DIY TT and Unipivot finished ... pictures.

[krishu]

Hello to everybody;

I recently finished my DIY TT and unipivot tonearm. I still have plans to change it a bit, in detail i will put brass weigts underneath the platter and use squash balls as feet. Also, I am working on a schroeder based tonearm. (See other thread)




I put some information on my website , but did not translate everything into english yet. if you have any questions or - what is very welcome - some advice: please reply or email me.

Cheers
Christian.

[EC8010]

Congratulations, it's very pretty. You obviously have a weakness for acrylic. Are you happy with how it works?

[fdegrove]

Hi,

If this stuff sounds as good as it looks...
Marvelous piece of engineering + looks to kill too.

Hats off,

[Chris]

First of all congratulations on your new turntable and arm. It looks very nice and classy.

I have a question regarding your diy TTarm: What do you use for a weight?

(My German is not so good )

Chris

[Variac]

Maybe here's a place to mention how a guy in the composite construction business told me how to create carbon fiber parts.
Let's say you want a C.F. tone arm tube
Get a tube of aluminum and wrap it in the pattern you prefer with fibers using epoxy . If you need to, tease them out of a piece of C.F. fabric. Fabric is available at TAP plastics in the USA.
Obviously the number of layers and pattern are very important.
When the epoxy has set up, etch away the aluminum with an acid that eats up aluminum. Sorry I forgot the kind of acid....

[krishu]

Hi

Thank you.

Acrylic is very, very good when it comes to machining it. One has to lath/drill/mill it at loww speed, but then ... wet sanding and polishing....
When we build models of productes (i am a industrial design student) we use acrylic very often even when we paint it afterwards because it is so good to work with.
Apart from that i just like the look... even if it is heavy it does not look blockish... Soundwise everything depends on matching things: my unipivot sounds very lively and is therefore a good match for the acrylic, wich is more dampening than e.g. metal.
The acrylic is way too expensive but i definitely wanted it.
The platter and the bearing is sold by thomas scheu; i got the platter relatively cheaply from ebay. I will put another thin one underneath, in which i will drill six holes to but brass weight there (like michell, bluenote etc.)
The bearinmg is a inverted one with a aluminiumoxide ball, teflon plate and apart from that steel. I had a rega bearing in it before and there are differences (i could not believe...)

The construction of the arm: it is a 1/2" wound carbon pipe. Then you may see loads of acrylic. The brass counterweight is "decoupled" by acrylic from the arm tube.
I got wires cheaply from Thomas Scheu, before I used laquered 0.05mm solid core copper wire, but i broke it twice...
I tried several arrangements of mass to make the arm stable and not swinging, now it works greatly. The centre of mass is at the heigt of the sylus point and the bearing point is about 5 mm above. The length is 12" and at the moment i do not use any antisakting at all because it sounds better to my ears. Any advice is welcome here.

When laminating carbon by myself (we do that here at university) i will not get a good surface and need much too much epoxy, what makes the advantages of carbon go away... of course a conic tube like wilson benesch arm has advantages (resonances etc) but bought pipes are better in all other concerns. Theoretically, there are conic pipes outthere for model airplanes (how would you call that) and (heavier) one could use fishing rods. I kept it somple and bought a straight pipe.

The turntable is limited by my phono stage, at the moment. but i can tell you that it performs ways beyond a rega planar.

cheers
Christian.

[Variac]

I forgot to mention that it is indeed a beautiful job. I'm sure you are right, time is better spent tracking down a good tube than making one

[krishu]

Hello to everybody,

i changed a few things meanwhile.

First, i put brass weight underneath the platter, second i use polyamide string now. great improvements.

Here's a picture:




Also, there are a few diy turntables on my gallery now. www.krishu.de_>_DIY_TT_Gallery

Cheers
Christian.

[planet10]

Wonderful

dave

[JOE DIRT®]

Krishu that is a brilliant looking turntable...nice work!!

DIRT®