Great photos on that site, thanks for the link. The 518 project is not mine, although I do have a footless 518 waiting for surgery! :) Lewm, I think it would be a good idea to post your Lenco project at LencoHeaven, and there is a thread on motor controllers where your thoughts would be welcome too. :)
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.
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The 518 project is not mine, although I do have a footless 518 waiting for surgery! :) Glad you have a beater to experiment with. To be honest, the 518 is not the best candidate. I had a similar one like that. I forgot the model number but it didn't keep speed and had jerky motion. After several bad experiences with early era DD tables, I decided not to touch anything that's made before 1975 or pre-quartz-lock era. Back to Pioneer, I have a PL-570 is just about perfect for such project - currently in "guts" form with only motor and electronics and power supply - and I think the simpler version PL-550 is even better. I know some people are attracted to the wood veneer and probably pains them to do butcher them. The cabinet is really resonant and easily attracts acoustic feedback so butchering it is no loss to me as I hate plinths that shape like a box (and that includes certain Scottish spinner). I try to look for units that have broken or nonfunctional tonearms or bad auto mechanism, as long as the motor and drive electronics works, they can be had for dirt cheap. It's fun to experiment with beater tables. :-) ___ |
Hiho, I noticed this Sansui on eBay and have done a little reading about it on Vintage. The motor seems very advanced, and the plinth is at least partially constructed with resonance in mind, altho there is an outer MDF layer for cosmetic purposes. Do you know anything about it. http://cgi.ebay.com/SANSUI-SR-929-Quartz-Locked-Direct-Drive-Turntable_W0QQitemZ170470092387QQcategoryZ48649QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp4340.m8QQ_trkparmsZalgo%3DMW%26its%3DC%26itu%3DUCC%26otn%3D20%26ps%3D63#ht_500wt_962 |
. I never own any Sansui turntable, even though I am a huge fan of their tube gears - awesome output transformers. I am not familiar with that model but I don't think the motor is all that interesting. And judging by the look of it, they might have outsourced it from Denon. As a turntable, I would rather choose their later day coreless motor models like XP-99 or XR-Q7. As you know I am a big fan of coreless motors - super smooth sound. The attraction for me is the tonearm as it is knife edge design a la early SME but the horizontal movement is an inverted bearing on sapphire disc. Very unique for its time. Anyway, the table seems well built and might be a good performer. Almost all info on Sansui turntables can be found on this site: http://www.classicsansui.net/Turntables.htm I have read about Sansui's latter day designs in addressing the counter torque issue with direct-drive motor by adding another motor underneath running in reverse to cancel the vibration. Not the most elegant solution but at least they acknowledge the issue. I much prefer Steve Dobbins' simpler and more elegant solution by decoupling the stator coil from the bearing assembly. Judging by the look of theXR-Q7 motor, Sansui might have outsourced that from Sony as it just like the BSL (Brush/Slot-Less) motor from a PS-X40, PS-X70, and others, even down to the tapehead servo system. Those BSL motors have rather flimsy construction on the bearing well as it is mounted on plastic(!!) as my PS-X65 got damaged in transit due to bending plastic. Maybe Sansui improved on it. Anyway, those two models, XR-Q7 and XP-99, are the only Sansui turntables have any attraction to me. Unless I find a beater XR-929 so I can scavenge the arm. :-) _______ |
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