New Maplenoll Ariadne owner needing advice

Charlie---If you need some tonearm wire--AMsystems or Phoenix wire sells medical grade teflon coated silver wire that will work well and can be cut to length. It can be all the way to 0.001 diameter (i did 0.003) and is wonderful if you are handy with solder iron. Makes a big difference and the thin wire helps from a tonearm standpoint. I tried the thicker wire but did not work well because it impacted the free play of the tonearm. Piedpiper warned me about that and he was right.

Oilmanmojo: Many thanks for the information. I hope wrote clearly on the set-up. Smith recommends several ideas that I incorperated into the room that is far from done. I highly recommend his book. My "rats" take was my version of "lemons make lemonaide". Charlie

Checked out the sites. Thank You ! More to come , Charlie

I have an Ariadne that was recently purchased for me by my wife for our anniversary! Anyway, the previous owner had owned the table since new and apparently this table was used at a Chicago CES almost 20 years ago. He said he bought the table directly from Bob Dilger. The owner said that this table was plug and play and it rarely required adjustment. Anyway, I took the turntable home and was able to quickly set it up (1/2 hour) and it played amazingly well for a couple of hours. I put on an old Grado Reference Sonata and I never heard it sound better. I was really captivated by the performance of this turntable.

Then the original silent pump overheated and no longer works! I can't believe it!

I called Lloyd Walker who told me that it was a 1/6 horsepower Refrigerator compressor with the coolant drained and with oil poured in as a lubricant. The pump has wooden decorative exterior cover. The pump itself is attached to a small air chamber and there are 2 larger air chambers (the very large one was apparently called a Scud by Bob Dilger) that are connected by 500 feet of hose. Anyway, my question is if anyone else has replaced this pump with a modern equivalent refrigerator compressor? Any other suggestions regarding air pumps. My version has the 50 pound platter.

Also the original owner said he never used the oil trough because it was not worth the trouble and sonically it really didn't make that much of a difference. Would like to know your opinions of the oil trough. Bob

Baranyi--Not sure if anyone ever called a maplenoll a plug and play unit:>) However, i do think the maplenoll ariadne is one of the better tables out there. I currently own the white ariadne reference, grey ariadne signature, and the apollo heavily modified by Lloyd Walker.

Your first question, i changed out my air pump to a JUNAIR compressor back in 2006 and have not looked back. The compressor is one used a lot in the medical/dental field so is pretty quiet, reliable, and clean smelling (not always the case with the original pumps). If you look on this string you will see MEDO and WISA pumps also mentioned. I like the Junair because it has a rather large surge tank and great pressure control regulator that matches well with my air system. Clean, pulse free air at a pressure your arm likes is key to keeping these machines happy. The Junair uses a synthetic oil that is odorless and does not bleed off very much even with heavy use.

Concerning oil trough, i find it is a very good tool to get the utmost out of the system. it tends to solidify the bass in my opinion. I personally do not like the tonearms that came with the maplenoll and have modified both the ariadne to carbon fiber arms and relocated the oil bath to directly below the air spindle using a tapered pen similar to current walker tables. This way, the mess of the oil trough is eliminated. Its a little complicated to do this modification but i get a maplenoll with on the fly VTA adjustment, better dampening of the arm, and a stiffer assembly with the carbon fiber arm and headshell. There is a difference with using the oil trough versus not.

Hope this helps