I currently own a Revox linear tracker. I bought it in 1981 and it still plays nicely. Mounting aftermarket cartridges is difficult, and the "String Tensioners" have probably stretched to a degree. When new this unit was a joy to use and sounded good. However, I have since bought the Music Hall mmf-7. WAY BETTER for sound quality. |
In 1984 I purchased a Sony PS X5555 ES (ES=Elevated Standard) linear tracking, bio-tracer table with the Sony moving coil cartridge. Back then the table cost $1,400.00 new. I re-carted the table with a Dennon unit, then a Benz Micro Glider unit. I used this table into 2003 then replaced it with a Michell Gryo SE /SME V arm and the same Benz cart. The engineering incorporated by Sony to develop this arm was incredible! Full auto operation, direct drive, quartz locked, safety protection features galore! The table still functions flawlessly (built like a tank) and is packed up in its original box. But...I will admit, the later system blows the Sony away at all levels of sound reproduction. The few remaining linear trackers availiable today are of very high quality....but at a very high price tag. |
my first was a rabco st4 and it was a joy except the wow and flutter.
i have a mapleknoll athena and its a VIVID sounding player but i need a quieter and more reliable pump and now i have a pioneer PLL1000A which is the exact tt as the phase linear 8000a.
the sound isnt what my vpi/.sme IV gives but its fun to be able to change carts quickly.
its too bad linear trackers didnt catch on but it takes effort on the part of the manufacturer and cd came in and the need became less.
some argue that linears are always off tangency and continuously correcting. just hear one and youll realize thats a fallacy, especially the iar bearing arms. |
I have a ET-2 air bearing linear tracking arm I purchased a long time ago. I still have not heard anything I like better. |
Henkaudio...The servo system that moves the arm pivot assembly quickly along the track, lowers the arm at the outer groove and picks it up when the record is finished is separate from the system that controls movement during play. I don't think that cleaning or lubricating the arm track will help, especially since you say that the arm plays OK once it gets going. If you try cleaning the track be careful not to use anything that would leave a sticky residue. I think that your unit may need some adjustment to the fast arm movement servo. Sony service centers (one of two in the USA is near Boston) claim to be able to work on the PSX800...I wouldn't let just anyone try. I have a copy of the service manual and let me tell you this is one complex piece of electromechanical hardware, and software. Yes the thing has several microprocessors in it.
This player is a technical masterpiece (I think they must have sold it at a loss) and I would ship mine back to Japan if necessary to get it fixed. In these days of the global marketplace, shipping to Japan wouldn't be much different from shipping across the USA. |
Hello Eldartford,
I own a PSX800 too. I bought it some weeks ago. It's like new but since today pushinging the starting button the arm doesn't move to the outer groove and won't lower the arm on the vinyl. If I give the arm a little help by pushing it, there's no problem. Every works fine then. I wonder if lubricating the rod will help. Do you have any experience with that?
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I also have the Sony PSX-800 with linear tracking biotracer arm, and find that it performs flawlessly. For example, it will play records so badly warped that an ordinary arm gets tossed completely out of the groove.
The reason that I bought it was because I attended a seminar at a High End audio shop on the subject of how to set up a conventional pivoting arm. I never realized how many angles and tracking forces were involved, and how many of these errors can only be approximately corrected because things change as the arm tracks the record from outside towards the spindle.
I think that most linear tracking arms failed because they relied on virtually frictionless bearings so that the arm would move with a very tiny sideways force from the stylus.
The Sony Biotracer arm uses servo motors to move the arm (side to side and up and down) so as to keep all those troublesome angles down to about 1/10 degree. Stylus downforce is also applied electronically, a nice feature which lets you adjust the force while a record is playing so that the sonic effect can be heard. |
I own both a restored Yamaha PX-2 and a Sony PSX-800 Linear biotracer. They outperm anything else I've ever heard.
John Kercheval |
Just in case anyone is interested, there's an auction currently on Ebay for an Infinity turntable from 1973 which has an air-bearing arm. Looks like this prototype never got off the ground but it looks interesting (in a retro kind of way). My other 2 cents... the ET2 arm was quite wonderful but the armtube had to be meticulously cleaned and setup for the arm looked daunting. |
Jody, no I don't know what a table like that would bring these days. I suspect not alot. |
I had bought one of those expensive (at the time Linear tracking) I paid $1300 canadian for a Mitsubishi LT 20 their top of the line then and it is in excellent copndition except of course small scratches on the dust cover any idea of value? Thanks Jody |
Poorguy, yes I think they are. The Revox is a very well made turntable with Swiss precision. Unfortunately they decided to use direct drive, which inherently puts the motor vibrations into the platter, even though most DD makers claim it doesn't. The only DD tables that were really good are the Rockport, which is all air-bearing, and the Goldmund. Before Psychicanimal jumps in here, I'll say the Technics SP-12 does a decent job with DD. And so does the Revox. It just doesn't do as well as a good belt drive table does. In addition, the Revox linear arm is not good enough to beat out a good pivot arm. This combination of things puts the Revox a level under a good belt drive like the ones you mentioned. Now I know that some people have these Revox TTs, and I don't want to be disparaging of them, but this is my opinion based on listening tests in the store I worked at, where we sold Rega, Linn, Sota, and many other belt drive TTs, and we also sold the Revox stuff. I did comparison listening on these things when they were brand new. My opinion has been stated above. |
Twl, are Regas, VPI HW-19 IV, & Sotas better than Revox B79x? |
The Revox TT is a pretty good one for their "genre" of TT, which is direct drive, and mediocre linear tracking. If you wanted a TT of this type, you should be aware that the direct drive types will impart a motor vibration into the platter(whether they claim it won't or not) and the linear arm of that type will not really be true linear, but instead, a "crawler", and will be loose enough to lose information at the arm bearing. For the money that you will pay for a Revox 791, or a B&O 9000, you could get a nice, belt-drive, pivot arm TT, that would walk all over the Revox in terms of performance. |
So I assume affordable Linear Tracking models from the 80s, such as Technics SL-10,Yamaha px-2,etc,are good in "theory"...but bad in "practice?"...are there any affordable models that come to mind...maybe the revox b791? |
One rationale for linear arms was to maintain perfect tangency to the groove, following the track of the cutting head across the lacquer. In comparison, pivoted arms are truly tangent at only certain radii on the record, and this can result in distortion.
Linear tracking arms are far from simple in operation. TWL mentioned air bearing versions with pumps, and there have been others with multiple rotating rods or servo motors to facilitate the arms' lateral mobility, especially as required to track off-center records. |
Twl's comments are to the point. As someone who tried several of the linear tracking arms in the mid-1980's, I found them to be a mixed bag. Linear tracking arms are conceptually the "ideal" way to reproduce LP's, since the path of the tonearm/cartridge duplicates the tangential path of the recording lathe cutter head. There are a number of practical and engineering problems, however, in making a good linear tracking assembly that is affordable.
First, the tolerances neeeded to produce a high-quality, air-bearing linear arm are very tight, which means that the manufacturing costs are likely to be much higher than a conventional pivoted tonearm.
Second, if you were going to invest in a good quality, air-bearing linear tracking arm, you needed to have a really solid, stable turntable that would accept the tonearm/bearing assembly. There weren't a lot of TT choices in the early to mid-1980's that were suitable for use with air-bearing linear tracking arms.
Third, the air pump needed for an air-bearing assembly posed additional engineering challenges. The pump must be able to deliver a fairly high volume of air at a very constant pressure (fluctuations in air pressure could lead to jerky movement of the tonearm). Noise was almost always a problem with those pumps, so having them in the same room with your playback system wasn't a good option. The alternative was to place the pump in an adjoining room or closet, and then run a long tube from the pump to the tonearm assembly. Needless to say, this tended to exacerbate the WAF (wife acceptance factor).
Last, not all cartridges were well suited for use with linear tracking arms -- there were either mounting problems, or problems with excessive noise being transmitted from the tracking assembly to the cartridge. There could also be problems with the rather stiff phono wiring harness, which could cause drag as the linear arm moved across the surface of the record.
In short, there was great potential in linear tracking arms, but their cost and the "tweakiness", and the expense of a really good matching turntable was more than most people could afford. With better pivoted tonearms becoming available from 1990 on, air-bearing linear tracking arms became relegated to the very highend market. |
Ha! Phasecorrect, you will get some posts on this thread for sure.
Actually linear tracking did "take off", and it is seen on some of the best, and most expensive turntables made. Rockport, Walker, Forsell, Versa Dynamics, Maplenoll,Goldmund, Clearaudio are a few of the ones that have the linear tracking type arms on them as a combo/package. Eminent Technology ET-2.5 is one of the more commonly seen separately available linear tracking arms.
The thing about linear tracking arms is, that it takes a high quality, and usually high cost application to make the most of this design. The mass market ones that were commonly seen in the 80s, like HK/Rabco,Pioneer, Technics, etc, were too "loose" to provide what was really needed to make an arm like this perform at top level. The air-bearing types finally showed what could be done with a linear tracking arm, and these are some of the best arms on the planet.
They are not without their problems, especially in set up requirements, but they do perform at a very high standard. |
