Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Greetings Mario, fellow adventurer down the Audio Path and fellow amateur historian/archaeologist. Thanks for the kind words.

Time to address some of the usual misleading and distorted postings out there, provoked by the Preview, and to learn something of the scientific process in the bargain! Part of the reason I believe in the Scientific process, but often have serious doubts as to the Scientists who should be following them (who are often – but not always - to Science what the Enron accountants are to accountancy), is because of their often selective reasoning/consideration of the evidence...favouring of course whatever it is they choose to champion. Sort of like a certain forum’s (you all know which one) recent treatment of the 6moons Preview: the 6moons INTRO, CLEARLY marked as such, is in the PREVIEW section, and so is a PRE-view, not a RE-view. Nevertheless, it is there treated as a RE-view, the better to mock and denigrate it for....not being a Re-view after all. Nothing new here, as that forum has been the home, first of those who attacked any suggestion on my part that the Lenco was a serious ‘table, and now any suggestion that I ever battled there to have the Lencos and idlers taken seriously, that forum now dominated by DIY idler projects (due not only to my battles with what have now become Captain Idlers, but to the activities of two who followed the Home Despot/Lenco forum, Freek and Fred)! Take a look at this, from the early days of the thread:

“02-19-04: Musicus53
Hi, John

I just wanted to let you know that your fame (or in this case, infamy) is rapidly spreading since you've now a subject in the Vinyl Asylum! I thought the post about you was actually laughable, but I had to repond (as "Vinyldork"). I just hope a "deprogrammer" doesn't kidnap me now and convince me that Lencos are crap before I get to do the project! Some great links from bornin and I'm looking forward to the pics.

Don”

The denizens of that same forum (is it something in the water there?) – the one which, as the preceding post makes clear , evidently thought my promotion of the Lenco and idler-wheel drives was to be stopped and was laughable - NOW claims I never conducted the battles there I evidently did, to have the Lencos and the idlers recognized. Let’s have a look at another reference to that same forum for Old Times' sake :-):

“02-20-04: Rich121
Did you not read the posts? They basically repeated what I said in this thread earlier.... These are Lenco owners who posted... I'm talking about the posts on AA that Musicus53 reported. Obviosly, you did a search of AA to dig up the few positive posts, why don't you tell the truth, about the overwealming negative posts? That are from Lenco owners. Most every one that still owns a Lenco, says that it is only useable for old 78's because of the rumble (which you claim is not there!, Which you claim can be eliminated with a massive plinth...) What it amounts to, is your claiming that it will (plinth) defy physics and magically divert the rumble from the platter, to the plinth!!! What a joke!!!! The plinth is not even directly connected to the motor/idler wheel/platter.... it is connected to the plate, then the plate is connected to the motor, motor to idler wheel, to platter WHICH IS WHERE THE RUMBLE ENDS UP!!!”

Now Richard wasn’t lying here, I had to dig long and hard to find ANY positive mentions of the Lencos, because any such mentions were quickly punished by Yahoo-like avalanches of abuse, and they learned to keep their heads low (as on all forums at the time, though not with that Yahoo-like intensity characteristic of that particular forum). Apparently things don’t change, and neither do their ways, three years down the road. Some of the less rabid on that forum should begin to think about cleaning up over there.

For the literate (those who can tell the difference between “Pre” and “Re”), one could also consider Swift’s “Yahoos”, he evidently had these types in mind which existed in his day 300 years ago, as they do in ours: “Several of this cursed brood getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree; from whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head: however, I escaped pretty well, by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with the filth, which fell about me on every side.”

To show further examples of this type of selection, they – again Yahoo-like – select my early plinths for mockery and denigration - which I let stand to constructively encourage amateurs to join in and feed the Idler Ranks, and which Srajan selected with no argument from me (thus disproving any ego issues on my part, as I might have asked him to post some of my better efforts: the top Lenco is Willbewills - say Hi! - and the centerpiece is Tom's) – and carefully avoid mentioning or displaying the later plinths which have been up posted under my “system” on Audiogon for months now. Then, following the same utter lack of logic (but a very fine sense of prejudice and pettiness), they charge me with having too large an ego! Not that they get away with it: for while they egg each other on and thus think themselves clever, I receive regular e-mails from frequenters of that forum, informing me of the latest antics of the “court jesters” and “the usual suspects” (and thanks for the info all, but truly, I’d rather not know ;-)).

Any who are interested in witnessing the antics of these Yahoos, or practicers of selective consideration of the evidence, go ye over on that forum, and check out the 6moons thread, and identify them! Then, simply as a spectator sport, watch for their next postings whenever my name – or Lencos – comes up. A very interesting lesson in a certain type of human behaviour, and an excellent example of what I am talking about re. certain scientists' selective consideration of the evidence, and other techniques used over the years, such as: claim a statement which was never made was made (just like deliberately taking a "Preview" and presenting it as a "Review," to then take issue with it), and then attack the statement to discredit the individual! I have seen these tactics – and many more - used in the history of science (of which I am an avid student), and in the 20th century and the 21st century too.

And now, let's get back to Lencos and away from spelling and dictionary lessons, to Mightiness, Hyperbole, and Political Correctness (yes, one of my favourite subjects because one of the biggest problems). Many have accused me of hyperbole (of course) because I make "outrageous statements" with respect to the Lenco, and this, of course, offends the Politically Correct (and provides an excellent handle for certain Yahoos to focus on). But, as Grant so courageously pointed out, the statements are NOT, after all, exaggerations, since they are accurate descriptions of the Reality of the Lenco. Let's look at the question in terms of logic: the Upper Limits of the Lenco have not yet been found. In fact, so far, the Lenco has CLEARLY beaten all comers up to $20K in the Land of Belt-drives (haven`t had tests higher than this...yet, though I am slowly Climbing the Ladder), and even some very Scary Classics like the EMTs (even the BEST of the EMTs). So, given the Upper Limits have not been found, then how is it even possible to hyperbolize?!? Ergo, they are NOT hyperbole.

Dare to Think the Unthinkable you watchers out there: what if I'm right?!? What if, after all, Idler-Wheel systems ARE the Superior System?!? How else to explain the incredible success Lencos and idlers are having out there, despite the over-engineering of many of the current belt-drives, after THREE years. It's not because they suck, uh-uh. Gadzooks! Could I, after all, be right?!? Of course, the Yahoos won't like that one bit, as then some serious amounts of egg would be flowing from their collective faces, so you can bet they will oppose the Unstoppable Lenco Juggernaut (as they already are), in order to avoid the destiny they (NOT me) have carved out for themselves, to be an ugly little footnote in history as....Yahoos.

YOU BET I'm gonna make this review happen, and place my destiny in the hands of the Audio Gods and roll the Audio Dice (I've never heard the phono stage to be used, and don't know which cartridge will be provided, for one).

Though I have often thought to simply abandon the whole Idler/Lenco thing and let the very persistent and tireless Yahoos (what IS their diet?..I gotta get me some) have their "victory" (elimination of me from my own history/activities/achievements, and theft of the same), I also am fundamentally unable to let it happen, and am doomed, dammit (I often wish it weren't so), to battle (though I had hoped, very FAINTLY hoped, knowing what I do about the often ugly history of the development of science - silly me - it would be about evidence and logic). When Bob asked me if he could approach some magazines on my behalf, I told him to go ahead, secure in the knowledge I wouldn't have to take on this burden/pressure (and as the Yahoos demonstrate, it is a burden) as no magazine would touch me with a ten-foot pole. I here take the opportunity to post the relevant parts of the e-mails:

From: Jean Nantais [mailto:ripplefritz@hotmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2007 5:59 PM
To: Bob Olson
Subject: RE: Riggle VTAF

"Hi Bob,

Yep, pretty busy these days, but I don't think one of my Lencos will ever get reviewed, too much of a threat to the industry."

"Jean,

Geez, 7 or 8 turntables in one year - and I thought I was extravagant moving up to two tone arms! You may well be right that no one in the mainstream audio press would review the Lenco. But if anyone would, it's Srajan Ebaen of 6moons.

Bob"

It turns out Bob was right. It is also damned exciting stuff - this is the stuff of LIFE! (I think I'm gonna faint ;-)) - and we, Lenco followers ALL, owe Bob a big thank you! It turns out he read both Srajan and I exactly right. Had I known that I would have told Bob "NO!", but, here we are, heading into the perhaps-Great Unknown. Feel the adrenaline, Home Despot threaders!! Now, where IS that suntan lotion?!?

Hi all,

The Green Giant Lenco -- no longer so giant, in comparison to later designs -- that Jean built me, is, with its modest compliment of SMEIII/Shure M97EraIVHE and AT1005mkII/Denon DL103, FANTASTIC. Just fabulous, and every one I play it for flips out with how top to bottom, side to side, micro to macro, whisper to thunder good it is at making music out of tiny bumps on vinyl grooves. I've had it better than a year now, and am amazed everyday, whether it by playing Bach, Bartok, Beatles, Basie, Bluegrass, whatever.

Jean has also always been personally generous, helpful, and friendly to me as well.

Now, is his rhetoric in favor of the Lenco hyperbolic? I am in no position to say. But the evidence so far seems to be that it has beat all comers up to 20k. One would think that if there are counterexamples, then they would be reported (and those reports multiply iterated) by the defenders of the belt drive hegemony. After all, they would be reports of opinion ("I thought my INSERT NAME HERE belt drive system sounded better in this and that way than the Lenco"), and you can't argue with those. (I've never noticed Jean dispute any such claim of personal opinion.) And those who have spent big bucks on belt drive systems, either as desgners, manufacturers or consumers, have lots of interest in making such reports, candidly or otherwise. But you JUST DON'T SEE SUCH REPORTS. That is really something. So maybe his claims to absolute superiority of the Lenco are not hyperbolic.

His packaging his claims in terms of "science" is rather grandiose, to be sure. Here "science" just seems to be good old reasonable judgment, based on weighty evidence rather than hearsay and biased propoganda. I haven't heard of any of Jean's evidence consisting of double blind control group studies of statistically significant numbers with the sort of protocols and quantificational methods that make for SCIENCE in the sense in which it goes beyond just good old decent thinking. But decent thinking is all the reason one needs to take the kinds of evidence Jean adduces -- uncontrolled and anecdotal though it is -- seriously.

This "political correctness" stuff, however, is hooey. Jean seems to equate it with relativism -- the view that good, best and better are entirely in the eyes of the beholder, and not objective matters of fact. Such relativism is dangerous, and at bottom quite unintelligible. But it is neiher the same thing as "political correctness", whatever that is, other than a Limbaugh-esque vacuous slander word, nor what's at the bottom of whatever resistance the Lenco and Jean have encountered on their way to recognition. The resistors I am quit sure believe Hondas (objectively) better than Kias, Ellington (objectively) better than Brittney, Tiger woods (objectively) better than Mike Weir, and love (objectively) better than hate. It's just 35 years out-of-date, relatively cheap, discarded and DIY-ified record playback technology promoted by a, um, charsmatic cyber crank, shall we say, that they don't think is better than new, expensive, nearly universally embraced and lauded, 100% professionally engineered, produced and marketed record playback technology.

They need to have an open mind and an unbiased listen. Given the market forces at work here, that may be more than one can expect in most cases. But that's entirely understandable without appeal to sinister cultural forces of political correctness.

Anyway, I love my Lenco!

Happy listening!

Richard

Hi Richard, thanks for your support, as always, and your usual caveats - a HEALTHY form of HONEST debate - only underline your integrity, and the integrity of this thread, as other healthy and fascinating debates have done in the past. Thanks to all those who have debated, like gentleman, using honest evidence, logic and opinion (inevitable as we don't know everything) various issues with me in the past, to keep this thread vibrant and alive. For now, I'll leave the PC-Science and what constitutes acceptable evidence connection for another day, as the bigger Sturm und Drang (German for storm and drama) of this new higher-level exposure will concentrate our energies and attention.

Long ago, the first of my persistent opponents, that first Richard121 - driven like all the others by considerations of ego (i.e. the lowly and base envy) - had written the following over on "that" forum, which has set the template (especially on that particular forum, very interesting, perhaps I should re-analyze the original thread and write a book after all on the subject) for all attacks on me ever since:

"John,
You should go to Audiogon... there is a thread there "Building Hi-end tables cheap at Home Depot" that you will either laugh at, or get pissed, because the guy is convincing people to buy Lenco L75 tt and build a massive plinth (he claims this will cure the rumble problem).
The guy obviously wants center stage, sort of like a cult leader... he will not listen to any logic.
The thread is enormous... so many people are falling for this."

Now yet again: "Posted by rich121 ( A ) on February 18, 2004 at 20:55:43

Make sure that you post your thoughts.... many of these guys reading this, are buying these tt, I did also, and then... researched it, finding out how bad the rumble problem really is.
This guy is a "cult evangelist" wanna be...
Richard"

Now that the Lenco's Mightiness (and this is no hyperbole) is proven, then what of Richard's charge? It shows that what drove me all along was indeed, as I claimed, the Lenco's - and by extension the idlers the Lenco represents - amazing abilities/performance, which I wanted to share with the world (and effect TRUE progress). The charge that ego motivated/motivaTES me doesn't hold water, but it is an easy charge to make, as the stand I took - and proved - has made me somewhat of a public figure (in our small little analogue audiophile world), and the price of "fame" (as far as that goes) is unwarranted criticism.

The charge against me over on that - ho-hum - SAME forum, is that I am taking credit for what is not mine. While it is one thing to not toot one's horn (and one reason so many believe these charges is that I indeed kept silent and let Freek and Fred lead the charge over there and took no credit, so other than a few battles evidence is scarce on the ground), it is entirely another to stand idly by and watch others, driven by their petty ego issues/ambitions, try their damnedest to erase one completely from the record. So let's look at that posting once again and analyse it for what it implies: ""John, You should go to Audiogon... there is a thread there "Building Hi-end tables cheap at Home Depot" that you will either laugh at, or get pissed, because the guy is convincing people to buy Lenco L75 tt and build a massive plinth (he claims this will cure the rumble problem). The guy obviously wants center stage, sort of like a cult leader... he will not listen to any logic.
The thread is enormous... so many people are falling for this."

This shows that the denizens of that forum (who turned an originally enthusiastic participant of the Home Despot thread into a dedicated opponent) barely knew the Lenco/Idler/DIY phenomenon even existed. But thanks to Rich121 and various others who attacked me, and continue to attack me on that forum, the Lenco/Idler/DIY thing caught on and spread.

Long ago I had written a big thanks to that original opponent, who set the template for all the following attacks against me, as every time he attacked me in public forums the e-mails and interest grew due to the free publicity (and people LOVE the controversial, something these less-than-sharp adversaries cannot understand), and so, like fertilizer on plants (think of those Yahoos: "from whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head"), helped the Lenco phenomenon grow and grow. So, once again faced with a deluge of e-mails on the subject due to their attention being drawn to the 6moons article/Lenco phenomenon (and these e-mails ALWAYS represent only a tiny fraction of the actual awareness out there) I would once again like to thank the same crew for the free publicity! Thank You, oh Thank You so very much.

This same fertilizer is also largely responsible for the incredible heights the Lenco has now reached, so I would ask all Lenco participants to thank these Yahoos along with me, as I present a case in point. That SAME Richard (very busy boy) tried to discredit the entire effort on yet another issue, this time the issue of proper geometry. Over on that - YAWN - SAME forum, he had posted that no proper attention was being paid to either tonearm geometry/positioning or VTA (I was just plunking the Rega tonearm in the original hole, due to the Lenco's natural Mightiness it still sounded amazing as Palmnell's - Linn LP12 man - above posts testify). So, in order to save the Lenco/Idler/DIY Project from this attack, I pioneered the cutting off of the corner (which I no longer do, plinths were smaller then) and the creation of the removable armboard method for our DIY plinths. This actually represented a BIG advance in the Lenco performance and phenomenon, as, in addition to the increased sound quality due to proper positioning and VTA, there were no longer any roadblocks to the use of any tonearm anybody wished to try! And so began the Great Tonearm Frenzy as we all began to rediscover and mount a variety of vintage and current tonearms - from Decca Internationals and Maywares through Regas to Grahams, JMWs and various SMEs - to test them out with the Lenco, and also began the Great Cartridge Frenzy as various vintage cartridges were rediscovered and the whole Lenco/Idler/DIY phenomenon became Supercharged.

The same motivation - various forms of attack and unfair criticism - prodded us all to raise and raise the Lenco's performance: Direct Coupling, high mass, deep investigation of the Lenco Guts and how best to restore/tune them, proper lubricants, brilliant and inventive solutions as tey were showcased, and so on. So let us all, I beg you, thank these opponents for this richest of Fertilizers, who through the years - and STILL - motivate us all to reach for the sky. The latest reaching being the shipping of a Mighty Giant Glass-Reinforced, Direct-Coupled Lenco to Cyprus. I Thank You for the free publicity, I Thank You for energizing this thread, I Thank You for the ongoing opportunities for setting the record straight, I Thank You for the energy and for the motivation - the Fertilizer - which keeps this movement and phenomenon growing and growing, to who knows what point/level. Join me all, please in a BIG Thank You!

Now, freshly energized and motivated, time to start planning/actuating/building that emissary of our efforts, that plinth! Hope you're all having as much fun as I am fellow Lenco-ers :-)!!

Good luck Jean with your preparations for the almighty challenge...having just read Srajan's article in 6 moons, he sounds pretty open to the possibility of the ultimate enlightenment experience.
Ive been doing a few comparisons of my own this evening, prompted by one of my sons asking why I bothered with vinyl, weren't CD's easier?....sat him down next to me...started the same U2 track on CD and vinyl simultaneously-Helter Skelter-turned the volume up and then played him 30 seconds or so of the CD version, then let the mighty Lenco rip into it. As a follow up, played both versions of the guitar intro to Van Diemen's Land. When he heard the Lenco version, he looked at me and a grin spread across his face.....the mighty Lenco bringing through the rich warm textures of the notes, on Cd the sound was tinny, flat and made me want to yawn, the Lenco kept me entranced and enthralled at the beauty of the music.. But then he whipped out his iPod, started playing the film 'A hard day's night' saying "but your Lenco can't do this, can it?". I had to agree with him, but...

Jean, great writing and all too true.
As I am putting more miles on my PTPL (Peter's Top Plate Lenco) it continues to amaze, it really is very good!
So far everything that wasn't already great has turned out to be an artefact of something else, not of the PTPL. I have finally ordered a DL103 that I will try as soon as it arrives.
Keep up the good work!
Peter