Say it aint so--- Teres quality question

Patrick,

Thank you for having the courage to post this publically, though I hope we Teres-philes have never been intimidating. I trust CB will replace the armboard with one of the proper height.

After I got your email I checked my platter and it's pretty flat. Not "perfect" of course, but closer than 1/64". I'm not sure how critical this is, virtually every record is warped by that much or more.

OTOH I quite agree about the armboard issues, since I experienced them myself. The armboard should be finished as flat and smooth as my plinth, which is so perfect it's hard to believe it's made of wood. It's also really important that its top/bottom surfaces be parallel. I had to file a burr off mine, as I told you.

Metric drill bits seem pretty obvious too. I've been posting and advising new buyers for months that Teres is drilling the wrong size hole for Rega/OL arms with a VTA collar.

I too had to buy a longer armboard bolt at Home Depot. For $3800 I suppose one should get the right length bolt. Perhaps fitting one's armboard is meant to be a reference to Teres' DIY roots? ;)

Focusedfx,

Judging by Patrick's very positive reaction to the sonics of his friend's Teres on another thread, I think his concerns stem largely from his considerable expertise as a woodworker. He understands how easy it would be for Teres to do some things even better.

FWIW, I'm still convinced that a 200 series Teres is the bargain of the decade. Except for those armboard glitches, everything about my 265 approaches world class. I got a TT that rivals or mainstream $8-12K tables for less than $4K, and a 255 may be an even bigger bargain.

AS YOU WILL NOTE THERE ARE ALOT OF RESPONSES TO YOUR POST. I AM GOING TO GET FLAMED AFTER THIS AS THE TERES CULT WILL COME LOOKING, BUT, THE TABLES ARE NOT STABLE. PERIOD.

AudiogoN HAS MANY TERES (WOOD) LOVERS, I HAVE SEEN 20 COME OUT AND RAVE ON THEIR TERES WHEN SOMEONE ASKS WHICH TABLE. I AM SURE THAT THE TABLES SOUND WONDERFUL, HOWEVER, WOOD WILL MOVE ITS ENTIRE LIFE AND THAT IS ONE OF THE BEAUTIES OF IT, but not for audio precision. DO YOU SEE ANY WOODEN ARMS, BEARINGS? MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS ON THE OTHERHAND ARE DESIGNED TO VIBRATE AND MOVE TO CREATE SOUND, THE COMBINATION OF PLEASING HARMONICS AND NATURAL BEAUTY MAKE WOOD A NATURAL CHOICE. OTHER THAN PERCEIVED BEAUTY, I CANNOT THINK OF ANY PRECISION MACHINES THAT RELY ON CELULOSE IN THE REAL WORLD.

THE PROBLEM IS VARIOUS PARTS ON THE TABLE ARE ALL MOVING AT DIFFERENT RATES ALBEIT MICRO, AND MOVEMENT IN A TABLE IS LOSS OF DEFINITION, DYNAMICS AND DYNAMIC RANGE.

BUY A WOODEN TT FOR ASTHETICS AND ITS MAJOR SHORTFALL BUT DON'T CONFUSE WOOD WITH HIGH PERFORMANCE.

It's no secret wood can't be machined to high tolerances...

As far as the Teres tables not being stable, I live in a log cabin in East Tennessee, and I am currently sitting in my living room, where it is currently about 48 degrees INDOORS. I have a coat on. I am often out for nights and weekends and don't even run the heat during these times. I have temperature swings indoors from about 35 degrees in winter when I come back before I get the wood stove going, to about 95 degrees in summer because I have no air conditioning. The humidity ranges from about 20% during the winter to about 95% very commonly all summer, even when it isn't raining. Very humid climate here in the summer. I'd dare say that my temp and humidity swings are far far greater than ANYBODY reading this post. Sometimes I have temp swings of about 40 degrees IN A SINGLE DAY, like today when I came home this morning during an ice storm and then started warming up the house with the wood stove, which will eventually get it up to about 75 degrees before I go to bed. Also, my TT sits right next to a 6' sliding glass door, which doesn't have the greatest insulation, and gets opened to go out from time to time, even when it's very cold out.

I have a wood based Teres 245, and have NEVER had ANY instability problems whatsoever with my table. My table sounds great any time I play it(although I do have to adjust the VTF because of temp sensitivity in the cartridge).If any of you reading this even come close to this level of change in your listening environments, I would be VERY surprised.

In case there is any concern about my system having enough resolution to hear any changes, I might refer you to my system thread which will show a high efficiency SET OTL tube system that will reveal EVERYTHING mercilessly through 100db single driver speakers.

I fully understand the idea about wood moving around, since I also do woodwork in my custom acoustic guitar making activities. But I can state unequivocally that my Teres does not change sound performance because of any wood instability.

As far as no wood being used in tonearms, one of the highest regarded tonearms in the world right now, the Schroder, has a wood wand on it. Nobody seems to be complaining about it.

I'll try not to enter an opinion as to why there is an attack coming upon the Teres tables, even though I think it is quite apparent, due to the sales being taken away from the other more famous TT manufacturers.

I have nothing to do with the Teres Audio company now, nor have I had anything to do with them in the past, ever. I work for another audio company, and have no axe to grind about Teres, nor do I have any profit or loss motivation involved. I simply use their table, and am very happy with its performance and value, and have experienced none of the things being discussed on this thread in almost 2 years of ownership time.

IMHO, and YMMV.

Doug,

Yeah, all I've heard so far is the relative potential of this table since VTA (SRA) is so critical, especially with the 901. I will let everyone know what my impression is once it's set up properly. I imagine it will meet my expectations or exceed them. Just for the record, if the armboard would have been the right height I would never have looked so closely at the surfaces of all the pieces. Keep in mind though that the Teres website says the platter is MACHINED to very close tolerances. Like 4yanx, I too would like to know exactly how the platter is made. If the parts are run through a planer and then sanded, that doesn't meet my definition of machined.

On a side note to everyone I would like to express my appreciation for the kind remarks. I feared that I would really be seen as a touble maker which I'm not. The trouble was with the armboard, not me. It took quit a bit of effort on my part to eliminate every other possible part as the culprit. Maybe I'm wrong but I haven't been able to find detailed drawings of the armboard or platter on the Teres website. If those would have been posted then I would have found out long ago that the armboard was about 1/2" too high. Chris said to me repeatedly that there must be something different about the Illustrious. In retrospect it should have been obvious to him when I had to buy a 2" Forstner bit to deepen the bottom hole 1/2" just to attach the nut to the arm. In this case, getting his attention was like pulling teeth and I've got to say this aspect really pissed me off. There is really no excuse for shipping the wrong bolt length since the potential of stripping the wooden threads goes way up when one is trying to secure the armboard to a point where a minor bump doesn't require you to re-setup the whole package. Drilling the wrong size hole for the VTA collars is inexcuseable also. Honestly, these issues may be minor in the scope of things but how would the Teres group like it if their tire dealer only had 3 of the correct size tires and mounted the fourth tire with whatever size they had on hand?

Once again, there aren't that many critical dimensions. Not many of the surfaces are critical either. Those that are should be held to the standards expressed on the Teres website.