I always like to have two turntables at my disposal: one with a lightweight tonearm for my vintage high compliance cartridges, and another with a medium mass arm for everything else. The exact models have changed over the years, but here's the two I am currently running. I am quite harpy with both, especially considering what I paid. Harman Kardon T60, shown running a Grado G2+ with the original Twin Tip stylus: And the newest addition to my stable of tables, a Yamaha PX-2 running a Nagaoka MP-150 cartridge with an MP-200 stylus:
My current humble setup. Had - and loved - a Nottingham Horizon, for years. Spotted this as a rare local trade in - whoever the previous owner was, they took great care of this table.
JVC QL-7 with Denon DL-110 cartridge: Huge holographic sound, clear as an unmuddied lake & delicate as the sound of thunder. Everytime I patch it in, it blows me away...
Interesting DIY rig. I would advise him to at least varnish the raw plywood. I don't understand using spikes/cones for turntable feet, and I see it done all the time. My understanding is spikes/cones couple the turntable to the platform, which is the opposite of isolating them from vibrations. Can someone with more knowledge about physics confirm this?
He wanted to leave the plywood [with its imperfections] unfinished. If it were mine, I'd probably fill the voids and finish it in black... the stacked reveal joints would look nice. To each his own. The tip of the cone rests in a dimple on the top surface of the disc, which is padded underneath. There is very little metal-to-metal contact. I would imagine that it does a pretty good job of vibration isolation.
My understanding is that you couple a table to a platform to drain the vibrations away from the unit. However, I do think this is supposed to be done with a high mass platform (like a large butcher block) that can absorb a lot of energy. Also, the platform it rests on should then be well isolated from the rack or whatever it sits on.
Was so pleased with Peter Newby's (from the UK) suspension modification for my Gyrodec that I recently sprung for a couple of his custom designed acrylic armboards. Thought I would post a pic. Not only do they look the part but a very significant improvement in sound quality as well-almost in the same league as the improvements achieved with the suspension. Pete has really taken the Michell tables to new levels of performance with his ideas-pretty amazing stuff.
Blake, I can see that you and Pete are going to make me spend more money! Your table looks really great! I can only imagine how nice that it sounds!
- Haha! Thanks Jeff-it looks and sounds pretty good for a used table that I originally picked up for $200 in 1985 . It has really served me well and is sounding fabulous. I've poured quite a bit more money into it over the years (mainly in the past 10-15) but apart from replacing the steel ball bearing a number of years ago with a ceramic ball, Pete's upgrades have been by far the biggest bang for buck improvements on the table. I think you'd really like the armboard and would be curious about your impressions should you go for one in light of you already having the Pederson armboard mod. I cheaped out and went with the Michell armboard decoupling kit a number of years ago and found that I really had to strain to hear much going on with it, although to be fair it is pretty inexpensive. The improvement in moving from the Michell armboard to Pete's new design is pretty significant: it's probably close to the improvements of the suspension, which, as you know, are huge. My guess is that a Gyro fitted out with all of Pete's upgrades would surpass the performance of a stock Orbe for a few thousand dollars less. Good news for Orbe owners is that they can do exactly the same thing-that would be a scary proposition in terms of what it could deliver I think compared to some of the uber priced tables out there now.
The ELAC Miracord 45 has joined the fray. $75. Had some trouble with the automatic functions this afternoon, after I brought it home, but everything's working now!
Nice ! I see you have the same 'new' dustcover that I purchased for my td160. These new dustcovers make all the difference vs an old brown 70's cover imo!
Setup right now (Technics SL-1200G, Ortofon 2M Black with LH-6000 headshell and some mods). Setup some years ago (Pioneer PLX-1000, Orotofon Nightclub MKII, Cambridge Audio 651P, Magic eye tube VU-meter). Both great, the latter was based on the DJ equipment I had, nevertheless it performed well in terms of sound quality.
As far as I know, the contact surface is related to the frequency range it dampens. The higher the frequencies to be dampened, the smaller the contact surfaces need to be to prevent resonance between the both of them.
