Years ago one of my employees picked up an Empire 208 at a garage sale, and got it sounding good enough that for fun, I sought one of my own, which I found for $35.00 (good luck trying to do that now!).
I threw out the arm and installed my SME 5 on it- it then sounded better than my SOTA Cosmos. But when I turned up the volume, the SOTA held together and the Empire didn't. So I damped the plinth and it sounded much better, even at volume, so the Cosmos went on the chopping block. After that I damped the platter, and ultimately had a plinth machined out of solid aluminum (the original is cast and no more than 14" thick), taking out the minimum amount of material to mount the original parts. I found a source for belts, the motor mounts, damped the platter and its been hard to beat! By this time the machine had a Triplanar installed. Others wanted one too, so I made a limited run of them. The new plinth is built with all the same lines as the original which IMO has some pretty classic lines, although our version is anodized rather than varnished.
I've seen it take on serious high end machines and come out on top- Empire had a lot of things right with the original, but they didn't do too well with vibration control, which we fixed.
But then the new Technics SL1200G came along and that was a better machine yet. So I think the Atma-Sphere 208 is history at this point...
I threw out the arm and installed my SME 5 on it- it then sounded better than my SOTA Cosmos. But when I turned up the volume, the SOTA held together and the Empire didn't. So I damped the plinth and it sounded much better, even at volume, so the Cosmos went on the chopping block. After that I damped the platter, and ultimately had a plinth machined out of solid aluminum (the original is cast and no more than 14" thick), taking out the minimum amount of material to mount the original parts. I found a source for belts, the motor mounts, damped the platter and its been hard to beat! By this time the machine had a Triplanar installed. Others wanted one too, so I made a limited run of them. The new plinth is built with all the same lines as the original which IMO has some pretty classic lines, although our version is anodized rather than varnished.
I've seen it take on serious high end machines and come out on top- Empire had a lot of things right with the original, but they didn't do too well with vibration control, which we fixed.
But then the new Technics SL1200G came along and that was a better machine yet. So I think the Atma-Sphere 208 is history at this point...
