DECCA unipivot tonearm

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Just bought the Decca unipivot tonearm as a collectors item. It's brand new and with all the papers and stuff. I paid about 25 US dollar. Was this price ok you think? I haven't found very much info on the arm but maybe you guys can tell me more, like what type of cartridge fits , or used to fit this arm and does it sound anyway?

I will test it soon in my TD160 and let you know my experiences...
 
Decca arm

I, too, bought one last summer. I was having certain difficulties with the implementation (no arm lift) so I didn't get much time on it. I solved the lift problem recently with an Ortofon item of similar vintage and am now ready for bear.

I have a rebuilt Decca Maroon on it and for the little time that I did get on it, there was remarkable promise. The arm looks to be cheesy, almost mickey mouse, but a great deal of thought went into the design if not implementation. Coupled to Decca carts, it's likely to be something.

Peter C
 
Oh, nostalgia! Back in the day, I had one armed with a Decca 4RC. Great combo, but to make it fit on my AR table, I had to take the bottom off the table and put it on stilts. I successfully used a Shure (probably the V15III or IIIG), too. Had bad luck with Grados; they never seemed to track well at low frequencies, for whatever reason.

At 25 clams, you should be happy.
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
DECCA.

Hi,

To control a Decca cart you really need a very,very well behaved unipivot or the cart will throw itself out of the grooves,or, at best audibly mistrack.

The arm I once had that mastered this with great control and of course amazing dynamic range was a British design by Tom Fletcher from Nottingham Analogue.

He designed for Glen Croft (of Croft Acoustics) and it was marketed as the Omega Point.

I'm sure Toms' latest designs can handle a Decca with aplomb too.

Cheers,;)
 
I'm using a Decca International currently on a Technics SL120 Direct Drive.

The arm came to me with the detachable headhsell damaged so I had to mod mine into a fixed headhsell. Otherwise it's pretty much stock but with some newer arm leads coming out of the pillar.

Current cartridge is an Ortofon MC20 Supreme.

This TT/ARM/Cart combo is astounding for it's speed, PRAT, and revalation of musical counterpoint/musicianship. I'm hearing alot more detail than I did with the heavy arm that used to be on my TT or the ACT-1 tomearm I had before.

This Arm BOOGIES. I'm tapping my feet like a mid 80's Linn Dealer! (Never thought that would be a good thing but times change huh?)

If I had to pick downpoints in the arm I'd say low bass and I think there's a bit of treble colouration there as well.

My tt experience is not extensive, haven't heard loads of decks so I can't give a wide ranging assessment sorry. As i say, due to the mods I've performed my arm may well not be typical.

If it is typical then I say the 25 euro is a steal. For the money there's nothing to touch it.

Gotta go to work now :-( but as soon as I'm home I'm sitting down with Oscar, Ray and Ed to listen to "Night Train" again and drink some nice Australian red wine.

Till then

drew

PS, love the tonearm. But my wife hates the lack of an arm lift
 
Decca

Arm lift: One thing I don't like about unipivots is the twist you get with the arm when you use the finger lift. I gotta believe its rough on the stylus to be abused that way. Hence waiting until a suitable arm lift swam past to solve that problem for the International.

I've got the International and I'm doing up an SME 3009 Ser. II Imp. for the Gold I have. I figgered that it would take a heavier counterwieght (not by much, but I suspect adjustability is key here) and bias weight. Also, while I was about it I got some headshell weights to be able to raise the effective mass of the arm. I wouldn't have gone to all this trouble, but this is the only SME that can conveniently be wired directly from the cart to the phono stage and the damper trough is something I believe in for other carts like my Ortofon SPUs on a 3012R.


It all remains to be seen, but I have an ffss, a Gray Export, a Maroon and a Gold. Among 9" and 12" SME arms and the Decca Internatinal, I ought to be able to find *something* that sings in that mix.

Peter C
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
WOBBLY UNIPIVS.

Hi,

If you were to design you're own unipivot,here's a nice little trick to prevent the arm from going with the wind.

As most good things it is simplicity itself...just put a sidebar on each side of the carrying pin made out of a small teflon rod and space it a fraction of a mm away from the centre pin.

The arm will not wobble anymore whenever it is lowered or lifted from the record and it won't impede its' noble unipivot pedigree in any way.

Voila,;)
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
Re: WOBBLY UNIPIVS.

fdegrove said:
If you were to design you're own unipivot,here's a nice little trick to prevent the arm from going with the wind.

There is a thread in here -- on building your unipivot -- where Dice45 takes the basics of this idea and brings it along much further, with many other benefits. I'm going to tackle that when i get around to putting my Hadcock GH212 back together.

dave
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
THE HADCOCKS.

Hi Dave,

As you may recall,I used to own of the Hadcock 228 E models.
Implementings this trick on these models is like talking microsurgeory though.

I feel you could make a great unipivot when restarting the idea from scratch and implement the trick along the way.

No idea Bernhard was aware of it too.

Time allowing,I'll try to dredge his ideas up.

He's surely missed in the Analogue dep...a true analogue man.:nod:

Cheers,;)
 
Hi all,

I have just collected the decca. Very nive box, never opened in its life. everything was there, glass capsule with dampening fluid (as new), sealed bag with nuts and bolts and other goodies :)

Now I am looking for a not too expensive Decca cartridge, doesn't have to be new, onely not to heavy worn... Any ideas of fitting the arm to a TD160??? Any help is welcome...
 
Decca carts

Unusually, there are several on eBay USA last week. Don't know what happened with them, since I have all I need except a Jubilee. $150 USD would be an average number I suspect, though they could go for more and some for less. From bottom to top they go , Blue, Gray Export, several Maroons, Gold, Gold "specials" of several varieties and London Jubilee. Gold and up have elliptical styli, the Jubiliee has a fairly radical line contact stylus from what I recall. Low in the food chain gets higher tracking forces (2+ g) as does older. The Golds, etc., have about 1.5 g, no matter what they tell you. They say unipivots are the way to do this, though I remain unconvinced and am doing an SME as well as a Decca International. I'm told viscous damping is imperative, I'm inclined to believe that.

They're not that common, so it may be a wait, but be comforted that very few people know what they are and are likely to let them go for a song (pun intended.) They can be rebuilt for 135 GBP, likely a good investment. I just got an ffss that's going off to get the treatment.

Peter C
 
Hi Peter,

For $25 the Decca are could be fun to play with. But, it's not very good, never quite sounding right with the Decca cart in it An analogy would be like a lens you can never get to quite focus correctly, but you sense that if you could it would be exceptional.

I went through a period of trying every arm I could with my Deccas, even some really unlikely combinations until I finally foung something that worked: Townshend Excaliber with the damping trough. Deccas put so much energy back into the arm, that it's easy to find which brands have good bearing designs. You should have heard both the Ittoks I tried rattle with it.

I'll be interested to hear your finding wrt to the SMEs. My previous experiments (a decade or more ago now) with the SME 3009 on the Gyro was a bit of a flop, my SAEC easily outperforming it. However I picked up a 3012R on the weekend (for an exceptional price) and would be curious how it fares in that. I think the 3012 will get a bronze bearing kit later.

IME, the Deccas seem to need a unipivot, with lots of damping control, or an arm with <i>exceptional</i> bearings, based on having tried lots of arms with mine in the last 18 years of using Deccas.

The next cart I buy will be a Jubilee.

Cheers

PS: Load the cart at around 12k, and keep the capacitance low. If you have one of those 'clamp' mounts that look like a tiny vice, don't use it. It messes with the sound, and changes the internal relationship of the coils for the worse. I also recall Brian saying something about reducing the lifetime of the cart. He wouldn't honour warranties if you used them (IIRC long time ago now)
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
RATTLE & HUM

Hi,

Decca carts are notorious for throwing back an enormous amount of energy into the tonearm and...the record itself.

Moreover the original design only had three terminals for connections...a typicallly British idiosyncratic design indeed.

Several companies in Britain and OZ still offer modded ones though and combined with an arm such as the well thought out Excalibur results can be quite breathtaking.

It certainly is a design that,once matured,could have put a lot of MC carts to shame.

Cheers,;)
 
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