VPI TNT 3

Thank you for your quick replies! I have reached out to VPI, but they are quite hard to get ahold of, however I did chat with a very friendly lady there who took down my information and was going to get the right person call me back today!  I will keep you posted on how that goes!  Not sure if they will still have parts for a 30 year old table? 

Again, thank you for all of the great responses!

I will look for that FB page!  Thank you.

Yes, my TNT 3 does have spring coils inside of the corner towers!  I have re-purposed a set of Sorbothane legs left over from a HW-19 Jr upgrade to a Mk III. I have used them to hold up an aluminum platform to sit the large TNT form-factor on.  Should provide great isolation! 

I was looking at the bearing, and it does appear to have some wear, but still working adequately.  When I speak to VPI, I will talk to them about the following items:

- replacement pulley system or plugs?

- replacement for my PLC, as it does not slow the motor down enough to play 45 rpm's.

- replacement bearing.

- upgraded feet

- upgraded clamp

Thanks for everyone’s great feedback.

That is a very good point that I did not think of… I thought I was just being resourceful re-purposing those Sorbothane legs!  I will definitely take them out and substitute some old tip-toe cones in place!  I will report back if I hear any changes (hopefully improvements). 

Well, you certainly raised a good point about the Sorbothane (double sprung isolation), I switched the Sorbothane legs over to standard solid tip-toe mini cones… and I can tell immediately that the bass was deeper (maybe stronger and more focused would be better adjectives), yet smoother (which was the biggest surprise), the mids and treble were clearer, less harsh (albeit only by a small margin).  So good call you guys!!! Thank you.

Again, thank you for all of your replies, great community for sharing ideas. Appreciated!  The platter that I have on my TNT3 is 1.5” thick, with the bottom 1” appears to be aluminum with 7 grooves around its perimeter, the top 1/2” appears to be black acrylic, the bottom has a sheet of cork covering the outer half of the platter with a lead-filled disk inside. It weighed in at 20lbs.

Quick question, right at the moment, I’m using my old PLC box (that came with my HW-19) to adjust the speed control to get 33.3RPMs tested with a stroboscope printed disk. To get 33.3 I need to turn the adjustment dial down to about 9:00.

However, for 45, I can’t turn the dial low enough to bring the speed down to match 45 on the stroboscope disk! Even at the lowest setting, it’s still about 2-3% fast. Does anyone have any suggestions to dial in 45rpms in the meantime until I’m able to pickup an out of production SDS or an updated PLC (currently VPI calls it the ADS).

Regarding the PLC not working for 45rpms… I took the PLC into my local Audio Repair tech… and in about 10 mins he had it working!  He said it just required a small adjustment!  And sure enough it spins 45’s right on speed. Fantastic! 

Quick follow-up on this thread regarding my VPI TNT Mk3.  Since my last post when I got the PLC unit repaired, it has been working flawlessly! 

Couple of other upgrades, searching through some of my boxes of old turntable accessories, I found a cartridge box, with an old Koetsu Black cartridge that I bought used back in the 1980’s and it only lasted about a year, then it’s cantilever suspension could not hold itself any longer. So I boxed it up and completely forgot about it!  After making this great find… I consulted a number of local audiophiles and found that there are a number of companies that can repair cantilever suspension, etc.  I choose VAS which was located directly next door to the VPI office! I spoke to them and they assured me they have performed this service on Koetsu cartridges many times with great results!

So I shipped my Black off to them and in no time they sent me sound files and video’s with the cartridge fully repaired, new suspension, cantilever and stylus. They did a head to head comparison with a variety of $1000+ cartridges and preferred the updated Black!  Not that I could tell from the digital sound files, but I took their word for it that it was in good shape!

When I got it back, I installed it and took extreme care to get all of the alignment parameters as exact as I could. And OMG, now that is an upgrade!!! It was like I had a whole new record collection (again).  The bass was rich, deep and smooth… stunning! Everything was better, soundstage, clarity in the mids and highs.  What can I say, but VAS did a great job!

As I illuded to in my latest update, I had made a “couple of upgrades”, first being the Koetsu Black refurb.  The second being one that is not directly on the TNT itself, but in the path of the phono signal.  It was the addition of a SweetVinyl Sugar Cube Mini.  And what an upgrade it was!

For those who have not heard of the Sugar Cube, it is essentially a “pop and click eliminator”.  But nothing like the devices of decades ago that would simply chop off anything in the signal path over 10kHz (which included mostly pops and clicks)… but also included some of the music and the sense of the aire, space and soundstage, etc. so those old devices were never that good.  The Sugar Cube is completely different.  It uses sophisticated software that is capable of distinguishing the difference between “music” and physical flaws in the record surface that cause pops and clicks, it isolates those sounds and then removes them from the signal path. 

Now a point of contention is how does it do this on an analog signal?  Well, to be able to analyze the signal, it must convert it to the highest resolution of a digital signal possible (194/24) so that the software can detect and remove before it returning the “repaired” signal to its output and convert it back out to your analog line level preamp connections.

Since my pre-amp has its phono stage built into the pre-amp internally, I simply put the Sugar Cube through my tape loop, which works great / easy to bypass if I felt the need to do so. 

But let me tell you that I almost never bypass this device as it does not take anything away from the “aire” and “space” of the music… soundstage is left completely intact and now completely silent with no background noise! Completely incredible.

I have a fairly significant Classical record collection (mostly purchased from the used record bins) that I so rarely played in the past, mostly due to how distracting pops and clicks take away from the beauty of the silent segments of the music.  But now with the Sugar Cube I have completely revitalized my Classical record listening… as I find myself not thinking about the noise and clicks in the background, but just becoming immersed in the sheer beauty of these amazing compositions!

I whole heartedly recommend the Sugar Cube as a “must have” device!  The most fun feature of the Sugar Cube is the “monitor” button, which changes its output from the “repaired” music to what it’s actually removing!  It’s quite astounding, I have some records that are scratched beyond belief, and now they play like a brand new record!  Wow.

I think the only way to get a software update is to ensure that you have the device successfully connected to wifi.  This will allow you to control the SugarCube with the mobile app (they have both iOS and Android apps).  Once you have the app connected, then go under the Support menu and select “Updates”.  There will be a “check” button, if you are not on the latest version of the firmware, it will ask you to update.

I believe you can also connect the Sugar Cube to your router with an Ethernet cable.  If wifi is not a good solution for you.  I have not tried this method, but they walk you through it in the user manual.