Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Helen, If you don't mind using up about half your space, you COULD try Quad 57s in your small room. It would be like having the best, most transparent headphones ever made.

Johnnantais,

I will be on a business trip the first part of May to UK then on to Cyprus around the May 5th-10th. I would like to meet up at srajans if possible. If that works then I have some friends of mine that I'd like to share the lenco magic with....best personal regards

Hi Sixfigure, dammit that's the second meet-up I'll miss by a month or so, just got an e-mail this morning from an old friend who will be on one of my favourite Greek islands....exactly a month before I get there. I'll only be landing in Athens at the end of the first week of June, and don't expect to make it to Cyprus until the end of June/beginning of July. If you have reason to make it to that part of the world at that time, or at the end of July/beginning of August when I will be making a re-appearance there, then feel free to join us (of course, Srajan is the host and must be consulted).

But the Mediterranean or not, you owe it to yourself to hear a Mighty Lenco some way, somehow, just fire me an e-mail and I'll see if there's one in your part of the world. There's a regular battalion of Lenco owners forming up in the Washington D.C. area! Why? Hearing is believing, and some Giant Direct Coupled Lencos are there to hear :-). Also groups forming up in Colorado and Oregon and other scattered Lencos, and of course my own area where again, hearing is believing. Great to see you concentrating on the magic!

So, Jean, the ticket to Greece has been bought! I'm betting you're going to work out this visit to Srajan Ebaen, become fast creative-rebel friends, and make idler wheel history.

Thanks for the encouragement Bob, your enthusiasm is always much appreciated!!

Over here I enjoyed another bout of Crush the Belt-Drive, this time my own turntable in my own system! I've decided it was finally time to sell my Maplenoll, and so I carefully set it up for demonstration, and in setting it up in my system it sounded glorious. The Maplenoll rightly has an excellent sonic reputation (though criticized for build quality, I was the unofficial Maplenoll technician in my area and discovered secrets for flawless performance). For context, a fellow had recently contacted me, having discovered my participation in older Maplenoll threads on other forums, and contacted me. He wrote me to say he had a VPI TNT which was inferior to the Maplenoll in performance, and wondered if I had any tips to further the performance. In addition to being superb in terms of the usual audiophile obsessions - detail, frequency extension, imaging, and so forth - the reason the Maplenoll was my main source for so many years was its thunderous bass, amazing dynamics and incredible PRaT, being a true music-meister.

So, set up in my system it sounded glorious, so much so I worried, so I moved the same album over to the Lenco to settle the issue. WHAT a killing!! The bass which had been superb on the Maplenoll deepened and became much faster and more dynamic. Transparency - again superb on the Maplenoll - increased a hundredfold, details came out which were simply inaudible on the Maplenoll. Transient speed and dynamics macro- and micro- increased to an incredible degree. Even imaging, where the Maplenoll excels due to its linear-tracking tonearm, improved drastically via the Lenco (using the admittedly imaging-excellent RS-A1 tonearm)!

Finally, the musicality - gestalt, PRaT, entrancement - increased to a supernatural degree, to the point where I ended up once again in a multi-hour LP listening Mega-Session! I just hope none of those who may be considering the Maplenoll are reading this ;-)!

I've built myself a new Reference Lenco/Review Prototype for demonstration purposes, the Bauhaus Lenco, with single tonearm, that being the RS-A1 (with Denon DL-103"E"). The angular black-and-silver RS-A1 makes of the black-lacquered Lenco plinth with gray-recoated top-plate and platter a Bauhausian feast for the eyes (I like it anyway), simple, yet modern, a fortuitous accident! I'll include it under my "system". Have fun with your idlers all, WHAT music!!