And now for a tale of synergies and Deccas. Waaayyy back, in the days of the original thread, I had accidentally found that the JMW tonearm was a perfect match for the notorious Decca cartridges. For the first time in my experience, the Decca behaved perfectly with no mistracking or jumping out of grooves, at least almost perfectly, with possibly one album in my collection giving it problems.
Back then I had my vintage Sony TAE-5450 preamp (stellar, recently handily outperforming and displacing a heavily-modified Superphon Revelation Basic Dual Mono, itself a legendary '80s phono preamp), evidently an excellent match for the Decca. The POWER, and transient SPEED I heard then was awesome to beholdd, and I declared this the Best Combination in the world (Giant Lenco/JMW/Decca), being at the same time my discovery of the effects of increased mass, the first Giant Lenco I built at the request of Dave Pogue, to whom I owe TWO discoveries (Giant/Mass is Class and the JMW/Decca combination).
Now the Decca cartridges are Direct Scanning designs, meaning there is no suspension, the diamond being attached at one end of a bent piece of metal, the other end going directly to the magnets. This means direct communication of energy/information to the electrical generator (the moving magnets), which in turn means, in engineering terms, that it should (like the idler-wheel drive principle) be superior to the alternatives (standard suspension cartridges, which is everything else). But, the resulting tremendous energy of the Direct Scanning principle means Deccas will only perform up to spec on the appropriate tonearms (otherwise buzzing and mistracking and jumping about), which means fluid damping (I also got great results on a Maplenoll tonearm with damping trough in the Fab '80s). Recently, a Canadian audio magazine declared the "lower" Deccas (including the Super Gold) severely flawed and gave them a thumbs-down because they insisted on disregarding decades of collective Decca experience and using them in standard undamped captive-bearing tonearms.
Anyway, eventually I got an ARC SP8 preamp, which was fabulous, and then an Orotfon Jubilee to replace my extinct Kiseki Purpleheart Sapphire MC, and for the first time, in my system, I heard something which could beat the Decca, the JMW 10.5/Ortofon Jubilee combo. But now, I am back to a Sony preamp, the 2000F with swithcable MC and MM loading and two phono stages. On trying the JMW Decca Super Gold combo once again, I now hear the Decca far outstripping the JMW/Jubilee combo. Yet in another system the same week (Quad ESL 63s driven by tube electronics, and a Graham 2.2 Ceramic on a Giant Lenco) the story was precisely the reverse. Now that Graham/Decca combo sounded absolutely perfect in audio terms, but in my system it is Lighting and Thunder to a far greater degree, along with truly astonishing transparency and detail. Everything sounds so REAL, so palpable, so 3D!
I believe this is due not only to electronics which the Decca loves (vintage Sony), but also to the acoustic suspension Yamaha NS-690s (which I remind everyone belongs to the famed NS-1000 monitor line, haivng in fact deeper bass than the 1000s). I had also written way back in the Kundalini Effect days, that acoustic suspension speakers retrieve more of the Palbability Factor and Timing (PRaT) which is yet another aspect of the superiority of idler-wheel drives over the competition, due to their tighter and more responsive bass (also deeper bass for a given size, but with the penalty of reduced sensitivity).
Anyway, given a good acoustic suspension speaker and sympathetic electronics, the Lenco/JMW/Decca combination is once again at the Top of the Sonic Heap, providing truly unbelievable results, borderline vaporizing the Yamaha drivers!! This is not to say that the results are not stellar in other systems (the Decca handily outperformed a $3K MC in the Giant Lenco/Graham 2.2/tube/Quad '63 system), just that to hear what an idler/Decca can do an acoustic suspension design is way recommended!! This means too push-pull tube electronics, not single-ended (excepting certain particularly muscular single endeds as the Wyetech electronics) to drive these more difficult speakers.
I'll next try out the underrated AR2ax's, now that I have this fabulous Lenco/JMW/Decca combo singing once again!! WHAT fun!! Have fun out there all you idler users as well!! One discovery as well of all these tonearm/cartridge combos, was just how incredible the humble/budget Denon DL-103"E" (roughly $300 all told)sounded on the JMW, both super-smooth and slamming, and transparent as well! All you silent readers out there owe it to your Audio Happiness to get ye out and hear a properly set-up idler-wheel drive, but be prepared, as First Contact is often a severe psychological shock (can vinyl sound like THIS?!?!)! There's a reason the Idler-Wheel Movement is steadily gaining steam and adherents :-).
