Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Hi Mike, how's your new Giant Lenco coming along? Out here in the country I've been busy with some experimentation and preparing for and then enjoying the local winter carnival, which involved lots of horses and lots of beer!

I had wanted to mount the Black Widow, but it turns out it was a casualty of my last move. So I rewired an NOS Sonus tonearm instead, using a Giant Lenco as platform, the Sonus being a very low-mass version of the Mayware unipivot, and mounted both an AKG P8ES and a Grado Master. The Sonus, with the Grado mounted to it, seems to equal the VPI JMW tonearm with the Grado, and so by extension with MMs, which is great news for audiophiles on a budget! But the JMW's abilities with MCs gives it the overall edge in performance when it's matched with the amazing Ortofon Jubilee cartridge. As I wrote before, the JMW seems to bring otherwise analytical MCs into MM territory for gestalt and PRaT, so that the JMW/Ortofon Jubilee matches the erstwhile unmatcheable Grado for these two specific qualities while drawing ahead in every other area, excepting perhaps the Grado Woodies' way with acoustic instruments/resonances of natural materials (i.e. wood, lacquer, strings).

Of course, more listening is required to pin down these elusive qualities with respect to the JMW/Jubilee vs Sonus/MM. Right now, I have the Master mounted on the JMW, which sounds excellent and comfortable and intensely "together", as Grados do, and so I'm in no hurry to go back to the more detailed Orotfon for now.

I have to sing the praises of the Jubilee however, which is a true contender for State of the Art in terms of detail and other traditional MC strengths, which most agree is currently the Bass Master (in terms of reach, detail, all sorts of low frequency information, etc.), and which matches the Denon DL-103 for overall excitement and musicality and, when mounted on the JMW, also matches MMs for PRaT and gestalt. So good is the JMW/Jubilee match, in fact, that I'm having trouble finding a combo for the second tonearm board (my Lenco is a two-tonearm Lenco) which can provide a viable alternative! The Jubilee is ten times the price of the venerable Denon however; but its stylus is said to last 5000 hours as opposed to the Denon's 600-800 hours, and it is superior in perhaps every area. I will have to next mount my special Denon DL-103E on the JMW and see how it stacks up in a head-to-head, lots of comparison fun!! I'm thinking of drilling out the tapped RS-A1 bolt-holes so I can mount threaded cartrdiges like the Jubilee and the Grado Woodies to it as well. More reports of the AKG P8ES on the way as well, on both the Sonus and the JMW. Be bringing in the Rega RB-250 soon too, and I hope also the Transcriptors Vestigal! Throw in the Piezo YM-308 MKII as well for fun, and at some point the Pickering TL-2S currently being promoted by Dopogue and sweeping the world according to all reports. I've been a BIG fan of the Pickerings for a long time now (I remember the stellar peformance of their stereohedron models, and the excellent neutrality of the XV-15/625E), and look forward to trying out this new discovery by Dopogue, being I think a current model.

And let's not forget as well the MAS 282 tonearm, which had me convulsing under the spell of the Kundalini Effect a while back, when matched to the Grados: astounding gestalt, bass, SLAM and musical excitement (provided the crappy tonearm cable is replaced with something better, like the Audio Technica tonearm cables which come with their vintage tonearms and which are superb). Can't wait to start all this experimentation and comparison, things will be getting quieter for now and so I'll have time, as well as finally getting around to building the Reinderspeter steel top-plate version of the Lenco, for even greater performance, already mind-boggling due to the Mighty Idler-Wheel technology!!

Have fun all with your own respective match-ups, I look forward to reading about more fortuitous matches and combinations!

Hey Jean. Had a productive weekend. I put Giant #2 back on the workbench and filled some small holes and ran some tests to tint the top black to contrast with the G99 that I epoxy painted white. Next task is to make a template and cutout the arm boards.

Also started rewiring the Sonus MKIV arm. It hasn’t been too bad to deal with – just have to hook up the output cables to the Cardas wire and put it back together.

TIP: for stripping thin tonearm-like wire, Radio Shack makes a wonderful tool. Wire-Wrapping Tool Model: 276-1570 looks like a jeweler’s screwdriver but has sweet little wire stripping tool concealed in the handle. It is for stripping very thin wire - it made stripping the Cardas tonearm wire – literally - a 1 minute job. I once made a set of speaker cables (8 strands ea) out of 30ga. kynar wire wrap wire and didn’t know about this tool – it would have made it a breeze – as opposed to the torture that it was.

Finally a TWEAK-O-Gram from your pal (Me)... Have youse seen those ridiculous contraptions that claim to degauss CD’s (and now even LP’s) for supposedly better sound? Well, a couple of week ago I just happened see an old audio tape degausser for $10 on eBay, so I bought it on a whim. “Hummmm.... I says, if no one bids on this here thing, I’ll see if there’s anything to them claims”. So’s – yesterday and again this morning I listens to a CD and I immediately go degauss it and put it back in the player. The fairly obvious effect was that the soundstage was taller and wider and there seemed to be greater bass dynamics and improved detail. For $10, what’s to worry?

Mike

Hi Mike, thanks for the tweak suggestions. Pierre, the designer/builder of my 100-watt SS amp, had once very convincingly demonstrated the effects of the degaussing tweak, but these machines were no longer available (I think sold by Monarchy at the time), great to know there's a cheap and available alternative! Thanks as well for the tip on the Rat Shack tool, I'll look for it.

On the tonearm/cartridge front, more news: in fact, none of the vintage tonearms I've tried match the JMW, Morch or RS-A1 tonearms, due principally, I believe, to the suppression of internal resonances, and in some cases also the headshell resonances. The Sonus has a flimsy plastic headshell to minimize mass, and no internal damping at all. Nevertheless, the Sonus/Grado Master came close to the JMW/Grado Master, but with other cartridges the gap was rather large, showing that Grados like low mass, regardless of specs. The real advantage of vintage low-mass tonearms (excepting perhaps the lowest-mass Morch) is that they track the most difficult warps with the utmost ease (no momentum to create the ski-jump effect), and so enlarge the collection and reduce problems. They also save on suspension and stylus wear. I won't give up on the Sonus yet though, as I'll try the fab vintage Satin MC (a gorgeous sound like the Grados, but aimed more specifically at stringed instruments) I have on it next to see what's what.

I had tried the Audio Technica ATP-12 tonearm, a superbly well-built higher-mass professional tonearm with no provision for anti-skating (but seems to work perfectly well nevertheless), but better-built overall than either the AT-1009 or AT-1005 MKII. It sounded great with the Ortofon Jubilee (at 10 times the price!) and a variety of other cartridges I tried. But, compared with the JMW 10.5, there was a slight hardness/brightness, those tonearm resonances again. But it came surprisingly close! All this on my new Reference Lenco of course, I'll have tio try the Rega RB-300 and RB-250 tonearms again to see how they measure up in overall performance now that my Reference has reached new heights.

More on the Jubilee: properly set-up - and this means on a large idler-wheel drive with its clear superiority in terms of PRaT, gestalt and SLAM and transient speed to every other system so far (though we're working on optimizing DDs) - it is a stunning high-end cartridge, which at the price (just under $2K) is a steal, considering its competition lies in the <$8K league. The only high-end MC I've heard so far which matches and beats the incredible Denon DL-103 and variants which so far - for musical power and togetherness - have been King of the MC Hill. I had set up the Denon DL-103"E" (retipped by phonophono in Berlin) on the JMW nad was as always seduced by the musical power, intensity, and togetherness. But when I switched back to the Jubilee, there was all that and more, and even more musical power! As always when setting up cartridges and tonearms on belt-drives, a true idea of a given cartridge's character and performance escapes us, as the belt-drives' various speed instabilites - MOST clearly audible in the relative lack of bass when compared with idler-wheel drive, which itself is the simplest and most evident proof of the inability of belt-drives to deal with stylus force drag and so achieve true speed stability (as opposed to bogus/not real-world speed stability reached by cooking the testing books via biased testing) - cause brightness and poor tracking, among other phenomena such as loss of transient speed and timing. Take the Ortofon Jubilee and mount it on a Lenco/JMW and Bingo!-Presto! it becomes a Denon for musical power and togetherness, and as well preserves its leading-class detail, bass and overall clarity. Also, being King of the Hill when it comes to bass, its results in this one area is truly awesome when mounted to an awesome idler-wheel drive!!

Given all that, I'm still experimenting with various viable alternatives to the Mighty JMW/Ortofon Jubilee pairing, and by this I mean equal but different in overall performance and musical effectiveness. I'm hoping either a re-wired Rega RB-250/Grado Master, or the MAS 282/Grado Master pairing will do the trick.

Tomorrow, in a truly scary high-end system, I'll be setting up a Lenco/Dynavector 507 MKII/Dynavector 17D MKIII, for the previous owner of the Oracle Delphi MKIV/SME V/Dyna XX-1 VdH, already handily outperformed by the Giant Direct Coupled Garrard 401/SME/Dyna XX-1. It'll be interesting to see how the two - Lenco and Garrard - sound compared to each other in such a high-calibre system!! The Oracle is already moot :-)!! Have fun all!!

Hi Mike

RE: Degaussing Plastic - in a a word or two "It Works". I was very skeptical when I read about treating vinyl records to a degaussing before play - very counterintuitive on the surface.

Well, a listen to "Ambrosia" on the Monster L75, a slow pass with the bulk tape eraser (both sides), and another spin on the Lenco was all it took to cure my skepticism. Really. The nay-sayers will say "Nay" and that's OK... my Hi-Fi is resolving enough to let me hear the difference, and that experience is proof enough for me.

BTW - ditto for CDs. I've not yet seen if it shows up as a better picture from DVDs (anyone else tried that already ?)

...and remember to degauss your brain before a listening session (pink noise blast, decreasing to zero, played over headphones)... er - just kidding !

But seriously, do let us know your experience with treating LPs to a buzz from the eraser.

Cheers,
Grant

Hi All,
Happy Anniversary! Our four-year undergraduate program is completed. On to mastering the audio universe! With a bulk degausser in one hand and a Lenco in the other, nothing can stop us! Seem like ions ago since Jean cast his net and snagged so many of us into this blast. It’s been fun and continues to be so whether publicly extolling or privately building – seeking and questioning.
The ‘table playing field has changed in four years. If not in an outright ground swell of idler support, then belated, grudging acknowledgement and respect for a system that was all to quickly passed by. It seems that idler hands were not the work of the Devil, afterall.
Sail on.

- Mario