Micro SX-8000 II or SZ-1

**** As some know here, I am shortly moving to the SXC-8000 Mk1 with vacuum platter, and so it will be interesting to hear the differences.

Radicalsteve, so you were apparently the person who got the 8000 MK1 from this site a few days back. Congratulations, it was very good setup and it was not overly expensive price. You will need to re-service it and then pretty much forget about TT to the rest of your life. That TT will easily succeed over many today’s TT that are being sold for 7 times more then what you paid. The MK1 is considered less desirable then MK2 and cost less but I like MK1 more – it more flexible with organization of space. You got the best deal of all as you have the white platter. Most of the MK1 come with yellow platter and most of the MK2 comes with white. The only thing that you would need to decide for yourself is if you willing to use the vacuum hold down. The vacuum hold down is tricky you might play with it. If you decide to use then you can make a very-very thin but hard cut of leather that you would place between the Micro’s levees. It will not screw up the vacuum but it will create a decupling layer between record and metal platter.

*** What is here disputed about the Micro Seiki skeleton TT's was already done so widely and brought to conclusion by the later 1980ies. Micro Seiki introduced the Hs-20 and HS-80 to further improve the performance of the RX-1500, RX-3000, RX-5000 and SX-8000.

There is no such a thing as conclusion was reached in later 1980ies. Do you remember your setup in the later 1980? Would you go beak to that sonic result? Leaving aside on psychological moments of being younger… Besides whatever Micro Seiki or any other manufacture produces it is just what they produce. Micro Seiki is just a machine shop and they will cut anything they want you to buy. To make a final judgment about sonic benefits is not Micro Seiki responsibility by my responsibility, and yours… I made my experiment and I concluded that there is a certain patter mass after which any further increase of inertia moment becomes irrelevant in practical terms. The conversations about the minimization of wearing I juts discard as completely off the wall.

**** The improvements with inertia units by Micro Seiki or custom made devices are sonically apparent to all audiophiles who care, whose set-up is capable to show it and whose hearing isn't deafened by dogmatic prejudice.

I do not know. I do not hear well after my surgery a few years back and I do not have the capable set-up. After my wife and I had 6 childrens she does not allow me to pay music loud. But I have my amplified Radio Shake headphones that I think make me able to hear a lot. I did not hear any inertia improvements with 8000, but might be my hearing aid had weak butteries that day….

*** This - for once in our audiophile world of often nebulous results and experiences - is fully backed up by applied science and simple mechanical laws found in every middle high-school physics book.

It you care about the applied science, not the lever that people like to demesne at those internet forums then look for papers that represent of belt simulation as filtering devises, what the horizontal force on the palter acts the modification of the filter’s Q. The free-standing, or the latitude-neutral platter acts as the second ordered but the properly belt-biased palter more move the filter to the Bessel Q. You need to get a proper relationship between the patter mass and bias from belt and if you hit it then there is not father improvement, you might have twice more mass and inertia but it will just reset the need for different tension, nothing else. Sure it works staring from a certain mass of the platter. The 8000 is in the Zone of the right mass…. It is possible to do the same with lover mass but then you will need to make the shaft longer, the way how it is done in EMT 927 but this is a whole another story….

Its not about using a belt at all.
I would never use a belt - not on a Micro Seiki nor on any other "belt drive" TT.
A belt is always a source of instability and in worst case much more than a filter.
The RX-5000 and SX-8000 were designed by Micro Seiki to be used with string for best results.
With a string, fairly low tension and symmetrical positioned inertia unit we are looking at a kind of slip regulated drive.
In other words - the inertia providing the speed stability and the low tension string applied without horizontal force is just preventing the platter to get slower.
Its a tricky idea and it only works with fairly heavy platter (= high inertia) and force free low tension string drive.
No belt - no tape - no high tension and no horizontal force vector.
There were papers in japanese magazines floating around by Micro Seiki engineers in the early 1980ies addressing this principle.
And yes, - there were top-class set-ups with SX-8000 and RX-5000 w/inertia units and mats dead quite already in the early 1980ies - this is nothing the US-audiophiles discovered.
Some of the japanese audiophiles were already enjoying this when the majority in the western hemisphere still thought a scottish TT would be the very pinnacle of analog set-up.
Setting up precisely a RX-3000, 5000 or SX-8000 that way will provide you with the utmost speed stability and an extremely low noise floor and outstanding low level dynamics.
I know it - I've done it a few times.
Despite what some people may say otherwise, anyone in the position to try should do so and find out for himself.
I know that some here have already done so and know that there is much truth in what I've said.

"...by far the best comination to be a light but hard vinyl/acrylic mat from a source in Germany Probably from DeltaDevice" ........

Syntax, not only are you correct, but if memory serves me well, you were the person kind enough to give me that lead a few months ago?! The store on ebay is acryteller.

If anyone is interested the link is: http://stores.shop.ebay.ca/acrylteller-de-shop__W0QQ_armrsZ1

Steve

*** I would never use a belt - not on a Micro Seiki nor on any other "belt drive" TT. A belt is always a source of instability and in worst case much more than a filter.

Come on, it acts as filter equivalent no matter what you do and an no matter what coupling topology you use between two axis. Also, I disagree with your comments about belt. Starting with some palter mass it become irrelevant what you use if the tension of your drive is properly applied with respect to marital of the belt/string. I used what imaginable to drive heavy Micros: magnetic tapes, all possible string, many different types of belts… you name it. If methodologically properly each of them used then with the proper mass of palters there is no difference what drives the platter. I might talk about some VERY negligible differences but it is so minor that absolutely discard it as contrived differences and I have a firm believe that no one would recognize them in practical trims.

*** The RX-5000 and SX-8000 were designed by Micro Seiki to be used with string for best results.

It was not what Micro Seiki designer told me….

**** With a string, fairly low tension and symmetrical positioned inertia unit we are looking at a kind of slip regulated drive. In other words - the inertia providing the speed stability and the low tension string applied without horizontal force is just preventing the platter to get slower. Its a tricky idea and it only works with fairly heavy platter (= high inertia) and force free low tension string drive. No belt - no tape - no high tension and no horizontal force vector.
There were papers in japanese magazines floating around by Micro Seiki engineers in the early 1980ies addressing this principle.

And there was zillion pares advocating opposite as well. All those people who write those papers know very little about sound. If you so love the Japanese magazines then go to Japan and listen their funny rice-paper sound. I hate the Japanese sound, it derives from non-morphemic tone of Asian language and I do not value it too much in my reference scale. I wrote about it a lot in past. The Japanese magazines write the same as the US magazines do. Our writers say that on their tonearms they can clearly hear sound of tide on Atlantic Ocean but they have their paper-made TT sitting atop of TV or hoods of working car. Do I need to pay attention to the “writers” or to my own experience and my own definition of success?