Sorry – missed this. No, it has an external power supply, which I think helps a bit, and it has a Mike New bearing. I also like to decouple the rubber base by removing the screws. Over the years I have extracted several power transformers from Mk2 and Mk5 decks to put them in external boxes and my suspicion is that the benefit comes from putting distance between transformer and cartridge. As for the Mike New bearing, it's a lovely thing but I wouldn't expect it to show up the newly-engineered Technics G. In other words, I doubt I will easily hear a difference between a standard Mk5 with transformer removed and the 1210G once both have the same arm attached. However, I admit that I am an immoderately skeptical person not inclined to hearing 'night and day' differences between components which actually sound about the same, so don't take my word.
Yes – it was one of my design requirements that the arm play a full side on a Techie and a Sondek with the lid down.
I've tried Neglex 2549 on the G now, and can't claim to hear any difference. I'm pretty confident that the 2dB louder output of the Mk5 over the stock G really is down to the Blackbird sacrificing less of the signal energy. It's just a much more rigid arm. Corroboration of this has come from several customers who have found the Blackbird louder and more dynamic than their previous arms with a given cartridge.
I got to meet Rich, (tryitfirst), and Sophie at the Bristol Hi Fi show today, more importantly I got to see and hear their arm in action, firstly the pictures don't do it justice, they look nicer in the flesh, they also look very well-made and belie their cottage industry manufacture, the quality appears to be up there with much bigger players in the industry. It's always hard to judge the sound in a hotel room on an unfamiliar system, but the arm mounted on a Technics deck playing Grace Jones was hard to fault, the tracks were well-defined, excellent tonal balance, everything including the bass accurately and well reproduced, it definitely showed up the sound from the next door Technics room, that sounded fine until you heard what the Supatrac Blackbird was extracting on a similar deck. I went along today with the 12" version of this arm on my shortlist for when I get my Garrard 401 sorted, not only has it jumped to the top of that shortlist, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be getting in touch with Rich about getting a 9" version to mount on my Roksan Xerxes having recently killed my current arm, it's nice when something exceeds your expectations.
Thanks for the report! Having used a DIY:ed sideways unipivot arm (the principle invented by Richard) for a year now, I have no doubt that for that money the Supatrac would be my no 1 choice if I where to buy a tonearm in the future.
Great to meet you at the Bristol show Martin (IIRC?)! The Technics boys came in to listen, and the great Roy Gandy spent an hour with me which was an honour. It was surreal sitting quietly, just Roy and myself, listening to Louis Armstrong's magic via a tonearm I had designed and made. Roy is a lovely man and we had a laugh. He has sold about half a million tone-arms. The room and system were not perfect but good enough to hear something of what the arm can do, and quite often it was standing room only.
There are a few more pictures of the SUPATRAC room from the show here: 【國外音響展】 2023年英國布里斯托音響展實況報導: UK Bristol Hi-Fi Show - 第17頁 ...and here: The LP12 Lounge | Facebook
Yes. It was 1210G versus 1210Mk5/Blackbird. Cartridges were VM540ML. Linn Uphorik phono stages -> Creek OBH-22 (passive volume and input switching) -> KEF KC62/high-pass -> Behringer A500 -> KEF LS50 Meta (passive). Arm cables were both Mogami 5249. It was my habit to hand the Creek remote control to a front row listener to do the switching so that he could be sure I wasn't adjusting volume. The reason is that the Blackbird is 2dB louder (more dynamic) than the Technics arm, which is quite easily audible. Several customers have also remarked that their Blackbirds are louder than their previous arms. The only explanation for a louder arm, all else being equal, is that it more rigidly opposes the extraneous forces on the cartridge and captures more of the original signal's dynamics rather than absorbing and dissipating that 2dB discrepant energy. The higher peaks are easily visible in an Audacity plot. A consequence of this more efficient transduction of energy is that the music seems more present, more physical, more real, and more exciting. From the beginning it was my plan to maximise dynamics with rigidity, and it has worked. My wife describes this characteristic of the Blackbird as 'punchy', and it's a good summary. The two very nice chaps from Technics were in the next room, and they both came in to hear it, one of them bringing in his own LP, a tracking torture test, at the end of the show. I became suspicious that they were impressed, but they are professionals so it wouldn't be right to repeat what they said in casual and friendly conversations. I can say that I thought their room sounded superb.
Well, it could also be that the arm is more resonant and exaggerates some frequency bands, you'd really have to do a frequency sweep with accelerometer attached, or careful analysis of the frequency response and spectrum to be sure, but sounds like you've done some form of that already and are confident that isn't the case. Nice report, congratulations on show, sounds like it was pretty successful
Yes, good point, although it seems to be generally louder and more dynamic, not just at certain frequencies. Resonances can't make energy. I'll look at the spectrum when I'm next at that machine.
Are you also using the exact same internal wiring in both arms; IOW the stock Technics arm and the Blackbird are wired all the way from the cartridge pins to the arm connector/phono cable connection with the same wiring. If not, the difference in load there could allow for the difference in volume that you hear.
I don't know what Technics uses for internal arm wiring. I am using 30 strand copper Litz. I'm very ignorant about these things, but it would certainly surprise me if the short section of wire from cartridge to output on the Technics deck was causing 2dB of attenuation from a moving magnet cartridge. Do turntable makers use wires with such high resistance?
By 'cartridge output', I take you to mean across the full spectrum. It seems to me that if there is resonant energy stored in the arm, it has been stolen from the signal. Where else can it have come from? And what other device is transferring energy into the arm? A perfect cartridge and arm would capture all of the cantilever vibration as signal output. If some ends up in the arm structure as resonance, it seems to me that it must have come from the cartridge reaction, and it can be taken to have manifested in the signal as attenuation of some range of frequencies. Where else is this extra output energy coming from? After all, the arm is only connected at its base. I hope we can agree that on a good turntable there isn't much energy entering the arm by that route. This is what I meant when I said resonances can't make energy. They can trap it temporarily, and they can shift it to certain frequencies, but only at the expense of the conversion of that energy from other frequencies. This is why I suspect that an arm which is broadly louder across a wide frequency range is probably truer to the signal, whereas a quieter arm must be absorbing via flexion, robbing the signal of dynamics by conducting away energy which by rights should have been there in the signal peaks. That's just how I see it. The test is in the listening, but don't forget to listen for verve and excitement. Or 'punch'.
No, just in the regions the arm is resonating. Energy is transferred into the arm from the stylus motion and mostly dissipated by some means, but during the resonances more of that energy will be returned back to the cartridge via the exaggerated arm vibrations. There will almost always be a substantial bending mode resonance in tonearms based on the length, and then you have the headshell attachment, and bearing supports, etc. All those can have resonance modes. Some of the vibrational peaks in the spectrum are due to reflections, such as from the bearing back to the cartridge. You've probably looked at some of the Korf blog measurements, and Paul Miller takes accelerometer measurements in the Hi-Fi News tonearm reviews, usually with some comments to accompany the waterfall plots he shows. It's the same measurements they make on speaker cabinets, they often see a frequency response wrinkle, maybe a high q peak at some point, usually an indication of a cabinet resonance, and can often find it with accelerometer measurements of the cabinet panels. Some manufacturers even use those panel resonances as part of the speaker voicing, while others try to absorb them or make the cabinet highly inert. Just different philosophies, and same applies to tonearms, vibration management is a big part of the end sound. Good unipivot designs like yours help to define a vibration dissipation path and prevent much of the reflected energy from the bearings. Note that I'm not saying you are wrong, but the overall 2dB sound level increase you mention when using your arm doesn't really seem plausible to me. I'm certainly not an expert, though, so happy to be shown it is plausible
I spent quite a lot of time in the Technics room, because I liked what they were playing and also had a nice chat with one of them, but I genuinely found your room to sound much better, I'm sure that much of that was down to your arm, but I also suspect your Kefs are much better than the small Technics speakers they were using when I was in there.
It's all in the wrist - I mean arm ;-) I thought their room sounded really good, but I didn't get to hear anything familiar so it's very hard to compare. It was a bit claustrophobic in there with all those screens some distance out from the walls.
They were switching gear around throughout the day, so we likely heard different set-ups, the screens were overpowering, must have cost a fortune.
2db is a very small difference in volume. Certainly the difference could be put down to the differences in resistance that your litz cable makes. You also have to take into consideration the difference in the pin connectors at the cartridge and whether or not that was accounted for. I presume your 30 strand copper litz cable is solder terminated to the pins that attach to the cartridge. This is how it is connected on my WTA Black arm, which also uses a VDH copper litz internal wire. This all makes a difference in the SQ.
It's an interesting theory. Still, I find it surprising that Technics would use arm wiring which sucks out dynamics in a £4000 deck. Perhaps the bill of materials budget couldn't stretch to a yard of Litz. It seems to me that a likelier explanation is that like other arms I have tested (Ekos 2, Well Tempered, Rega) the Technics arm base, bearing, arm tube and detachable head shell mount are less rigid, less mass-tuned and less conservative of energy at the cartridge than an arm which has been specifically designed to exceed the rigidity and performance of those components in obvious ways. With time the reason for the loudness/dynamics discrepancy will become clear. In the meantime, here's a highly speculative tip for 1200G users: have your Technics arm internally rewired with copper Litz for a 2dB improvement in dynamics! ;-) A very worthwhile upgrade which costs pennies. Or at least it's said to be worth a try...
I will give specific examples of the claim about rigid design in my post above. The arm tubes each have a cross section area of 36mm^2, giving a total of 72mm^2. If the Technics arm has the same wall thickness (1mm) and its diameter is 12mm (a guess, please correct me), then it has a cross section area of 44mm^2. Now magnesium isn't carbon fibre, but I can't rule out the possibility that the Blackbird's arm tube is actually stiffer. Sure, it's only 10mm high, but there is 40mm^2 of material in the vertical sections alone. Pultruded cf is easily available and affordable. The SUPATRAC bearing has one point of contact which almost directly opposes the principle net drag force. The Technics bearing has four points of contact none of which is opposed to the principle direction of drag forces on the arm. The Technics arm has roughly equivalent lateral and vertical inertia whereas the Blackbird has higher lateral inertia (warps are more severe than eccentricity and signal is mostly lateral). The Blackbird has no headshell junction. I could go on, but the point is that the Blackbird is designed in every component to be more rigid than other arms. There is room for improvement, of course, but if some of the efforts to achieve superior rigidity have paid off, then sharper dynamics and a louder signal are precisely the result any engineer would expect.
I've rewired MK IIs in the distant past, (never again), the arm cable was bog-standard, I don't remember them touting the arm cable when they launched the G, and they did tout pretty much everything else, if I can dig out the brochures I'll see if it's mentioned, but I doubt their arm cable is anything special.
