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Sorry, Henry. I may have failed to be clear about my opinion on the Timeline vs the KAB. I agree that the former is probably a more demanding standard than the latter. What I meant to say is that when the KAB is "happy", I tend to be happy too, meaning the KAB standard seems to be good enough for me.

Interesting thing happened last weekend. I invited my audiophile neighbor over to my house to listen to the Beveridge speakers I have set up as a second system in my basement. The source was my highly modified Lenco tt (slate plinth, Jeremy Superbearing, Speed dialed in from Walker Audio Precision Motor Controller). When in the course of our listening I played a 45 rpm LP, by switching the Walker from 33 to 45, he remarked that he is cursed with perfect pitch and that the Lenco sounded a tad slow on 45. We checked his judgement using the KAB strobe, with and without the stylus drag. The KAB showed without doubt that the Lenco was in fact running a tad FAST, not slow, at 45. But the speed was "constant", in that the "45" viewed via the strobe, was not wiggling back and forth, but drifting slowly in the direction that indicates overspeed. Anyway, we live and learn. (This guy owns the Timeline that I have been able to borrow on the odd occasion. His own expensive belt-drive tt is revealed by his own Timeline to be wildly variable in speed. The maker is replacing his motor controller and belt in hopes of curing the problem.)

Lewm,

"a tad slow on 45. We checked his judgement using the KAB strobe, with and without the stylus drag. The KAB showed without doubt that the Lenco was in fact running a tad FAST, not slow, at 45"

The problem is with the KAB strobe and not your friend, it locks in slightly lower than the correct speed. Test it against better units and you'll see. for yourself that its off.

Dkarmeli, that is interesting. It is the first I've read of variation among samples of the KAB strobe. I don't mean to defend the KAB, but I don't know anything about the Ortofon units. How do you know that the Ortofon is accurate? Have you tested it against a known reference?

Peterayer, At one point I had 3 KAB strobes that I was using and I use and saw some slight variations of frequency setting with each one. I use an industrial grade voltage/frequency converter to control the speed and since I had AC strobes, I didn't much of it before and the variations were small nothing to be concerned about. I only got the Ortofon unit in recently and compared to the KAB it locks the speed very slightly higher. Then I compared both to the EMT 927's strobe and the Lock speed of the Air Force One and they both fell in between the lock speeds of KAB which is slower and the Ortofon which is faster but dead on with my AC strobes. The speed variations are very small and unlike your friend I don't have perfect pitch and any of those 3 speed settings work for me.

Dkarmeli, If the KAB locks in at slightly LOWER than correct speed, as you say above, that means my Lenco was running even faster than the KAB revealed it to be, because, as noted, the KAB indicated overspeed, not underspeed. Which means my friend's sense of pitch is not as perfect as he may have thought, since he perceived the tt speed to be slightly "slow". The whole anecdote was noted just to poke fun at ourselves as a group, and the idea that we can perceive tiny errors in tt speed.

It's possible that there would be some minor variation in the performance of the KAB strobe, if there is some minor variation in whatever hardware is used in the strobe to induce it to flash with some exact frequency. Given the nature of such ICs, I would posit that the error there is very tiny, indeed.