Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

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.

Be careful, Rick Hopkins. It is funny that when someone early in the original Lenco thread said something almost exactly the same, the guy was battered and ridiculed for being some kind of an insect and dismissed as a trouble maker. I suppose when a person actually has been or will be face to face with someone who speaks the truth as they find it, it is not so easy to be so flippantly dismissive. On the other side of the coin, the same thing happened to the guy that suggested using epoxy when gluing the plinth and the top plate right at the beginning. Dismissal and condescension. Now it appears to be a state of the art inclusion in the World of Lenco.

And my Gigantic Lenco sounds much better now than it ever has before, thanks to the experience with Rick, which paid unexpected dividends in learning more about Lenco mechanisms, and the success of various tonearm/cartridge combos in differing systems (i.e. don't assume that what works in one system will work in another), a great learning experience!

Mr. Nantais. You have written page after page after page of your opinions regarding the reproduction of sound among many components. The relative accuracy of such opinions, obviously, is wholly dependent on your having a good and trusted “ear” for sound. So let me now get this straight. Are just NOW realizing that what arm and pickup combos work in one system may not work so well in another? Have you not been able to hear marked differences before or have you just not bothered comparing the same arm and pickup combos on a variety of tables?

Ah Jejune, living up to your name as always, and waiting for the first sign of trouble. I have written repeatedly about different arm-cartridge combos, and their interactions with various electronics. I am just putting a positive spin on a negative development. Don't try to make this worse than it has to be, a stock-in-trade of your own. Try something constructive for a change. And to get the facts straight, I use the epoxy not to glue the plinth or glue the Lenco to the plinth, but simply to fill in gaps in the metal top-plate and kill resonances. Otherwise, there was just speculation as to whether epoxy was a plus or a minus in gluing the layers (elasticity vs rigidity), no "insects" involved, other than a trouble-maker much like you, the first one, who was not pushing epoxy in the design/plinthing of Lencos. Produce the relevant passages and we'll look at it more closely.

To those out there watching whose behaviour mirrors Jejune's, don't try to capitalize on what has been an amicable "break-up" and make it ugly, the experiment is over, we see things different ways, and I'm very grateful to Rick for giving me the opportunity to go as far as we did, as I repeatedly emphasized. Now let's move on. I know I will, and will take the lessons learned to further develop my own Reference System.

Here's the thing, jejune. Rick's conclusions may have merit, but we'll never know because both the tonearm and cartridge were not alike in this comparison. I am also willing to believe Jean's claim that some of the shortcomings of the Lenco, if indeed they can be traced to the Lenco given the aforementioned variables, were due to problems with the idler arm. Any noise generator in the playback system, like an excessively vibrating idler arm or a noisy motor, is going to be perceived as a hf roll-off and/or as a loss of spaciousness and transparency. What's lost here is that for an expenditure of less than $2K, one should not expect or require a turntable to better the performance of a $29K competitor. I use and enjoy my Lenco, to the extent that I am not concerned whether or not there is something better out there. Indeed, for the amount of money that some people spend, I hope they ARE getting something better. However, I do not necessarily subscribe to the "you get what you pay for" school when it comes to audio equipment.

Agreed. My Lenco project was not just the TT on the cheap.....believe me I can afford multi $$$$ turntable but chose other wise. Not only Lenco gave me the chance to transport myself into the World of Music but forced me to gain knowlodge and know how on turntable building , basis , setup, materials, constraction etc. It is not always about the money.......is it????? It can not be........right? At least for some of us. I am glad and thankfull, those that influence me and help me build it and restore Lenco......that is what it is all about.....or at least should be.

Cheers and enjoy your records anyway you can....being it a 30K or $200 analog rig. Whatever makes you jump, dance , sing or cry.

Mariusz

Am I the only one who has read the reviews of the big SME tables that almost uniformly say that they are dry and uninvolving?

Rick is obviously a well healed and experienced audiophile and I respect his opinion in the context of his post but I dont see the reason to go off in a huff. He likes what he likes but that doesn't mean that he is correct - audiophile detail vs wooly musicality... How should systems sound? Like you are sitting on the bandstand or in row "m".

Anyhow it must have killed Jean to kowtow in print as much as he did :) Good for character building :)

Mike