Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Hi Mike, yes indeedy the AI 800 MKIII has an easy musicality, liveliness and fluidity which complements the Klipsch very well, sounding very smooth, AND produces some quite serious bass! It has a Beauty which reminds me of the Ortofon M15E Super, redolent of red wine and fires in the hearth in winter. I'll be making this set-up my mainstay for quite a while.

Hi Billybuck, I had reported a while back one of my audio buddies up here sold his 80-pound Technics SP10MKII, saying he no longer felt anything for it. Even before the Lenco reached its Giant phase, he would invite me over to hear just how much superior the 40-pound Lenco was to his Technics. I also owned and rebuilt an SP10 MKII to find out if it too could Crush belt-drives as easily as the Lenco, and if it were indeed a threat to the Idler Supremacy. It wasn't and I sold it. And Lencos have defeated EMT DDs, the best ever built. But if you think about it, the DDs are MORE complex, not simpler, as they require complex circuitry in order to work, and once these go - and they always do go - the 'table is toast, though one or two experts may exist in the world who can repair them.

The Lencos are in fact about the simplest and most reliable 'tables out there, far simpler mechanically than the Garrards, and so repairable by the amateur, and the wheels apparently last forever, provided they are the metal ones. However, you seem to have found one of the very few lemons ever reported, so don't let that one bad experience colour your views of the Lenco. If a Lenco is in good shape when it is first bought (and they almost always are), and has the metal wheel, then after proper restoration it will perform dependably for decades more. A friend of mine got the first one I ever rebuilt after my return to Canada (the Oak Lenco under my "system"), and six years on he still uses it without problem, needing only a dusting once in all that time to continue to play perfectly: his wife uses it frequently. I am now retrofitting the various mods/improvements (except mass of course) to it. I would advise you to abandon the Lenco you have, find a good one, and apply all you've learned to it. Once finished, the wheel will never need replacing (unlike a belt or thread), the motor will run for decades, and even the "ON" switch, which consists of a silver barbell and a spring, will last forever. The plinth, of course, doesn't wear out or go out of adjustment either.

Welcome to the ranks of the Lenco Initiates Glenn!! If everyone had had a quality idler instead of a crappy belt-drive (and by this I don't necessarily mean ALL belt-drives are crappy - though in the context of idlers....;-) - but the cheap ones were and are execrable) when CD made its first appearance, digital would have been laughed off the world stage and would today be analyzed as one of the greatest PR (and technological) failures of ALL Time!! One [apparently small and meaningless] Evil (the collusion between press and industry to lionize the cheaper-to-manufacture belt-drive) gives birth to others. Now we have MP3, the concept of "Quality" is fading from Western consciousness, it is Fast Food everything. Good thing even without exposure to the concept of Quality (and integrity, and ethics) some seem to have an innate knowledge of these things. Anyway, the lessons aren't done yet: it takes quite a while to absorb all the lessons of the Mighty Lenco. Your sensitivity to PRaT will increase, along with gestalt and harmony (which high-end belt-drivers and worse, the Digital crowd, claim to understand, like dessicated 90-year-old scholars discussing the concept of Sex...these definitely need the lessons Idlers can teach them), and all the musical secrets which lie engraved in those licorice pizzas will slowly be dragged out into the light to amaze, delight and enlighten you for decades to come!! Vive la Lenco, Vive la Idler Wheel!!!

Hi David, the Yamahas, along with the AR2ax's, are two of the speakers which have given me the largest dose of the Kundalini Effect, when mated to the Sony 3130F, though I do hear it peep through various combinations I have tried. However, with a big idler behind various items of equipment, I hear all kinds of flavours of Beauty and Excitement, keep us posted as to the strange Tube Beastie you might get next.

Hey Jean,

I have some ? about your RS-A1, because I might be selling mine.

Does yours have a slight ground-hum-problem, when you turn the volume up and touch the metal parts?

I think I removed a little grounding-cable that was attached to a screw at the bottom of the armbase.
I did it because the whole arm was actually resting on the head of that little screw! Not stable. Does yours stand on that head too?

BTW: I live only a few miles away from the guy who constructed your Audio Innovations amp. :-)
I believe he likes that particular model.

Hey Ronnie, small world!! I know I am loving the sound of this amp more and more, due as well to some 'table/tonearm/cartridge rolling I was doing yesterday. I'd love it if you contacted him and got me some more info/opinions on this amp!! But, to get to the RS for now. My own RS-A1 has no ground scheme whatsoever that I can see, so no screw/stability problem. With my Denon DL-103"E" there is no hum whatsoever in spite of this, but with my moving-iron AKG P8ES there was indeed some hum. But a caveat: the RS-A1 is in the back corner, so the headshell travels directly over the motor, I don't know if there would be any hum in the other position.

Did I ever mention that I find the Rega RB-300 to be one of the Greatest Bargains in Audio History ;-)?!? Yesterday I had fun playing tonearm/cartridge swappies on my two 'tables (B75 Bogen-Lenco and Garrard 301 grease-bearing), and having recently acquired a new Rega RB-300 to replace the old one (which I traded mounted on my old Ode to the Denon for equipment a while back), I re-wired it with my usual recipe of Cardas internal wiring and Music Boys (I LOVE this recipe!!). Anyway, I had constructed a special armboard for this tonearm for the Garrard 301, and mounted the Ortofon Jubilee to it. What sound greeted my ears!! For years I used the Kiseki Blue on the RB-300 on my Lenco, and then my Kiseki Purpleheart, and never did the Rega let me down, sounding powerful, incredibly detailed and blindingly dynamic, and yet "honest", in the sense of tonally correct and with dynamics in their proper proportion (like the more-expensive JMW tonearms).

Again yesterday it freshly blew me away with Ortofon's current statement MC. Never have I heard Marianne Faithful's brilliant Broken English LP sound so perfect, so mesmerizing, so amazing, as if it were the product of careful and expensive recording, transference and vinyl!! But nope, just a garden-variety commercial LP available for a few bucks used. Didn't know it was THAT good sonically, run to the nearest store and get yourselves copies! Also never have I heard this LP on a Giant plinth, or with a cartridge of this stature. I heartily recommend the Rega for ALL idler-wheel drives (including, of course, the Garrards), there is definitely a synergy between it and idlers, almost as if, like the Koetsus, the Regas were designed on idlers :-). As I've written before, once I'm done playing with all these other tonearms, I'll likely end up with solely a Rega.

And speaking of incredible bargoons, a fellow audiophile was here yesterday, and clearly heard the supremacy of the Denon DL-103 at PRaT, timing, it being the only cartridge so far to generate the full power of the Kundalini Effect (which is not to say that there aren't perhaps some others out there that can achieve this). Mounted on the RS-A1, it has detail to rival the best, and a lack of hardness due to the RS-A1's swivelling headshell, which pretty well eliminates tracing error. The Denon DL-103 should be dissected and examined to see what makes it tick, and the lessons applied to all new MC designs, but no, it's too cheap, and so is not taken as seriously as it should be, it being assumed the more expensive materials of more expensive cartridges will address all issues (wrong). Of course, there are all sorts of flavours of Greatness, from the Grados' supreme gestalt, through the Ortofon's supreme evenness and balance (combining a large portion of the Denon's energy and PRaT with state of the art tonal perfection and detail), and so on, it's a complicated and fascinating old world, glad I have multiple 'tables and tonearms!! Vive la Vinyl Fun!!

I did a little research and am not so sure this guy made the mkIII version. Perhaps the mark I.
Anyway, if you'd like to ask him something about Audio Innovations you can try contacting member "Erik Andersson" on this forum: http://www.hififorum.nu/forum/default.asp

Don't know if I explained so well.. that screw (if your RS-A1 has one) is on the underside of the arm base, and is only an internal connection between arm "pillar" and base I think. Not for connecting an external ground wire to the phono stage.

Hi Ronnie, no, there is no little screw interfering with the flush-mounting of my RS-A1, it is affixed flush using two-way tape with no problem on my arm-board. Perhaps they took care of that in their later models. Oh well on the AI 800 count, nevertheless, it is sounding glorious!! As it should, given it is being driven by idler-wheel drives :-). Now I'll play with the Lenco/Morch/Decca!!