Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

"What's truly interesting is that the MAS uses a technique patented by none other than Lenco: the rubber-decoupled counterweight end-stub"
Sorry John, no rubber in Lenco tonearm end-stub, only a piano wire that connects it to the main wand.....

Cheers,
François.

Thanks for your input Francois, it's been a looooonnnggg time since I played with a Lenco tonearm, the only one I ever rewired was back in '92 when I first discovered the Idler, then found my first Mighty Lenco!! That tonearm I also modified by gluing a better headshell in the front, with epoxy-resin (I found one which fit snuggly into the drilled-out end), and via advertising at the back of British audio mags found the address of Technical & General for new armblocks. The end result was quite good as I recall.

So I guess the MAS tonearm is excellent for reasons all its own ;-). On another budget front, I just cleaned up a Sony 1130 integrated, truly a work of engineering art with matched capacitors and so forth, and it came within a hair of matching the top-of-the-line Sony 2000F preamp/TA-3140F combo which is my current reference!! Lots o fpower too for those looking for audiophile sound and Party Punch on a budget!! Weighs a ton. Have fun all, want to check out my Piezo YM-308 MKII next :-).

The MAS 282 sounds like an interesting tonearm. At first I thought John you made a typo and were referring to the ultra rare (read ultra expensive) Micro MAX 282. An arm I once had and now regret selling, it was one of the most dynamic, pure sounding arm I have ever heard and it also has a rubber decoupling to mount the counterweight on the arm tube. I always thought though that the counterweight sagged just a tad, maybe age, maybe design.

Also the Sony PUA-7 and PUA-9 have a similar design and the PUA-7 is a ridiculously good sounding arm for the money, I have not heard the PUA-9 and would be interested to know if anyone else on this thread has heard that arm. Also the Ikeda arms use a rubber (or similar compound) O-ring between counterweight and arm tubes, and probably there are other designs like this out there?

It seems that there is something then to rubber damping and decoupling designs. Almost has one wondering if there are some quick and dirty opportunities to incorporate this methodology on to other arms we like.

Steve in Ottawa

"...It seems that there is something then to rubber damping and decoupling designs. Almost has one wondering if there are some quick and dirty opportunities to incorporate this methodology on to other arms we like..."

Not hard to do, actually! A homebuilt tonearm I made many years ago, had rubber counterweight decoupling. The rear counterweight stub was a piece of 1/4 inch threaded rod, the counterweight itself was glued-together steel washers whose holes cleared the threaded rod. I glued rubber motor isolation mounts from the common Garrard record changers on the ends of the counterweight. Their center holes (sorry...Garrard was British, make that "centre" holes :-) ) just happened to "thread" onto the counterweight stub, so that the counterweight could be rotated on the threads to set it...and so the counterweight was rubber-isolated!

Even the ESL arm from early stereo days, had rubber decoupling of the counterweight.

What Steve, tupo, me ;-)?!? Actually, many of these rubber-decoupled tonearms do sag over time, but it doesn't seem to affect performance unless of course it's extreme. I too found the Sony PUA tonearms to be superb, but each one I got had a broken antiskate thread, difficult to fix in this particular tonearm, though I should get off my ass and fix it. When I first discovered just how good the Sony 2250 was, I mounted a PUA-286 to it and matched an Audio Technica OC-9 to that, and the resulting sound was stunningly pure, delicate and filigree-detailed. No rubber decoupling on these particular tonearms however. Be interesting to do some experiments as you say and see if this technique improves many tonearms. The Lenco tonearm's piano-wire goes some ways to decoupling, and so incorporates the idea if not the method (and also often sags over time). Anyway, more MAS experiments ahead, tonight the Piezo YM-308 MKII, one of the most detailed MMs I've ever heard.

A friend of mine with one of the best systems I've ever heard, though largely budget (heavily-modified legendary Superphon Revelation Dual Mono, 20-watt budget Wave 20 Antique Sound Lab monoblocks, big brothers to the legendary Wave 8s, JSE Infinite Slope Model .8 speakers, and of course Lencos), recently discovered the Greatness of vintage Sony electronics! I always thought much of his system's performance was due to the Giant Killer Superphon preamp, but when we inserted the Sony TAE-5450 preamp in his system, the performance went up a few notches, to the point where it sounded like a $10K no-holds-barred tube preamplifier. The sound was so BIG (walk-in soundstage)and pristine and smoooottthhhhh, with truly juicy and punchy bass. The TAE-5450 is a V-fet preamp, and V-fet were called the tubes of the silicon world, and in this system, rightly so. Now he has to have one.

Good to hear from you again Gene, and to the rest, have fun all, as always!!