Polytable vs. SUPER 12

Probably not the greatest test but as my current LP is playing I went up to the wall shelf and tapped my fingers down on the shelf, fairly hard. No change in the sound whatsoever. So quiet, and really well isolated.

But yea, the legs are pretty ugly

 

I thought they were ugly until I saw that one above - looks wicked Todd - almost alien - really cool.

 

i would agree on the looks--one word is disappointing maybe? i dont love the other one but people seem to say it's more impressive looking in person.

Aside from that, I'm very eager to hear your thoughts. Which Music Hall did you have? When you say it's far beyond--you mean blackness of backgrounds or something else?

Oh and kudos on the proximity to the brown stuff

 

NM--looks like you had the Music Hall 7.x. Would love to hear what you meant by well beyond...

 

Congrats and enjoy the tunes

 

I'll post some more in-depth findings when I get home. I need to throw on a few reference discs too to confirm what it feels like for initial impressions. Of course there is always a honeymoon affect with new gear.

 

I normally like a wood plinth traditional style TT but I really like the Polytable.

I'm a little prejudiced because I have been to George's shop and heard his high end table along with the predecessor to the polytable that was suspended in a more traditional plinth. They sounded amazing.

Unfortunately, I had just purchased my Music Hall 7.1 (nice table) the year before. I plan on upgrading to the Polytable in a year or two.

 

Checking back in after a long night of listening. LPs I put through this thing:

Supertramp - Even in the Quietest Moments, West German "poly" pressing
Slayer - South of Heaven
Rage S/T OP, analog RL cut
Iron Maiden S/T, UK OP stampers, Russian LP
Supertramp - COTC, UK issue "MBtt" cut
Dire Straits - Love Over Gold, Japanese Vertigo "spaceship" label
Metallica - Hardwired to Self Destruct
Fleetwood Mac - Rumours, SH/KG 45 RPM

First thing's first, it's not just a passing fancy, this setup seems invisible. Keep in mind, I'm using the same cart I've used for the past few months so I'm no stranger to how it sounds (AT-150MLX) and the same, relatively "cheap" iPhono V2. So $850 worth of gear hooked to a $3k table. I say this to point out that i'm not necessarily doing this table justice with this gear, at least in some sense. That being said, I'm getting the same sound signature I love from the 150MLX but it all seems to have notched up a peg or three. Bass, for one, is better-defined and I'd swear I picked up a little more low end energy. Midbass is quite punchy yet never "lingers", especially on tracks like Remember Tomorrow, Go Your Own Way, Take the Power Back, and Telegraph Road from the above list.

This next bit is hard for me to put into words. I'm sensing a greater distinction between sounds across the soundstage. Tonality is the same (I wouldn't expect a table to change that, unless something was setup wrong with the old or new setup), but the ease with which one can single out specific instruments is significantly enhanced over the Music Hall 7.1. And that's really no slouch of a table. I'm not selling the MH for a reason; I want to keep it as I feel it's a substantial value. But the Super12 presents a cohesive, yet distinct soundstage. That is to say it's easy to pick out differences throughout the soundfield. I would generically say there is less "smear" going on with the Super12. It's like turning up a sharpness control a few notches, but not so far that it all sounds phony.

Speaking of the soundstage, even in my little room, this fella casts a wide and deep net. I don't have the space for a "holographic" presentation yet the instruments are set in a place and they do not deviate, even if I move around which has, frankly, been a huge challenge in this room. I'm a bit shocked by this as I've been mucking around with speaker placement for as long as I can remember, trying to find the perfect placement for this little closet I call an audio room. But I'm getting a great balance left to right with absolutely no loss of energy or focus in the center.

Tracking - no issues whatsoever. IGD which I struggled with on some discs on the Project arm (though not to a large degree) seem to be resolved. I chalk that up to the 12" arm.

Speaking of - I love this Jelco arm. It's extremely flexible, very easy to work with, and has a very high quality fit and finish to it given it's street price. Jim at Osage, and I, were wondering if the 12" arm might sap some of the energy and speed from music but as you can see from some of my selections above, I definitely put that theory to the test. I have zero issues in this regard. PRAT, for lack of a better term, is fantastic. This is an arm and table that wants to boogie.

Lastly - speed control. Using both the strobe wand and my little phone app RPM meter, I'm getting more consistent speed with this setup than I was getting from the MH + Cruise Control I used previously. That is, I could get the former setup to read 33.2 to 33.4 and fluctuate rather quickly, knowing I was averaging 33.3. Same with 45 RPM. With the new table plus Digital Motor Drive, I'm locked in to 33.3 and 45.0 RPM. It fluctuates around those values for about 3 to 4 seconds but then settles in and the RPM display never changes. I tried this with just the bare platter as well as platter, 200g LP and weight and observed no change in the speed so I think that situation is as sorted as it can be.

Been a long night, sorry if I made any typos or lost my train of thought anywhere. Will listen more tomorrow. Best part is - this is an excuse to pull out so much stuff I just haven't listened to in awhile

 

Glad you like your PolyTable!
Having owned mine 21 months now, I've never gotten over the 'newness' factor.
As I've said many times before; dead quiet (invisible), solid, musical! Love it!
It tracks anything!
I don't have the digital motor drive, & honestly doubt I'll ever buy one. Speed on both 33 1/3 & 45 sound dead on to me. I know, of course, the DMD is part of the Super12 package.

Regarding appearance; George even states on his site that too many people buy audio equipment based on looks rather then the way it sounds. With that said; everyone that has seen my PolyTable talks about how great it looks. Definitely unusual! Works for me!

 

To me, a lot of the characteristics you're talking about -- fast mid bass with no bloat or overhang, a greater sense of image focus and sense of wholeness of the soundstage -- are indications with a turntable of lower noise and lower levels of spurious resonance, especially from the bottom through, like 200 Hz. I know Merrill was one of the first guys to really think about how better to terminate record resonances and use really inert materials for platter and subchassis (and the Polytable looks like it's just a variation on the subchassis of the suspended Merrill tables without the chassis and sprung suspension), and how better to isolate motors to reduce motor noise (my old Heirloom has the motor in a lead pod to reduced EMF that might be picked up by the cart, and it runs in a fluid bath to reduce vibration), but I suspect also having that motor drive -- which I think has separate drives for the two phases off the power needed for the motor, I suspect is really a big difference maker. It doesn't take a lot of what I guess they call cogging torque ripple to smear sound and mask details, even if you don't literally hear it as noise. And a lot of that can be minimized by delivering the motor not just cleaner power but properly phase regulated power. I found that out with my own old Merrill Heirloom which just has the very basic kind of motor drive -- a 12v transformer with a cap across it to provide a 90-degree phase shift for one leg of the power. The inertia of the heavy platter smooths some of the cogging ripple but there was always still some and I found I needed to add a little bit of extra capacitance -- another 3 uF -- to the phase shift cap to really smooth out the cogging. If I ever have another $700 to spend on my table, I'd love to add one of Merrill's motor drives to my table. It takes so little extra movement to smear the sound from a turntable that these very small adjustments can make very substantial sonic differences. Reading Merrill's writing on turntable and playing around with my Heirloom for 20 years has really taught me a ton about best practices in vinyl playback.

 

Not sure if it's a great analogy but I would liken the difference as being similar to when I added a linear PSU and went to i2S signal transfer (as opposed to USB with a bunch of gadgets in line to "clean" the signal) in my previous digital chain. The complete absence of noise, that true "inky black background," combined with a very quiet room, leads to rather astonishing detail retrieval. It's that "last mile" so to say that I honestly didn't think was possible via analog. I just chalked it up to a compromise of the medium. While I prefer the bass and midrange of vinyl, it always seemed a little oversaturated, especially in the midbass and upper midrange regions. I found this even on my old Classic 2 with a Lyra Delos strapped to it and a full compliment of Phoenix Engineering PSU/Tach for speed control.

And honestly it never bothered me. The juice was worth the squeeze, in other words. And to be clear - I don't crave a cold, analytical sound. But warm, "heavy" to the extent the room and table will accommodate, and detailed even up into the high registers seemed really frickin' hard to get.

That I seem to be so much closer to that goal - if not actually there - with this setup which, while not cheap, is relatively pedestrian amongst "high end" analog frontends.

The Super12 is very much function over form and I absolutely love it for that. It looks like a spaceship and sounds like an angel.

I do like that it uses a nice, thick, flat belt to connect pulley to subplatter. The thing is like a tank tread.

The last bit is on the Digital Motor Drive - it's amazing to watch it fix itself to the right speed. It surrounds the target and keeps adjusting minutely until the target is achieved. Pretty awesome to watch.

Thought of one other item of note over and above the Music Hall - imperfections in the pressing seem to be less obvious. This was the only "major" flaw I had with the Music Hall/9c arm + AT150MLX cart combo. Even with as low capacitance as I could muster, sibilance was an issue and ticks/pops seemed to be accentuated. I still hear them of course on the 12, but they don't seem to be nearly as dominant and intrusive as before.

 

Thank you Polytable owners for posting your impressions. I have a bit of a road to travel with saving and liquidating other gear before I get there myself, but I'm increasingly sure of the route! Polytable baby!

The main issue for me is the jump between the $2k 10" arm setup and the $3k Super12. I agree with toddrhodes that the latter seems to provide the better bang for the buck, but I really wonder if my 1) system, 2) listening habits (i.e. I rarely sit down and listen from the sweet spot) and 3) 58-year old ears are worthy of the extra $1k. Oh well, I have lots of time to think about that..

 

Hey @riverrat, thanks for all the great vinyl you've sold me, first and foremost Second - I am beyond happy I spent the extra. The 12" arm will take virtually any cart you could imagine. The speed control and platter upgrades are where the real value starts to shine.

If you need any convincing, keep in mind my $500 HOMC cart, going into a $500 phono pre, then into a 7.1 AVR, converted to digital for room correction/bass management, then, for now, using the internal amp in that thing while my Odyssey is in for service.

In other words - I am not really doing this table "justice" in some ways, especially if you consider the table, arm, and motor are "worth more" than everything else combined, pretty much including my speakers. I've tried to match the components well so there is that, but suffice it to say if I can hear such a huge difference between the Super12 and my old MH 7.1 (a $1500 table anyway) using the exact same cart I had on that 7.1... it speaks to just how revealing and musical the polytable is. And I really do think the DMD, platter, and arm play a significant role in that value prop

 

I'd like to hear more about this table and see more pictures! @ls35a ?

Could anybody compare Merrill to Michell? I had been eyeing the TecnoDec but this deck looks super promising.
Do these PolyTables prefer extra isolation?

 

I'd be curious to hear some further reports as well, @ls35a

 

So many questions about the PolyTable. I really want to pull the trigger and buy a Super12. Tough when you cannot see it, touch it and more importantly hear it.

Does anyone have a video of the table running?

 

Falcons are still available from HiFiHeaven.com - he bought up all the stock when Phoenix closed down. Of course - prices went up 50% easily.

 

I might be mistaken, but I believe the Ortofon TA-110 and -210 arms are modded Jelco's.

 

Yeah, not useful for me, my turntable motor is a 6 watter, would have needed the Eagle. I lower the voltage to the table after startup with a variac which dramatically reduces torque ripple amplitude and pretty much eliminates vinyl whoosh to a degree I didn't know was possible, but it would have been nice to have voltage step down, plus frequency exactitude, plus the tach set up and in a solution more elegant than keeping a little variac nearby. Falcons do also show up on the used market from time to time. Eagles not so much.

 

Sort of. I believe they're made by Jelco to Ortofon's specifications.

 

Ugly? I think it looks quite beautiful, in a elegantly simple, well engineered sort of way. But this from someone who shakes his head at all those shiny megalithic towers many audiophiles lust after.
Congratulations on your purchase!

 

May have met George at the same "The Show" and same experience, really personable and a great sounding room.

 

When I first got mine, it was so different but it has beyond grown on me. It is beauty in simplicity. No frills, just performance, and it doesn't apologize for anything. This table has no weakness, at least not to my ears. For it to distance itself from my other table, a Music Hall 7.1 so profoundly in such a short time, I knew it was special. I'm not sure what else there is to say - it's honest, neutral, accurate, and I never doubt what it's conveying to my ears. It took a little step up in phono pre and the Art 9 MC cart to really bring out it's potential but nowadays I just sit back and listen. I honestly don't fret about what the "equipment" is doing and for a neurotic idiot like me, that's really something

 

Which phono pre are you running now?

 

Manley Chinook, stock tubes. I probably should have left the word "little" out of my description on the upgrade from iPhono to Manley...