Tables That Feature Bearing Friction

Dear Raul, right now I am in the process of building the successor of the turntable Syntax has pictured. This project will be finished in autumn this year. I will include some thoughts and technical features I either could not include back in the early 90ies - or which came to mind in the last years.

I did not post any pictures of my system, as it would not help people to get an idea. Aside from tonearm and cartridge none of the other parts of my system are commercial products. However - I will briefly describe the system.
The preamplifier is all tube. Split passive RIAA. First 2 stages are full differential stages (1st time constant of the RIAA is equalised here). Between 2nd and 3rd stage the other 2 time constants are eq'ed. The 3rd stage is a pure plate follower. All triode. The line stage is full passive with transformer attenuator made by friends in Japan. Output impedance is pretty constant 120 Ohms. It drives several meters cables and 3 different pairs of amplifiers in parallel (and live athmosphere, rich colours and live-dynamics are my prime focus in playback audio). The preamplifier is full hand wired with all silver. All tube sockets are mounted on individual PTFE platforms in open frame architecture. All resistors are Shinko Tantal. All capacitors are silver foil in oil. The whole open frame arcghitecure of the Phono circuit is itself suspended inside the 2 cabinet preamplifier by special soft rubber anti-vibration poles. The powersupply is full dual channel with 4 rectifiers (double single wave) and all PP power capacitors with dual bifilar choke LCL filtering. All selector switches are massive silver TKD. Total 6 phono inputs with various transformers to accommodate and match any given source impedance and inductance by any moving coil and MI or MM.
The whole system is tri-amplification. E
ach woofer is sealed cabinet, 18 to 80 Hz with 500 Watt amplifier with active DSP. The woofer driver is a 18" unit with an BxL of 32 and maximum excursion of total 28 mm in sealed 70 litres. Mid bass and mid-highs is a 2 way system with 8" field coil paper driver with huge choke power supply and 80 000 µ filtering. 12 V supply. The tweeter is a 28 lbs unit which goes from 800 to 45 000 Hz. A ribbon / planar hybrid with 100 dB efficiency (past crossover). These two are mounted in an inverse ultraflex cabinet with a combination of 1st order electrical x-over (1 coil in low-mid - 1 capacitor in mid-high) in conjunction with approbiate mechanical filtering in low-pass (pre-chamber) and high-pass (super short tactrix). The cabinet itself has a special adjusted build-in mechnical high-pass with -3dB at 80Hz. Thus giving a pretty smooth melting between the active 18" woofer and the 8" mid-low driver. The whole system has measured 99.5 dB efficiency. Max. SPL 128 dB. Phase never worse than 8°. Pretty flat response whole band.
The amplifier for the tweeter is a special 8 Watt 1 single pair bipolar concept designed by STAX/Japan in 1980 but never commericalised. It has a double 12V - 2 000 000 µF power supply, soon to be put on complete battery supply. It is capable to deliver 5000 A for short moments. The amplifier for the mid-low (80 - 800 Hz is a single ended MOSFet design with OPT. 11 Watt. The shortest signal path of any amplifier. Very similar to the Western Electric type 25 amplifier of the 1920ies, but build with a special MOsFet and matching huge Output-transformer. No input stage, no driver stage.
Tonearm is - no surprise - FR-66s and cartridge is a very special FR-7f modified. Cables are Audioquest SKY w/144v DBS all in NF and flat ribbon pure silver for the mid-high and mid-low.
But honestly - I do not think that this description is of any help.
It rather illustrates the point that I am not too impressed with the offerings of the industry but like to go my own ways.

Wow, thanks for the picture, Syntax. Very, very cool work, Dertonarm.

Since we're hitting on the subject of "how do we pursue perfection" . . . this is of course a difficult question, both in the defining and the persuing. I think that there are several of us here who are frequently travel on this obsessive road in one way or another, and it seems to be ultimately a reflection of one's concept of their own mortality. And I've always enjoyed how much audio and music parallel each other in this capacity.

But to lighten up a bit (I attended a funeral yesterday), there are always a couple of big obstacles in the pursuit of "perfection", the first of which I'll call the "Hubble telescope phenomonon" . . . where a focus on the tiniest of minute details causes one to completely miss the end goal -- that is, a telescope mirror with an amazing level of polish on a micro-level, and a huge macro-level flaw that goes completely unnoticed. Dertonarm metioned the Eminent tonearm, and I'll use this as an example -- great low friction, but horribly excessive horizontal mass (not to mention dirt-sensitive).

The other common problem occurs with high-budget, limited-production projects. . . where from a true perfectionist standpoint, the contribution of every single design, material, and manufacturing decision must contribute maximally to the performance of the end unit. But the "cost no object" attitude actually can work against this, as there's the temptation simply to throw money at a given problem, because after all . . . what's mere money when perfection (and ultimately immortality) is at stake? And in reality, the assumption frequently gets made that simply because a problem has received great financial attention, that it is therefore solved. Thus, the input of cash has distracted the builders/designers from the required process of analyzing its contribution.

Both of these are what I feel are some of the currents that drive up the cost of our hobby, without necessarily driving up the quality of the experience . . . and that's very much away from what I'd consider perfection to be. As Dylan Thomas said:

The force that through the white thread drives the platter
takes my green dollar; that blasts my bank account
Is my destroyer.

Dear Kirkus, yes, I have put some money in that project back then, but I got paid back and in the end I did not loose any money on that project.
As I usually do like to link philosophy with my audio discurses, I must however admit - not today . I am not in the mood - I am afraid. Most likely it will brighten up again tomorrow... ;-).
So rather plain and straight speak now.
So far my odessey in audio has been - on the large scale - cost neutral. I rather wanted to illustrate my point that all too often we do give in too easy. All the money I did put in that project in the early 90ies did not come easy. As I certainly always had to work for my money I wasn't too tempted to throw it away. I did put lots of work into that project - much more than money.
I wasn't on a field campain just to bring as many troops as possible on the battlefield as to crush the enemy by simply overwhelming him by sheer number and brute force.
From the plain dimensions this may look as just another gigantic egomatic turntable where weight and money were the driving forces and the brain was replaced by the big wallet.
Certainly not so.
Cost was an object indeed.
Sadly enough - I do not have money to burn.
Not back then - not now.
Being self-employed means you work everyday and on your own (your own risk too....).
I am certainly much more on a budget regarding my audio passion compared to several other Audiogoners.
Thats why I designed my own turntable, amplifiers and speakers.
Because I am on a budget AND because I did not find what I was looking for.
There was much more research put into that project than my mere words and the picture can tell.
It may however give some reason why I am not too impressed by the "state of the art" turntables of today.
Maybe I just want to say:
I know what I am talking about ............ nothing else.

BTW Raul, one sample of the turntable was in Mexico City from 1993 to 1998. The owner was (and still is...) the former director of BMW Mexico. I sat up the table in your impressive city.

P.S.: agreed on the ET2 - it was just mentioned to clarify the point why the TT had several individual adjustable air supplies for the many different designs in airborne tonearms around in the early 90ies - all having different needs.

I wasn't on a field campain just to bring as many troops as possible on the battlefield as to crush the enemy by simply overwhelming him by sheer number and brute force.
From the plain dimensions this may look as just another gigantic egomatic turntable where weight and money were the driving forces and the brain was replaced by the big wallet.

I didn't mean to insinuate that these were at all your motivations, my apologies if it came across that way. I was simply trying to give a little counterpoint to the general discussion, and make the point that the consideration of cost isn't necessarily anathema to the pursuit of perfection.

Lewm did bring up the string . . . I'd appreciate it if you could explain some of the dynamics involved here, as I don't have much experience with thread-drive turntables. While the mid-1980s Micros and such are designs I've always admired and enjoyed listening to . . . I've always been a bit mystified as to how such a thing as the alignment of the pulleys, the tautness of the string, etc. (which strike me as critical parameters) were left up to the end-user to get right, when there was obviously so much effort into removing variability from so many other aspects of the mechanical design. Also seems really inconsistent with regards to temperature, and wear/stretching of the string itself. Are these significant factors, and does it ever bug you that maybe with sub-optimum setup and maintainance, your designs over the course of the years may not be delivering the performance you designed them to have?

Dear Kirkus, I know that these were not your motivations - I just wanted to set some points clear as the turntable sure looks like a "mammoth" in the picture and thus the above mentioned suspect might easily arise. But - thank you.

As for the string - just briefly and preliminary, as I have to leave the computer soon:

The basic idea / principle is to have a homogenous mass put into constant rotation and then let the inertia do the job. The string in its kind of "slip-coupling" (which is kind of tricky to set-up and needs a calbrated spring gauge to ensure the perfect "non-grip") does have only one job (after bringing the platter on constant speed once):

- prevent the platter from getting slower.

All I can say - and this time I just plain ask you to take my words for granted - is: it works extremely well. We made long period measurements in MTU in 1992 and the derivation from 33 1/3 was (short-period as well as long-period derivation measurements) as close to zero as possible (measurements were taken with laser beam and calibrated circular stroboscope foil).
And - yes, the measurements were made while stylus was in the groove.
This is a huge inertia (the platter is 326 mm in total diameter - 108 lbs) in motion.
Once in motion on the desired speed, there are no derivations. The air resistance, the bearing friction (...the stylus drag..) these are all constants and thus the rotation stays constant.
It however takes about 2:35 minutes to reach constant speed........
The string just have to be dyneema or kevlar derivate and the coupling has to be precise.
But it works marvelous and watching it work, you get a certain "feel" of "completeness" and "natural move".
Audio phrases......

Time to get off.
Good night for now.