Mundane
adjective
- Of, relating to, or typical of this world; secular.
- Relating to, characteristic of, or concerned with commonplaces; ordinary.
I think that on paper it seems easy, but if you look at the people who are buying and restoring stuff like old Garrards, Lencos, etc.. they are master carpenters in their own right. Plus they know their mechanicals and quite a bit of electrics... it's not an easy thing to do, but it is something that takes a lot of practice, skill and time. They take those old high mass tables and often long, high mass tonearms and make them sing.
https://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/gallery/image/52842
It's not a beginner's project and it requires some good tools. Not an Ikea product.
Sprung turntables can require some skill as well to set up. It is what is is, there is no voodoo in them, just skill and practice. All of the springs must be set just so, to make the table spring up and down, not sideways, with just the right amount of movement. And then there is the base... some tables do great on massive stands with Sorbothane pucks under them and weights on the spindle ( like my old Dual ) others really require a light, rigid base spiked into the floor and no additional mass damping (like my LP12)...
TT are mechanical systems and designed as a mechanical "diode" to direct vibrations away from the record/stylus interface... and they do so by various means and requirements. So you got to work with it.
For example, that Ikea bamboo cutting board might simply not cut it with a softly sprung turntable... it might have the wrong mass density for it. But it might do just fine for a heavy for a heavy suspension less table.
I mean, there's got to be a reason why designers go to extrements... just check out the VPI tables, the Mitchel Gyrodec, etc... Then you got the insane...
https://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/gallery/image/50071
Creating and configuring the base for a turntable not really mundane, as it requires skill and practice, hence it is not ordinary.
@BasicHIFI1 The vinylengine web site is interesting... you might want to peruse it and check out all kinds of wonderful machinery.
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Aaaand... it won't let me quote Tony's post above, but I thought this was a DIY audio forum and we've got people arguing against DIY...
Assembling a Denon Direct drive TT is literally cutting a hole to mount the platter, and the really tough part is using a template to locate the spot to install a tone arm. It's literally that easy. Denon did all of the heavy lifting in designing and offering this series of platters to the market. And if you've ever seen their stock plinths, just about anything other than a cardboard box is an improvement. Heck, for practice you could even mount the platter and arm on a cardboard box just to mock it up: it would play and still sound better then lots of the junk out there.
Now, my main deck is a lot more involved with vacuum platter and isolated power supply and would not be a beginner project. But that is not what I'm talking about....
The post above is reinforcing the dark art marketing employed by manufacturers to dissuade people from the joy of doing it yourself. There is no Voodoo involved with cutting a hole to place a complete working platter assembly and drilling a hole from a template to mount a tone arm.
Reading through this thread though and the exchange about the Linn LP-12 it seems like Tony is an iconoclast and likes to argue so I'll not engage that direction further.
Ignore the naysayers and have fun creating your own audio world. Experiment, explore, learn and grow.
eso
Assembling a Denon Direct drive TT is literally cutting a hole to mount the platter, and the really tough part is using a template to locate the spot to install a tone arm. It's literally that easy. Denon did all of the heavy lifting in designing and offering this series of platters to the market. And if you've ever seen their stock plinths, just about anything other than a cardboard box is an improvement. Heck, for practice you could even mount the platter and arm on a cardboard box just to mock it up: it would play and still sound better then lots of the junk out there.
Now, my main deck is a lot more involved with vacuum platter and isolated power supply and would not be a beginner project. But that is not what I'm talking about....
The post above is reinforcing the dark art marketing employed by manufacturers to dissuade people from the joy of doing it yourself. There is no Voodoo involved with cutting a hole to place a complete working platter assembly and drilling a hole from a template to mount a tone arm.
Reading through this thread though and the exchange about the Linn LP-12 it seems like Tony is an iconoclast and likes to argue so I'll not engage that direction further.
Ignore the naysayers and have fun creating your own audio world. Experiment, explore, learn and grow.
eso
That's a very nice job.... not a beginner's job, though. Looks like two chassis, huh? And it requires some precision wood work. Does it have a suspension?
I've always wondered, though, how do you use that second tonearm behind the platter?
I tend to rest my hand on the edge of the plinth when I lower the stylus on the record ( I don't use the cueing lever when lowering the stylus ). How would you do that across the platter?
BTW, I'm not arguing against DIY. The Linn is sort of a DIY in that you got lots of parts in the inventory. Other tables tend to be all in one. Then you got the fringe edge building their own tonearms....
Life is wonderful. To each his own. Just remember though, there are various levels of skills required.
( I was able to quote myself... but then I'm a legend in my own mind.... living in my own bubble -levelled naturally )
Oh, I'm no iconoclast.. Please don't call me names.
Iconoclast
noun
1- One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.
2- One who destroys sacred religious images.
I've always wondered, though, how do you use that second tonearm behind the platter?
I tend to rest my hand on the edge of the plinth when I lower the stylus on the record ( I don't use the cueing lever when lowering the stylus ). How would you do that across the platter?
BTW, I'm not arguing against DIY. The Linn is sort of a DIY in that you got lots of parts in the inventory. Other tables tend to be all in one. Then you got the fringe edge building their own tonearms....
Life is wonderful. To each his own. Just remember though, there are various levels of skills required.
( I was able to quote myself... but then I'm a legend in my own mind.... living in my own bubble -levelled naturally )
Oh, I'm no iconoclast.. Please don't call me names.
Iconoclast
noun
1- One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.
2- One who destroys sacred religious images.
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There is one on E-bay for less:
Linn Sondek LP12 Record Player Turntable
Item Information
Condition:
Used
Time left: 8d 16h|06/11, 11:00 PM
Current bid:
GBP 410.00
ApproximatelyUS $513.32
For a first serious turntable, and I mean taking care to use the system properly, I feel it might be better to use a inexpensive turntable to learn about this turntable thing. I really do not feel comfortable with even a purchasing an Audio Technica and damaging it through experimentation.
There seems to be an an almost spiritual aura around these spinning disks, which is not a bad thing, it makes one appreciate what one has, and hopefully use it properly.
I am not sure what you mean by assemble a turntable. Is it possible to make the plinth and fit a motor, belt drive, electronics and tone arm from different manufacturers? No doubt this crossed my mind, but I see this in my future. I admit, I would really like to do that, and there are some examples already, but usually they use the mechanicals from an existing turntable.
Vacuum platter - the record is held in place and straightened out by suction? The AirforceZero uses this, and it sounds great, but I am not sure how this affects playback quality: what effect does straightening out the record play in sound quality? Do you recommend any record straightening procedures?
Your system looks great, I see it is belt-driven. How difficult is it to align the belt, and how critical is it?
Why external power supply? Do these things hum or cause EM interference?
Link? That's pretty cheap, but then that's the UK and there's likely more LP12s in the UK than in the US.
On auction sites, "Current bid" and "cheap" are two different things. That auction has 8 days on the clock (when you posted), and it's unlikely to stay anywhere near the low hundreds...but you'll know in 8 days' time. This is why I almost never bid on auctioned items.
If you do get a turntable shipped to you, you want to be certain that whoever you buy from will pack it correctly. Many sellers don't know or don't care. I would be wary of anyone if it seems they don't ship such items regularly, or if they are reluctant to answer questions about their packing methods.
As a result of poor packing, turntables do get destroyed or heavily damaged during shipping. It's a terrible waste to kill an old turntable that was perfectly capable of working when it was boxed at the shipper's end. It's better to work with people who are well-known for being reliable and packing properly. In my case, I generally prefer stores. But you still have to filter those carefully to make sure you're buying from someone you can trust.
"Assemble" as in bringing together the parts that will make up your turntable. If you go back to the DP-3000 picture that Eso posted, you just have the motor/platter assembly visible in the photo. That's going to need a power supply (or power cable if the power supply is built in), a tonearm, and a plinth or some other form of mounting to really call it a complete turntable, and of course a cartridge as well for actual playback. I don't have access to the auction link that the photo came from, but some of those parts, such as an AC cable, may have been included in the sale.
Note also that a lot of Denon models are essentially all-in-one units, complete with their own base and tonearm, and are designed such that they're not really intended for tonearm upgrades or swapouts.
For many turntables you can easily mix manufacturers, within reason. Normally this means the tonearm, cartridge, plinth (often DIY or custom-built), and some third-party alternatives or upgrades. That can include belt, power supply, and sometimes platter or subplatter (be careful with direct drive though).
So really, you need to understand something about each model you're interested in before you assume you can just change a section for something else made by someone else. Direct drive turntables tend to be quite integral, so unless you really know what you're doing, you leave the internal electronics, motor, and platter unmolested to do their thing together. Though there may of course be some necessary replacement of electronic components on a board.
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My post was specifically speaking of a Denon direct drive platter. It's a self contained motor, speed controller, platter and finish bezel assembly. Cut out a hole per a template and mount the unit. Done, plug it in and turn it on (it has a power cord)
Once you have set the center of the platter you can determine the location of the tonearm. You could mount it anywhere in the circle around the platter. The important dimension is the distance from the center of the platter to the pivot point of the arm. Any decent arm will have the dimensions available and most have templates.
Mount the arm, mount the cartridge... Play music!
This is a really simple way to get a pretty high quality good sounding set up going. You're going to have to learn to mount a cartridge and setup an arm anyway. Why not just mount the arm too?
eso
This is a good point. I do see that quite a lot of people are intimidated about the idea of doing cartridge setup themselves (and I wasn't wild about it myself when I got my first turntable) but it's just a necessary skill, and part of turntable ownership. It tends to get easier with practice, although never underestimate the need for taking great care (as I think some of the people who have accidentally destroyed their MC carts would tell you).
Nowadays you have access to far more information about how to do it. Not too long ago, we might have had to rely on written descriptions in whatever manuals or magazines we could get our hands on. But if you're not brilliant at working from printed instructions, you can quite easily find videos nowadays that show and explain what to do. This is the next best thing to having a friend or family member who can take you through it, and certainly we didn't always have one of those.
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Cartridges
It is more than a little frustrating to me that I still do not know much about cartridges. I remember putting a record on and dropping the needle on many a dusty disk, but never changed a stylus, though I did wash my vinyl after a friend put me on to it. I just used what we had. Visiting a Hi-Fi dealer or two would have helped, I think, but that was unthinkable, though I did live in New York city for a while during college days (1985+)
First question: are cartridges interchangeable? Can you fit cartridge from turntable A to turntable B? I know the answer now, I think, but I wanted to point out that the answer is not obvious to the causal music listener. The subtleties of vinyl are never explained to the average music enthusiast, and I had to learn a few things in the past few weeks about this vinyl world. More reading is in the cards.
Having said that, I have found the vinyl enthusiast very practical minded, results are always testable and knowledge is shared freely. There are people who build their own turntables and even the cartridge itself! "Oh I take about 2 hours but this time 20 minutes" Assembling a cartridge under a microscope?
The other point, and I am a big fan of YouTube auditioning of audio equipment, and it seems that each cartridge sounds different! This is a huge revelation to me, not just better, but the difference can be detected over YouTube and headphones, matching the characteristics described in the review. I will not tell you my favorite, however there is one I prefer here, I do not want to start any vinyl wars.
This brings me to the question: why is the output of vinyl systems, and sound systems in general, different? Why is this acceptable?
I come from a background of computing and can you imagine different computers producing differing outputs from the same input data? Can such a computer survive? Maybe you can put it down to 'different analyses' of the data, different programs: each turntable is a program.
It is more than a little frustrating to me that I still do not know much about cartridges. I remember putting a record on and dropping the needle on many a dusty disk, but never changed a stylus, though I did wash my vinyl after a friend put me on to it. I just used what we had. Visiting a Hi-Fi dealer or two would have helped, I think, but that was unthinkable, though I did live in New York city for a while during college days (1985+)
First question: are cartridges interchangeable? Can you fit cartridge from turntable A to turntable B? I know the answer now, I think, but I wanted to point out that the answer is not obvious to the causal music listener. The subtleties of vinyl are never explained to the average music enthusiast, and I had to learn a few things in the past few weeks about this vinyl world. More reading is in the cards.
Having said that, I have found the vinyl enthusiast very practical minded, results are always testable and knowledge is shared freely. There are people who build their own turntables and even the cartridge itself! "Oh I take about 2 hours but this time 20 minutes" Assembling a cartridge under a microscope?
The other point, and I am a big fan of YouTube auditioning of audio equipment, and it seems that each cartridge sounds different! This is a huge revelation to me, not just better, but the difference can be detected over YouTube and headphones, matching the characteristics described in the review. I will not tell you my favorite, however there is one I prefer here, I do not want to start any vinyl wars.
This brings me to the question: why is the output of vinyl systems, and sound systems in general, different? Why is this acceptable?
I come from a background of computing and can you imagine different computers producing differing outputs from the same input data? Can such a computer survive? Maybe you can put it down to 'different analyses' of the data, different programs: each turntable is a program.
Basically, the answer is no, but in practice, often yes.
If we assume we're all talking standard mount cartridges mounted to standard mount tonearms (which is certainly not always the case), you can take the cartridge off one arm and install it on another. But you'd still need to align it, and also the fact that you can physically do this doesn't mean the cartridge is an appropriate match for the tonearm. Plus there's the matter of whether it's MC or not, etc.
Considering turntables as just table A and table B is not always a good idea. There are 4 common drive systems (that I know of): idler, belt, direct drive, and linear. Already, one of those, linear, often uses a different (though not exclusive to linear) cartridge system, P-mount, which can't be directly (without the use of an adaptor) installed to a standard-mount tonearm.
As well as varying drive systems, there is much diversity of turntable types. Some are all-in-one, or closer to that than a platform like the SP10 that can be user-configured in many ways. A Technics SP10 is highly flexible in terms of the plinth and tonearm choices, as it was originally designed to be, with the expectation that the user was likely to select the tonearm themselves. A Rega bought today, on the other hand, is more likely to have a specific Rega tonearm fitted, and is largely intended by Rega to be sold and used that way. And a Denon DP47F is an automatic turntable that I think would not work with anything other than the stock tonearm, unless some serious and pretty technical modification was involved. So its hard to talk about a Planar 2, an SP10, and a DP47F in the same breath.
Acceptable to who? Not everyone is looking for perfection, and in spite of some very authoritative-sounding assertions from enthusiasts (I'm not going to bother with the word audiophile, which is loaded with baggage), there is almost nothing that won't be disputed by another expert. This applies also to brands/models: every single model and every brand has someone who either loathes it, or has used it and decided they found what they wanted elsewhere. Likewise, every drive system. It's clear also that audio engineers don't agree on everything, otherwise turntables would be little more than clones of each other.
And as well as the somewhat impossible goal of perfection - or even agreeing on what that is - it's clear that people simply prefer different types of sound. That's inevitable, because they also listen to very different styles of music, and audio components can work well with one type while working less well with another.
Would you like someone to dictate to you what kind of sound you should be shooting for, based on the idea, or their belief, that their setup achieves neutrality? Or worse, based on measurements?
The sound I am looking for, at the moment at least, at least naively, is the sound of the studio tapes. I would like to hear what the artists heard when they played back and listened to what they had produced and said it was OK. Obviously not every cartridge and system will produce this sound.
If I want to listen to different flavors or 'analyses' of the recorded sound, then I suppose I will have to go on to something more: hear things the recording artists never heard on the recording, but maybe heard in real life.
Anyway that is what I am looking for at the moment. I found a video of a studio session and I like the sound of it.
Is this the tape being rewound and played back? Earlier session (1965 - Help)
If I want to listen to different flavors or 'analyses' of the recorded sound, then I suppose I will have to go on to something more: hear things the recording artists never heard on the recording, but maybe heard in real life.
Anyway that is what I am looking for at the moment. I found a video of a studio session and I like the sound of it.
Is this the tape being rewound and played back? Earlier session (1965 - Help)
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Okay, but what you are listening to when you watch a youtube video is lossy-compressed digital played back through whatever dac is being used with your computer.
That's not my experience at all. I phoned Michel about 3 years ago when I bought a 2nd hand SME arm and asked for help on mounting it. They sent me a mounting plate, all the washers, screws, stand-off's etc. Very, very helpful. Notingham Analog also support their T/T's well with spares etc.
Then get a used Technics open reel.
Open reel, next to DSD, are likely the best quality around. The issue will be to get music on reels.
Honestly, IMHO, you'd be better off going into digital Hi Rez downloads. Go for DSD if you can. It will cost you a ton less.
LPs are fine for those of us already sitting on collections ( I got more than 4000 ).... but if you are just starting, I would NOT recommend them, specially if you are serious about the sound. Just go for Hi Rez downloads. You can probably put a really good digital front end for way less than a mediocre, used analog turntable based front end. And with DSD and 24/96 sources, you have the potential for better sound than LPs.
Unless, of course, you are into the hardware, not just listening to the music... so if you want a turntable, well, go for it... but be ready to spend time and money on it. And you will NEVER get the studio tape quality. You will get something tactile that can sound very good on its own right, but different from the studio tape.
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Michel have been around for IIRC since the late 1980's (maybe @billshurv has better info on this?). They no longer machine any of their stuff in-house; its all subcontracted out but the fit and finish is still top class. (disclaimer - I own one so I am biased 🙂 )