rock mkv

frank
heard some good feedbacck regarding nu force 9s
siltrains swears by his and uses the same phonostage as myself
how are those ribbon tweeters?
at a guess i'd say your'e response will be FAST!
I used my rock today with and without the damping trougth
that trougth really dors work
the most noticeable attribute is better control of sibilance
thus making the human voice seem more natural and real.
pehaps you could optimise one to work with your orbe?

Uktel,

Yes, the ribbon tweeter is "fast" and is able to cleanly reproduce fast percussive transients. It's also quite airy when the recording contains that information. I think it's a very good tweeter.

And I totally believe that the damping trough does work. I used to have one on my Mk-III Rock. In fact, one of my friends made one for his SOTA and liked it; although now he has a VPI TNT and doesn't use the trough.

It would be difficult to mount a trough on the Orbe. So I'm thinking that the Riggle VTAF device, which decouples the tonearm from the armboard and allows quick and easy VTA setting may be a good thing for me to try.

But I have to tell you that even as things are, with the Ebony L on the Orbe I can clearly hear very low level details (echoes, spatial effects, and low level hums from electronic instruments) on some of my records that I never knew were there. And these are very interesting effects that add a bit of nuance to the recordings. Even hard to make out backing vocals that are lost or garbled on other tts can now be heard clearly.

I can tell you that keeping platter-bearing and motor noise from getting to the armboard is another area that can lead to considerable sonic improvements... And I have a couple of tricks for accomplishing that which work very well on the Michell.

frank
decoupling the armboard has been a question i have pondered for many a year.
it seems to me to make such LOGICAL sense but manufacturers
seem to ignore this i guess because of installation
i did build a tt out of old roksan spares and mounted the arm on a small wall shelf behind the deck
the results were certainly positive until the wife used to clean/polish
she always managed to move the deck!
i may in the future try this again with the rock
the rock is heavy enougth to not give the same problem
maybe great minds do work alike
but some say fools follow blindly!
good luck with the system
ps
heard an orbe with tom evans dc motor power supply and it sounded superb!