Apocalypse Now?—Technics sp10 problem s

My experience supports the proposition that a nude TT can sound excellent. I can't make comparative judgments because I've never had a plinth.

Chris: your set up is so cool. What's that black piece over the Start/stop button?

Henry: your thread and monumental efforts motivated me; otherwise I probably wouldn't have bothered listening to the Technics nude and went to fabricate a plinth straightaway. I also followed your lead on the Signet cart/AT 155lc stylus combo. I haven't had a chance to use it much but you're right about the impressive soundstage.

The black piece over the start button is a safety feature radio stations used to keep from accidentally turning the unit on or off.

Halcro, IMO, no one has proven anything until someone who has an excellent plinth can tell us that his dd tt sounds better without it. Even then, the result is subjective. Banquo has it right in that respect.

Banquo, I join in those who are glad you have found competent local help. Can you divulge the name of this person? Others in your area might benefit.

I have a local friend who owns a very successful machine shop. They actually make scientific instruments, but at his home he has every machine tool you can imagine, including a computer-operated mill. He has helped me already making odds and ends for my tts, and I am sure I can enlist him in making something to serve as a no-plinth. (He is basically retired, has hired someone else to run his business, just sits home and collects money.) I am thinking along the lines of the Grand Prix Monaco or the Micro-Seiki 1000DQX, basically a frame that holds the chassis firmly in place with three outward going "legs" upon which one can mount arm boards that are therefore coupled to the structure. Brass and alu in combination might be good structural elements. You can buy nice blank slabs and/or rods, etc, of either on-line for reasonable prices.

On coupling tonearm to bearing, perhaps I misspoke. It would be better to say that I think the tonearm should be coupled to the chassis. Do I need documentation for that idea? About 99% of all tts ever made provide that sort of coupling, some better and more emphatically than others. Oddly, all of Kuzma's lesser models do it that way; only the Airline system does the separate pod. Plus there are a few other high-price entries that also use pods to mount tonearms. I don't like the idea. Regardless of gross movements that could screw up alignment, if there is any chance that the arm pod will be subjected to vibration or resonance that is not also simultaneously experienced by the platter and bearing, then there will be motion of the structural center of the tonearm (the pivot) with respect to the LP. How can that be a good thing for a cartridge that is trying at the same time to trace a groove in an LP? I think the tonearm pivot (in the case of a pivoted arm, of course) and the platter/LP should move as one entity only. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. But this is theory we are arguing, not the idea that any one person's system that employs a separate arm pod could or could not be pleasing to the ear.

Tsk tsk Lewm.
I believe it was Raul who started this whole Project (at least for me), by stating that his Technics SP10 Mk2 or Mk3 sounded better 'nude' than in a plinth?
So he has heard it both ways.......and you haven't? :-)
But perhaps you will say that Raul's plinth was not "excellent"?........and this I fear will be the standard response of all who insist on plinths.
If it doesn't sound better in a plinth then the plinth is not "excellent".
A circuitous argument unwinable by the opposing camp? :-(

Hi Halcro, I am not arguing and never have argued that I know that a good direct-drive table sounds better in a good well-designed plinth than in a no-plinth. I have argued only that I like what I hear from my own tt's in a slate plinth of my own making. In other words, my experience is about as broad as yours on the other side of the coin, which is to say, not very broad.

Raul does not like it when I write this, but in my opinion (please note), marble and granite are not the best materials for a plinth, or at least their use is controversial. (Raul's plinth was made of marble.) So, while I respect Raul's observation that he likes his present set-up better than when he had a plinth, it does not tell me much about the relative merits when the plinth is a known high quality type. (As I wrote elsewhere, my SP10 came in an MDF plinth that sounded dreadful.) That's why I say I would like to hear from someone who has gone from an Albert Porter or a Dobbins plinth to a no-plinth. So, yes, I am saying that Raul's plinth was not "excellent" or at least I don't know that it was excellent. But I don't "insist" on anything. In fact, your experience has stimulated me to give it a try. I want the best sound reproduction possible (defined by my ears and brain), and I don't give a hang how I get there.

On the other side, it is tough also for you no-plinthers to argue on principle that your way is best. Why did the top engineers of Technics, Kenwood, Pioneer, etc, all develop elaborate plinths for their moon-shot efforts at a state of the art direct-drive turntable back in their heyday? (This is meant as a rhetorical question; no response is required. I'm just sayin'.) Kenwood even invented a new composite material to use as the basis for their multi-component plinth structure, which weighs 65 lbs in the L07D. �And they started with a coreless, slotless motor that has inherently less cogging than that of the SP10s.