Tade no Pioneer

[tade]

It's been a while since my last post on the forum, but I have been hard at work. Several months ago I picked up a Pioneer belt drive table. Nothing serious at all.
But you all know why I bought a turntable. It's motor and platter of course! After many hours of design and literally days of work the motor and platter were mounted to a block of red oak plinth. Running at 90v, the following is the result;

The tonearm is a hand made 12" unipivot made from paper coated with carbon fiber and epoxy. Very very simple;

After a little rearrangement and the installation of my B&W speakers the new setup looks like this;

I think that with a turntable less is more. This design is sheer simplicity itself, and really sounds like it. There are minimal resonances says the tap test and music just flows from the table. My next design will be based upon a much more substantial Rek-o-Kut platter and papst motor. i am going to try a light weight skeletal plinth of half inch birch ply: a top and bottom layer separated by randomly aligned slats.
The biggest problem is the tonearm is not adjustable. tracking force is set using putty. The cartridge is attached using hot glue which is probably good for the sound from an energy standpoint but not from an alignment standpoint... For my next tonearm I am going to stick with paper but use a larger diameter. I think the internal dampening and light weight of a paper arm tube is the way to go. I have not decided whether an epoxy coating is wise or whether it will just add weight.

Any thoughts are welcome!

[despotic931]

Nice! I specifically like the red oak plinth! Any pics of how you laid out the guts?

-Justin

[tade]

ill dissasemble it and take some pics! theres not much guts to it, basically a little drawing and a few holes drilled in the wood block.