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want new plinth ideas for direct-drive turntables


By now, the idler-drive genre has enough ink on them without me adding anything new to the topic. What is little talked about is the "guts" of direct-drive tables. Many vintage DD units suffered from bad plinth design with inadequate solidity (often mounted to crappy plastic or flimsy particle-board) and inadequate isolation from resonance and interference of electronics.

I like the bare bone approach, that is, to take the motor out of the chassis/plinth/enclosure and mount it to a something solid, material of your own choice, and extend the cable by at least couple feet to the stock chassis or an enclosure that contains the electronics/motor-drive/control-console/power-supply. In fact, the Monaco Grand-Prix, Teres Certus, or early Micro-Seiki DDX/DQX-1000 takes the same approach.

Almost ALL DD tables can be improved this way. There are many other brands of superb DD tables with great potential out there can be had for very reasonable price and can be converted this way with good result. I no longer have any Technics tables on hand to experiment but I still got great results with some mid-priced JVC, Pioneer, Kenwood, Yamaha, etc... I haven't tried it on Sony and Denon tables yet because they require mounted a tapehead to check platter speed so the mounting is tricky. Modern belt-drive turntables have been doing similar things by separating the motor from the main plinth. Once again, Micro-Seiki was ahead of their time with their RX-1500 and beyond. It's only logical DD will go that direction. The days of having everything in a box for DD tables seems less attractive to me now.

If you have other ideas, feel free to talk about it here. And hopefully this will generate more new interest in the DD genre. Personally I am more interested in people's experience with brands other than Technics as they already got enough coverage in other forums and threads. Nothing against Technics, just want to direct attention to other sleepers out there. Anyway, still feel free to share ideas.

_________
hiho

Showing 2 responses by t_bone

t_bone
1,182 posts
 
In Japan, it is not uncommon to do that to the Kenwood KP-1100, which when "nuded" looks like this.

Almost all of the mfrs you mention can have the motor units out of their plinth with minimal trouble, including the Sony and Denon tables (the only problem would be if arm electronics were somehow embedded in the table controls, but even there, the above-noted KP-1100 can have it done). All of the Sony/Denon tables I have seen have the magnetic reader in the motor assembly, not outside it. Some Denon and Sony DD tables were sold originally as motor-only and are commonly put into big plinths. There is at least one member here with a Denon DP-80 in a slate plinth. I have one in a different wooden 'skeleton plinth.' Sony's top sold-separately plinth for the Sony TTS-8000 weighs a short-ton, and had an interesting built-in suspension. Victor's original plinths for their TT-81, TT-101, and TT-801 motors (also sold separately) which have a model name of 'CLP' were actually an early constrained-layer damping plinth which sounded much better than they had a right to (but in my opinion, they were not heavy enough).

A Japanese gentleman named Kaneta-san has been recommending this for years on Technics tables (his plinths were layered plywood as far as I know; sometimes with damping material covering them), and he goes as far as to rebuild the power supply, and in some cases, the motor controllers.
t_bone
1,182 posts
 
DP-100 spinning tunes as I write. Love it. Only need one though so the other is going to go... :^)

One might be able to wrap the electronics in TI Shield or something similar, and leave them there (like the board in the casing of the SP-10Mk2) but if one wanted to separate the brains from the brawn completely, it should be doable with an umbilical in all but a bare minimum of cases. I recently saw that someone had taken it out and run a larger chassis cord (with larger wire count) from the motor to an outboard box). The SP-10Mk2 is eminently suited to that from what I understand of its innards. As for the Sony and Denons and the 'tapehead'... I would have to imagine one could simply take the 'brains' off-board. If one wanted to remove the entire head assembly from the mounting under the platter (as it is attached to the motor housing), and go completely naked, re-installing it correctly might be a major hassle, especially if you wanted a plinth of slate (I'd mock up the topside in MDF or plywood before doing it). Off the top of my head, I cannot remember the speed-control technology in the circuitry of the TT-71; the bi-directional-servo starts with the TT-81. I am not sure why the Pioneers would be particularly easy to do the mods on but I'll take your word for it.

In any case, your project is an interesting exercise and I expect might be worth the hassle for a DIYer. Once I get get some space, I might try doing that with a beater I have...
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