Schiit Sol- The Next Great Turntable?

The audiophile community is as diversified as any other. Some want plug and play, others enjoy various degrees of DIY.

 

DaleClark, he said he used masking tape, at first you said tape and now your saying Duct tape! Huge difference!
I singled out Rega as they have TT in that price range and there is a constant flow of inquierys as to how to get them to run at speed and what can be done to upgrade them.
I applaud Schitt for building something that was out of there real of expertise and than pulling out all the stops to fix the issues.
Im not a Schitt fanboy. Own nothing by them and as far as Rega is concerned, not interested in a flimsy TT that owners are constantly searching for ways to upgrade them, just search for all the Rega post on here about that. All my tables are on the higher end of the TT scale.
Acoustic Solid, Solid Edition
Victor TT71 in a CL2P plinth with a 10 anda 12 inch tonearm by Victor
Working on building a Russco broadcast idler drive with all the upgrades.

BillWojo

 

Shinola had no business building turntables as well. Although VPI was consulting them. I mean really, you buy a $700 turntable that some have a wobbly platter and on some you have to add plumbers tape for speed accuracy. Maybe use weed eater line in place of a belt lolololol.

 

I guess it lived up to its name....

 

Hey Dale, what is your problem? Lots of companies built crappy or so so tables. I put the Schitt Sol way above that leauge. Let us know when you have something constructive to say.

BillWojo

 

I do hope that the good reviews the SOL has been getting in Stereophile helps to convince Schiit to start up SOL production again. Maybe in a year or so. Manufacturing is a bit chaotic and uncertain right now with shortages and scheduling problems galore. Maybe in a year manufacturing and materials will be much more normal. Manufacturing a turntable like the SOL right now that needs a lot of outsourcing for metal casting and fabrication is going to be very challenging.

 

well, most of those things you mentioned don't actually do anything as far as audio performance...

 

As usual, every time there is a thread on Schiit products it turns into referendum on Schiit...

IMHO, Schiit has carved themselves a bit of an uncomfortable niche...

1) There are disliked by subjective, "expensive is better" kind of audiophiles because their products are popular and have reasonable prices. I have the humble opinion that there are companies out there that will sell you a Bitfrost 2 equivalent for $2K and/or an Yggdrasil equivalent for $10K, just because that's the audiophile thing to do and know that some audiophiles want that and can afford it. Of course, if you spent that kind of money for those products, Schiit will make you feel uncomfortable...

2) And of course, they are confessed subjectivists, so the objective crowd dislike them for their that, for the less than perfect measurements in ***some*** products, and also for their popularity. Although they have made some inroads with that crowd by creating some products with excellent measurements...

That leaves them with customers that become fans... imho, kind of a marmite company...

or I may be wrong - just an idea... The Sol, now that all the issues are addressed seems like a great table. Not to mention that I have seen videos from Fremer and others on how to setup turntables that seem as difficult and involved as the Sol.

v

 

The Sol is not unique in being self assembly. Michell are essentially self assembly and so are other skeletal designs as well as some massive and complex high end designs that include on site dealer installation. It's just Sol is not so refined which is to be expected at the price. Maybe they should have delayed it for a few months to iron out bugs. They should at least assemble parts to ensure they fit together properly and check motor functionality before packing each unit.

 

My thoughts are quite constructive. It irks me to see American manufactures throw something out to the public when it's not ready or half assed. GM was (and still is) a master of half assed manufacturing. I lost a lot of respect for Schiit for the SOL. Schiit basically felt..."what we throw out there ...people will snatch up". Schiit (and other companies as well) show lack of respect to their customers by not shipping products without quality checking the components before shipping. I do not care if the table was $99, there's no excuse. Next time, put in place standardized practices of quality checks and accountability to both suppliers and your employees. If units have ANY possible flaws never let them get out the door. Raise the price if that means shipping a high quality unit. If you cannot do the above, do not produce. I bet the Schiit guys spent a few hours measuring out the components for the TT's they sent reviewers.

 

It is virtually impossible for a small manufacturer to find any and all problems that may crop up in use. Even large manufacturers of complex products. Software for example. You can have 20 mules using a product for a year sorting pre-production usage. They cannot possibly expose it to enough scenarios to reveal all conceivable issues. Simply cannot be done while delivering a finished product in a timely and cost effective manner. Hand it to 10,000 end users and that will happen fast.

As mentioned earlier this was Schiit's entry into a mechanical device and some teething problems with hardware and process are to be expected. In my personal experience with them response and action to issues in another product line were exceptional. They helped my to attempt resolution with the existing unit and when that failed to produce results replaced it quickly with a good unit. The aforementioned platter problem should have been caught before shipment but I defer to the previously mentioned learning curve on a new avenue of manufacture. However their response to the Sol shortcomings are documented to have been quick and without excuse. They made it right.

Indeed Mr. Clark how do you know Schiit said or even indicated "what we throw out there...people will snatch up?" You [assume such things with absolutely no basis in fact and apparently little knowledge in manufacturing. Stick to what you know.

 

The folks at Schitt have a high knowledge of manufacturing electronic gear, it clearly shows that in their products.
What they didn't know was all the nuances involved in manufacturing mechanical components. I used to have a machine shop so this kind of thing is right up my alley. Unless a critical spec is called out on a print, it can be ignored. I have had to call a customer numerous times because the specs for a feature either were not called out or were specified to some ridiculous tolerance that it would have driven the price up substantially. Thinks like surface finish, parallelism from surface to surface, and finish plating will often times alter the finished part enough to render it not usable in an assembly.
It was clear from the beginning that they were out of there element and to that end they enlisted professional help and had no problem sending upgraded parts to early customers. I applaud them for how they handled the situation.
Even seemingly stupid stuff like the o-ring belt that wouldn't track properly was because the person gluing the ends of the cord stock together wasn't aware that all twist in the cord had to be removed before the gluing process.
It was quite a learning experience for them and I would hate to see them bail out on making TT. I do expect the price to rise, everything in manufacturing took a big hit in the past year. Material cost have been driven up, many mills were shuttered and have only recently been brought back online so people are competing with what was left in the pipelines. Metal distribution warehouses are fighting to get product to sell, etc. It's not good out there. Prices have soared. As consumers we will feel the pinch.

BillWojo

 

Schiit is also geared toward a younger crowd - a crowd who maybe doesn't mind so much that the finished product isn't... finished. Games these days come out and are half done, requiring patches to be playable in a lot of cases. Apps are in beta for years. It is what it is.

And it was worth it. There is nothing "wrong" with Sol, except that it isn't being produced right now. It's the sort of gear everyone should root for - it's cheap, it's actually quite simple and intuitive. It sounds fantastic. It's flexible and scales well to better carts and preamps.

Don't let the bumpy start fool you or set your mind to it being Sol's defining attribute. Setting up Sol is NO different from setting up a PolyTable or any other table that requires a little assembly. VPI could learn a lot from how Sol adjusts azimuth - the VPI method is a joke by comparison and yes I've used both. Adjustable pivot and platter height? Show another product at any price point that does it so easily. It's FLEXIBLE. Yes that can come at a price of being complex - but only if that's how you want to interact with it. Unboxing it and getting it to play in 15 minutes would not be a difficult task for anyone who's ever done this stuff before.

Could they have done better on the launch? Yes. Should they have? Debatable, based on how it actually sounds and what they charge(d) for it. Nothing is a free lunch and while it took a minute, people who bought Sol ultimately ended up with a fantastic product. To me, that's all that really matters. Early adopters (and what else would you be if you're buying the very first TURNTABLE from a company that specializes in DACs and silly marketing?) typically understand the risks of early adoption - why is this only now an issue because Schiit created a product for which early adoption was a thing?

I don't normally buy the first year of a new model of a car no matter if it's GM or Honda who is making it. It's risky, and those risks aren't always avoidable at launch, some take time and inexperienced hands to uncover.

 

I believe that Sol was launched during Mike Moffat's prolonged absence for illness. I remember images of Mike displaying plywood prototypes of Sol on his kitchen table before production began. I think that if Mike had not taken ill and been gone so long, he would have caught a lot of these issues before the release.

My recollection of the order of events may be incorrect.

 

Name me a company that doesn't occasionally stumble launching a new product line.

 

led zeppelin =|

 

I’m a former manufacturing manager, there’s no reason for “ out of spec” components to get out the door, especially for a low volume item.

 

It happens @ every business.

Given enough time, it happens again.

 

So you never made mistakes? I work in manufacturing as well and I know for a fact that mistakes happen all the time, and yes, sometimes they make it out the door. That's what warranties are for.

I think there may have been changes to the spec at some point, or Schiit tried to work with the suppliers to keep costs down. No doubt in my mind that the platter as originally spec'd costs more to machine than the one I originally received. Also, some of the adjustments suggested by Conrad in his unofficial setup video are impossible with mine, so changes were made at some point. It is sometimes difficult to foresee where a change at one point affects other areas. They could've spent another 6 years in prototyping but at some point they have to press the Go button and see how far it goes.

Some people are happy to bash Schiit for the mistakes they made in rolling the Sol out. That's fine. I find it interesting that those most willing to forgive them are those like myself, the people who actually own one. But, you'd have to hear one to understand where we're coming from.

 

Well Dale, it's to bad you were not working for them at the time. As I said earlier, they are electronics engineers, not mechanical engineers and I think they had no clue as to all the pitfalls of building mechanical assembly's. How does one identify an "out of spec" component if you have never dealt with this before. They order parts from a machine shop and they assumed that the parts were made to the drawings. I'm sure there is now a QC department to check parts as they come in the door now. It's all part of the growing pains.
The important thing is how they handled it.
There has been a running thread on here about a certain manufacture that has problems with plinths warping. It's a popular TT. They now say it must warp more than "X" amount before they will consider a replacement. Really?

BillWojo

 

That same brand has a history of speed issues and noisy motors.

It's not easy building within a limited price point.

 

Been a KAB fan and aware of the SpeedStrobe since I picked up my SL-1200MkII from him in '08 so decided to spring for one. I'm getting absolutely no drift at 33 1/3 and about 0.17% slow at 45RPM. He says 0.3% is N.A.B standard so still well below that.

To your point, though, the app is now reading a tiny bit fast at 33.36 (+0.07%).



The more I use this table on familiar records the more impressed I am with it. The dynamics and detail are really fantastic. And daily use is now no different than with my SL-1200. I've gotten quite used to the undamped cueing and can even change between 33 and 45 without knocking the belt off.

 

I keep hoping a Sol will show up in the b-stock list.... doubtful.

 

Seems to me that this TT was too cheap, and they'd have done better to double the price and use the money to iron out the schiitt before letting them loose. Few audiophiles are that-cheap, and $1500 for a high-end aspiring TT is nothing.

Anyway, while I do not lament the loss of the wobbly TT itself, it would be a shame if that tonearm bit the dust along with it, as my understanding is that there was nothing wrong with that part of things and unipivots (a tonearm-type that I've now used since 1980 (!)) are thin on the ground...

 

It's history. In the latest YouTube video, Jason all but said it. Just not their area of expertise.