It will be difficult to put heat shrink on without removing the cartridge tags.
Is that "O" ring not meant to be a ground wire, connected between the pivots?
I don’t use a ground, just the four wires from the cartridge, to keep things light and flexible.
Without seeing it in action, that’s my best assessment.
|
The best sounding wire I ever had, was the original pure Silver wire that Vic used to supply with the Terminator. Unfortunately his supply dried up and its no longer available, I've searched myself. This was, in my opinion, a little to stiff/heavy, but when you got the dressing right, sounded phenomenal.
The varnish layer on the Copper Litz just makes it to stiff for me. My current 36AWG Silver plated Copper is very, very light and flexible. The PTFE coating is very thin and soft, so the wire is free to move and offers minimal resistance.
If I could find something similar in pure Silver I would use that.
Andrey seems to coil the bundle of wires like a spring, to me, this is not a good method. The fact that the Litz wire will stay in that form and not relax confirms my thoughts on it.
|
Well I replaced my pump with something quieter.
It's the HYGGER HG095 4W version.
This gives 95GPH/360LPH at 0.02 Mpa pressure.
So slightly larger flow and slightly more pressure, than what came with the Terminator, but not by much.
Sound level is <35dB, which is noticeably better.
Fed the twin outlets, individually into a 5L tank with 4L of Polystyrene balls in it (4 to 6mm diameter).
I wrapped the pump in 10mm acoustic foam insulation, which lowered the noise further, but only by a small amount. The combination of new pump, twin smoothing tank inputs and Polystyrene balls has definitely improved the air supply.
More importantly, my set up sounds better, smoother, more detailed.
Even the wife commented, saying it sounded better, not knowing what I had done.
|
Vic used to buy the Silver screened wire from HiFi Collective (HFC) here in the UK. They still have it on their website, marked as discontinued! I came across it recently when I was researching what wire I could use.
I had a tidy up, went through some of my boxes of Turntable/Cartridge bits and bobs. I found some of the original balanced Silver/Silver screen leads that Vic made up for me 10 years ago and a pair of RCA using the same, so I have x4 strands 800mm long and x2 strands 600mm long.
I’m tempted to make a new harness for the Terminator. I would use just two strands, the core for the +Signal and the screen for -Ground on each lead from the cartridge. I had a go at stripping and separating the core/screen on some of the Silver wire last night, it’s mighty fine and tricky work, but I can do it.
Mmnn.... I will sit on the thought for now as my deck is sounding so good, but its an itch I think I will have to scratch along the way.
I have my pump and tank on the top shelf of a corner cupboard, where I keep my bottles of whisky, the only way I could fit an additional tank, would be to lose the whisky? That’s a hard decision  .
|
Well I own a Terminator and don't think its garbage, love it and nothing anywhere near its price point comes close. Best £800 I ever spent on HiFi.
@ledoux1238 I'm using a Van Den Hul MC One Special, sounds fabulous into Pass Labs XP-17 Phono/XP-12 Pre and Neurochrome 686 Monoblocks, Canton CT-1000/2 speakers.
In the past, a Goldring 1042 worked quite well, but a Denon DL-301 II worked really well, as did an AT33PTG II.
|
Yes, my other/previous pivoting arms, have all been low to medium mass, hence my cartridge choices were to fit any of my arms. At present I only have the Terminator and an original Mission 774 low mass arm. Having said that, using the 774's damping trough and paddle, with fairly viscous oil (50,000 cST) allows low compliance cartridges to work well.
Minor rant coming, but may be of interest....
There are no hard and fast rules in this game and to many arm chair experts telling us what to do, without any experience of your kit/combination, spouting pure theory, without real knowledge of how to apply it. I'm not having a go at @dover here, this is a general observation.
At my HiFi groups meetings, towards the end of the day, we do a mix and match system try out and the most unlikely components have synergy together, when on paper they are a total miss match and should sound terrible.
The nay Sayers for the Terminator, quote, amongst other things, unequal Vertical and Horizontal mass as a major issue, who cares, it works well, so they are obviously not seeing the full picture. The same with direct drive turntables and the cogging effect. If this was audible, as some claim, how do these decks achieve such vanishingly low wow and flutter figures? Budget belt drive could not achieve any where near these figures, its no coincidence the term cogging effect was used to combat the belt drive falling sales.
If its not physics its psycho babble, with A/B testing, placebo effects and the like, how many of these folks have even studied the subject. It seems they will use any excuse available, to avoid trusting there own instinct, ears and having an opinion of their own.
I like to mod things myself, but I don't throw the baby out with the bath water. The guys that design the gear we use, actually know what they are doing, its their day job. To many bits of kit are butchered by people that think they know better. I find this especially prevalent with loud speakers, where dabbling with low voltages on passive crossovers does not risk life and limb, so the dabblers have a go, spout lyrically about how wonderful they now sound, but the speakers end up in the classified adds a short time later. I noticed this a lot with the Celestion 66 monitors, so many people followed one particular forum thread and modified their speakers accordingly, six months down the line the same folks were selling them, as the magic of the originals was lost. I personally followed every one of the changes and tried them all, the mods were rubbish, they produced a different sound, not better and for every detail they had improved on, there were others that lost out. The author even admitted (very briefly) he had never owned a pair of 66's and was just applying general theory. I threw out his mods, went back to basics, replacing the off spec components with like for like and even putting some original parts back in, the magic returned.
My Pass Labs gear gets criticism from certain quarters as not measuring particularly well. Do you not think that Nelson and his team can't knock out a design that measures immaculately? This is where they start, but then fine tune by ear to get the sound they want, at the expense of a little inaudible distortion.
The whole tube amp third harmonic "pleasant" distortion shows us that its not all about the numbers.
I'm much more relaxed about my approach these days and buy what I like the sound of, rather than what the reviewers tell me measures well, though most of my kit does measure quite well, just not in the top say 5%.
I like the sound of my set up and it certainly gets great comments when I take it to shows.
It can be said, that we will never achieve our ultimate system, there's always something to try or tweak. I look at it this way, when you stop listening for flaws in your kit and you just listen to the music, you have reached your nirvana. Stop tweaking and just buy more music.
This is just one mans take after many years in this hobby, folks can and will disagree with what I've said, I'm not forcing my way of thinking on anyone, just hopping it will resonate well with like minded people.
Enjoy the music!
|
@ledoux1238
I just made an unscreened Phono lead to go between the Terminator and my Pass Phono Stage, using Mundorf Silver/Gold SG105 wire. Combined with the the Silver plated Copper I use on the wand the results are outstanding.
Using my set up of course, but I had goose bumps listening to some old favourites this afternoon. See the construction on my Cables page under "Premium Phono Lead" Here:
|
@ledoux1238
"You use a junction box to terminate the phono wires from the Terminator. Why don’t you run it direct to the phono stage?"
I used to use one piece cartridge to phono stage leads, but to get them flexible enough for the Terminator travel, meant very thin wire. I was using heavy XLR connectors at the time into a balanced phono stage that was a current rather than voltage amplifier (AQVOX 2Ci). I used to transport the deck to shows and have to set it up after every relocation. After snapping a couple of sets of leads I gave up on that idea. Even the weight of the metal XLR’s was enough to snap the leads.
I now have the short leads from the cartridge soldered direct to some RCA sockets mounted on the back of the arm block, these wires are ultra thin, the jacket on each is only 0.28mm diameter. The new silver interconnects are thicker and go between these RCA’s and my phono stage. This is a much more robust way of doing things and suits my requirements.
I don’t use the Molex connector which allows easy changing of Wand/cartridge, as I only use one set up. This at least removes one set of brushing contacts.
I don’t like the cable Andrey uses or his method of coiling/dressing it. But that’s nothing unusual, I didn’t like Vic’s method either.
I do my own thing and think my method offers less wire resistance or drag. The wire I use is both, lighter and more flexible, so a double whammy. I just ordered some more of this Wand wire, to have on hand, as the only supplier I've come across is in Portugal.
|
