Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?


I have just acquired a 32 year old JVC/Victor TT-101 DD turntable after having its lesser brother, the TT-81 for the last year.
TT-101
This is one of the great DD designs made at a time when the giant Japanese electronics companies like Technics, Denon, JVC/Victor and Pioneer could pour millions of dollars into 'flagship' models to 'enhance' their lower range models which often sold in the millions.
Because of their complexity however.......if they malfunction.....parts are 'unobtanium'....and they often cannot be repaired.
128x128halcro
I don’t want to touch the argument about vintage vs new production DD Technics with a 10-foot pole. Nor do I even want to argue about which vintage DD turntable sounds best; all the best ones have avid supporters.

But, Raul,  I wrote that my DP80, like I guess all DP80s, was made to run on 100VAC. The seller (person who sold it to me) told me he had been running it at 120VAC. In other words, he ignored the labeling on the side of the chassis. (He was in California, where some rules of nature can be broken.) He even said it was running OK on 120VAC, but it was not. There was no evidence that the power supply had been deliberately modified in any way to work at 120VAC, although that might be possible to do. In fact, I always suspected that the malfunctioning of the control IC was caused by his subjecting the turntable to excess AC voltage. So, there was nothing out of the ordinary about my DP80.  I bought step-down transformers on eBay, one each for the L07D and the DP80.  Oddly enough, my TT101 does have the capacity to take 120V, 100V, and maybe even 240V, by setting the primary of the power transformer.  Someone else told me that there were a batch of 120V TT101s made to be sold at US military PXs in Japan, and mine might be one of those. 
@l it was cleeds whom posted first and then I gave him an agreement on it. That's all.

Take care.
hi Raul: "The 71/81 came with coreless motor, you have a misunderstanding. The 71 has not bi-directional servo."

Perhaps you are right and my 'audio education' has been adversely affected by those from whom I choose to learn and listen to. But don't blame me, I've been hanging out with the crowd in this thread for years!

Seriously though, the resident motor 'expert' on this thread was hiho, and if I recall correctly he owned several tt71's and insisted, when the question arose regarding what kind of motor it and the tt81 had, that it was a cored one. Moreover, in the JVC catalog I referred to above, the side by side turntable descriptions have "coreless DC servomotor" under the tt101 and just "DC servomotor" under all the other tables (in that catalog--which didn't include the tt801).

Can you tell me then why you believe 81/71 have coreless motors? Perhaps you have a definitive catalog you could share? And if the 81 does have a coreless motor then, given that it possesses the same speed control as the 101, what is the difference between the two--only the digital speed counter?


You are totally wrong. From where you learned or I have to say ....) used Yamaha motors not JVC motors both are way different and measures different: 75db against 85db in the Yamaha.

Wrong.....
As only the Japanese can do, it was a co-operative effort designed by Yamaha in conjunction with Micro Seiki using a motor and motor control electronics from the Japan Victor engineer who designed the motor and motor control electronics for the TT-81.

Mostly Micro Seiki mechanicals and Victor electronics.
The 71/81 came with coreless motor, you have a misunderstanding.
 
Wrong......

TT-81

Motor: DC servomotor

Drive system: direct drive

Speeds: 33 and 45rpm

Speed detection: integrated frequency generator

Servo system: quartz locked positive and negative servo control

Starting time: within 1 second

Wow and flutter: 0.025% WRMS

Rumble: 63dB

Speed deviation: within 0.002%

Platter: 310mm diecast aluminium

Dimensions: 150 x 358 x 358mm

Weight: 8kg

TT-101

Motor: coreless DC servo motor

Drive system: direct drive

Speeds: 33 and 45rpm

Speed detection: integrated frequency generator

Servo system: quartz locked positive and negative servo control

Pitch control: +-6Hz

Starting time: within 0.6sec

Wow and flutter: within 0.02% WRMS

S/N: 75dB

Starting torque: 1.2kg/cm

Speed deviation: 0.002%

Load characteristics: 0% (with a 120g total tracking force)

Drift: 0.0004%

Platter: 310mm aluminium diecast

Dimensions: 150 x 358 x 358mm

Weight: 10kg

Sigh......so much mis-information
I do not think that the choice of one engine instead of another makes all this huge difference and I would not take this parameter too seriously to think that a turntable is better; I rather believe that everything in composing a turntable makes the difference better or worse than the competition.