Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Hi Lew, no you don't sound negative at all: my answer to you is that we take what we can get. Rick is an incredibly generous fellow, and who knows, maybe he will even be willing some day to transfer his tonearm/cart to my Lenco, I'll have a blank armboard ready and a drill-press!! But, I totally understand him if he doesn't want to start discombobulating his pricey SME to further the experiment. I have no cartridges which can compete with the Benz LP and Clearaudio Concerto in my arsenal which are not tapped and so useable with the tapped RS-A1, I will have to finally strip the threads in my RS-A1 and make it useable with tapped cartridges: THEN we will be able to perhaps simply plunk the RS-A1 on one turntable and simply swap it over to the other for a fair comparison (but given the SME 30's suprisingly compact dimensions, this necessitates complete removal of the Graham Phantom). He is certainly curious, so who know? But, our neutrality vs musical truth dichotomy continues, and so is the Shootout which continues for Round Three next week!

It turns out my Lenco has a faulty idler-slide mechanism, too loose and no way to fix it without replacing it, seems there was some variation in these and we must be careful in swapping parts from one Lenco to the next (there is also some variation in the length of the idler-wheel arms as I recently discovered as well). The result of this will be further improved speed stability and even better sound. We also discovered that the Concerto was MUCH happier in his system on the JMW tonearm than on the SME IV tonearm, which was killing the highs (this may be due to the complex wiring arrangement for the SME, as his preamp accepts only balanced Neutrik connectors, which necessitated complex connections, some of them plain cheap and bad (no way to find special female RCAs for cable termination). This in turn meant: SME tonearm cable to cheap female RCAs, in turn soldered to three-conductor balanced cable to Neutrik. Perhaps the changeover too from SME cable to Cardas via the cheap RCA created a high-frequency barrier. Or the JMW is quite simply the better tonearm ;-) (in my system however, the SME was superior, but this with the cable direct to preamp). The cable I made for the JMW, however, goes direct from the RCAs at one end to the Neutrik at the other. Incredible that Rick lets me take care of these various issues and come back with a fresh Lenco next week! In the interim, while the Lenco is still more powerful and "musical" (in terms of dynamics/punchiness, gestalt and PRaT) - which some dismiss as a colouration/distortion and so of no consequence and in fact a negative (I believe that PRaT and gestalt, the sense of all the musicians being on the same page rhyhmically, IS viable, neutral information, and that this information is far better conveyed by the Lenco/idlers, than by even the mighty SME or any belt-drive, due to the differing drive systems); and some don't question as anything other than musicality and so viable and acceptable "information" (so overall in terms of witnesses we have a bit of a draw) - it was discovered that the Benz LP improved quite a lot when loaded at 47K (while the Concerto barely changed...again might be due to the complex cabling), and a change in VTA made it even better, so it was time to attend to properly setting up the fab Clearaudio Concerto and recover its quickly fading high frequencies (in relative comparison), which is simply THE most musical cartridge I've ever heard (and it's a high-end MC!), and in terms of the usual audiophile area stupendous. More next week when all is attended to!

And speaking of blogs, I AM working on setting up my own website, where I will continue my Rants into the Void, at some point this summer, and continue to report on and share various experiments with various 'tables and other equipment, and more Idler Conquests, Conversions and Competitions! The Firewall will be provided by Raid ;-). Have fun all!!

Sounds like the Plains of Abraham redux. The master tapes don't lie. But whether more like Odysseus vs. Cyclops, Ali vs. Frazier, or Jimmy Superfly Snuka vs. Don Cage, all such pitched battles in Lenco-land are addictive to seekers of the analog Grail.

Thanks for the words of sanity Rick!

A DIY Lenco is without a doubt very good value for money and a very satisfying path to follow.

But it will never be able to do what an SME 30 can do. That's pure logic. Just look at the insanely elevated level of craftsmanship and fit'n'finish!

The only way to compare the 2 tables is to use the same arm and cartridge on both (into the same phono pre).

Oops, simultaneous postings! Hi all, just to clear up what may appear to be incorrect conclusions, with all due respect (and more!: who else would sign up for this out there? Any takers??) to the incredibly generous and helpful Rick: what I reported on was Round One, no misprepresentations, and what - for fault of a better term - was Round Two (I don't really count Round Two as Round Two as this involved me, Rick and the fellow who acted as go-between to hear what 47K did to the contest in poreparation for the real Round Two, so this involved no independent witnesses). Since I did not attend the real Round Two and did not report on it or its conclusions, then I could not misrepresent it. During the not-actual Round Two, Rick did say the bass on the SME had improved (after changing the cartridge loading to 47K) and more closely approached the Lenco's bass in terms of reach and power, which implies the Lenco was the standard here and not the SME. I am guilty here of perhaps jumping the gun on this conclusion only in reporting on Rick, which evidently changed again in the actual Round Two, so sorry about that Rick.

I do look forward to doing and hearing the tape vs turntables comparison, which I will report on: I believe, all due respect to Rick, that had I been there, and some others from Round One, conclusions would have differed, as I (and they) hear some things Rick does not hear (i.e. such as the matter of 3D "presence" which Rick perceives as forwardness, which may be on the tape and communicated via the Lenco but not the SME, and the matter of PRaT/timing, and so on). Definitely no contest on the highs, but there are reasons for this. To expand on the matter of timing, while I agree with Rick on the matter of the bass being better via the SME on some recordings, and the matter of high frequencies (which I could clearly hear and so I knew something was up, as Lencos have never been criticized by others in the matter of high-frequency extension, including some who own either the same Sound labs or even the same Atma-Sphere/Sound Lab system as Rick); I DID hear, on every single recording (and this was agreed on by at least four of us in Round One), a very wide gap between the Lenco and the SME in terms of PRaT (Pace, Rhythm and Timing) and gestalt. By "gestalt" I mean essentially timing, it means all the musicians are following precisely the same rhythm at the same precise time, so that they are evidently in chorus/symphony on this point: one organic whole. So, on this score, unrecognized and perhaps simply dismissed by Rick and the others in Round Two, did the SME preserve its superiority to the Lenco vis-a-vis the Master Tape? Does Master Tape even have this "artefact", and do the electronics inside the tape machine convey it if it's there? There are no absolute standards in an always imperfect world. I'll find out and report on it honestly in Round Three and it precursor (the not-actual Round Three/set-up ;-).

So, in Round One, Rick's first and immediate reaction, after only one or two minutes was to exclaim "Man this is a good turntable!" (not precisely the right words I believe, but an honest reporting of the facts). So this can sink in, this is in context of Rick's living daily with his SME 30/Graham Phantom. There were five of us there, four of us preferred the Lenco (Rick preferring the SME), and I actually sided with Rick against the others on the matter of bass (which was pretty well uniformly preferred by the others on the Lenco, including what had been a professional musician/drummer, while I agreed with Rick that the SME favoured certain LPs while the Lenco favoured others) and the matter of highs (which again the others preferred on the Lenco I believe). We were forced to go back and forth again and again on certain recordings, which shows just how close the contest really was in audiophile terms (i.e. information and not music). All was as I reported in Round One, with the midrange via the Lenco having more presence, impact, snap and even better separation of instruments (of course Rick can disagree here), and that the highs via the Lenco were indeed rolled off as compared with the SME (pretty well only me and Rick agreed on this, as the others found the smmooooth Lenco highs still there and quite good/pleasing). The end result of that Round One was that all agreed, including Rick, that the Lenco was World-Class, that the SME was also World-Class, and that it was a close-run race, so no misrepresentation. This evidently changed in the real Round Two.

If one reads Rick's posting, our dichotomy as to "neutrality" (which I consider actually a colouration) vs musical truth is even more starkly highlighted, and progresses/expands as time goes on, as every single superiority the Lenco has over the SME is dismissed as an aberration. So, the Lenco's evidently debatable "superiority" in terms of the SLAM I always write about, transients, presence (a three-dimensionality I hear but which Rick describes as "forward"), and bass weight and power get described as : "The Lenco has a pronounced bass boost that is a little fast and heavy, a warmer, livelier midrange that may cause snare drums and percussion instruments to leap out in stark contrast to the background music, and a pronounced rolled off top end that tends to take some of the life out of the music and reduces the subtle room interactions that are present on the recording. This provides slam, impact, and a snap to every recording you might want to throw at it but it is not an honest reproducer. These issues may also be arm, cartridge or set-up related. It’s not an exact science here." Two opposing judgments of precisely the same sonic artefacts/experiences.

Musically-speaking, all present in Round One agreed the Lenco was superior, and even Rick found it pleasing, but we evidently have different definitions of "musicality/musical". I define this in what I consider the usual/normal way, as in the phrases "music to my ear" (which means the "pleasing colourations" Rick is talking about) and "music to sooth the savage breast" which again points to beauty and not information. The Oxford Dictionary defines it thus: "Having the nature or characteristics of music; tuneful, melodious, harmonious; pleasing in sound, euphonious." This closely parallel's Rick's own description of the Lenco: "What the Lenco is is a very good vintage turntable that has very pleasing musical colorations that deviate significantly from the very neutral and musical presentation of the SME 30/2." Rick more closely ties "musical" to information and accuracy, such as pleasing definition of high-frequency detail and "neutrality," I believe. So a semantic disagreement as well, this hobby is a mine field! But, perhaps with the matter of the Lenco/?/Clearaudio's highs attended to and so a more balanced comparison achieved, this will change the descriptions.

So more and more the differences between the two, in strict audiophile terms (musicality aside), veer towards the matter of high-frequencies, already explained/described in my last post. Rick is going out of his way to help here with a proper Shootout: I actually relied on Rick's aural memory in our quick experiment to see if the Clearaudio's highs improved on the JMW (he said it did and it seemed so to me as well, and furthermore the bass changed too, seemed tighter to me, so expect new developments here too), and Rick actually held the Lenco top-plate for me while I examined and tried, unsuccessfully (because it simply didn't fit, first time in my experience so I never assumed/considered this as a possibility), to repair the faulty slide mechanism.

To end, we are both reporting honestly on the same series of events, but are in disagreement as to what it all means. Furthermore, there is the problem with the idler mechanism, which means the Lenco was not performing even near to spec (and yet this STILL forced resorting to Master Tape in Round Two, in order to decide, I leave it to the readers to recognize the implications of just how good the Lenco is in strict audiophile terms, i./e. detail, imaging, information and so on), leaving musical issues aside. And furthermore and added to that is the matter of the Clearaudio I took a chance on as it was the only one I could score (and I'm happy about that as it is my favourite cartrdige ever!), an unknown quantity, untested (I should never have sold the superb and neutral Ortofon Jubilee). The accompanying graph shows it drops off precipitously at a frequency of 14K instead of the 20K the factory says it should measure at (which makes one wonder why Clearaudio even released it), and me and Rick discovered that the Clearaudio favoured the JMW (which, to hand it to Rick, he predicted). Actually, this drop-off is a good thing in the context of the horn-loaded Electro-Voice system I am building. Anyway, Rick is very constructive, he suggested the Clearaudio would improve on the JMW and wanted this (so he does really want to know the truth of the matter of Lenco vs current Contender), and actually suggested on-the-spot remedies to the matter of the idler mechanism while I held it, and is looking forward to Round Three, where hopefully the matter of the high frequencies will really be ameliorated, and with correct speed with no wobbly-mechanism-induced speed variations we will hear the Lenco for real.

So, stay tuned to Round Three all, I'm sure the audiophile comunity is as divided overall as me and Rick are as to what constitutes "musicality" and what "neutrality" means and what we are aiming for in the construction/assembly of our sound systems!! Have fun all, and don't forget to thank Rick's endless generosity of time and effort, and the search for musical truth (and the different meanings attached to THAT ;-))!!

I say again, it would be interesting to try to make the comparison more "scientific" by using at least the same cartridge on the two turntables, granting that swapping tonearms is just too much of a pain in the arse to ask of Rick. (I know I wouldn't want to do it, were I the owner of the SME30.) Or, you could possibly swap cartridges and listen to see whether the differences you hear and ascribe to the respective turntables are indeed due to properties of the turntables or the cartrdidges. Having said all that, the differences you and Rick describe do pretty well fit with reviews of the SME30 (neutral, analytical, maybe a bit dry compared to some others) and the Lenco of my direct experience and as described by others, too.