Always have to bring it back to the same old muck, issues of "credit," the same stuff which has poisoned what should have been an entirely pleasurable - if sometimes stormy (on issues of engineering, measurements, results/experiments, etc.) - venture. Customs on imported things is an entirely different issue from crossing borders with a passport: I have never, until the Home Despot thing started, dealt with exporting and importing, beyond using the post office (and yes, even here things were sometimes delayed by months). If you use your head instead of your venom-sacks, you might see that many are in the export-import business for decades without ever leaving their home town (including Customs officials who never see more than stamps and places of origin), while travellers like me do not deal with Customs ever, beyond waiting for a shipped package and paying duties. The HUGE summer back-up overextended my own resources and time as well as the magazine's schedule, end of story. BTW, I never invented anything either, nor claimed to (which you would know if you weren't simply another purveyor of ugly hearsay with no interest in examining the public record and discovering the truth), just recognized and understood certain things, tinkered with and in some cases improved what had already been tried, and did what I could to promote it: i.e. start the "Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot" thread, do my bit to encourage people to participate by example and logical argument, and participate in various vinyl forums. It's the thread's success - NOT failures - which attracted the flies, or in this more particular case "gadflies", an apter description I cannot find. Now can we PLEASE get back to the issues: drive systems, idler-wheel drives, and Lencos?!?
This thread and the original - along with activites across many audio forums - is the collection of the independent testimony of people - the owners of the 'tables outperformed by the Lenco and other large idlers - and this is more than good enough, in fact, it's a phenomenon involving people from around the world, and which continues. I've personally learned my lesson and will not be seeking official channels again, my luck just doesn't run that way, and this is how I make my decisions (learned by months-long sometimes years-long travels with no plans, I know when a path is not my own). Lencos and other idlers will continue to be compared and auditioned - in greater and greater numbers - around the world, and how these eventually reach the audio press (and they already have in a few articles) is only a spectator sport for me from now on as far as I'm concerned (far too many non-performance related issues for my tastes, which is precisely why audio forums are so popular; better acidental discoveries - as in the positive-feedback TNT vs Garrard article - than planned reviews).
To the rest, getting back to original issues and the fun of discovery, the Lencos and other idlers - mine and others world-wide - will continue to be compared and reported on, on this forum as well as others. As with the crows, the constant addition of what is initially dismissed as/termed "anecdotal evidence" will, by its very weight and numbers, become simply "evidence". So don't stop building, don't stop comparing and experimenting, don't stop trying it out and tracking down those old machines, and best of all, don't stop reporting and sharing! To those who haven't tried, you have no idea of just how much MUSICAL information (as well as ENORMOUS amounts of detail) is waiting in those vinyl grooves waiting to be released, and you truly are missing a grand experience. Good luck all and have FUN, and share with generosity of time AND spirit, in a positive spirit of helpfulness. See ya all when I get back to Canada and have time to recover from all these adventures (for instance, it was HELL to get out of Israel, as both the Jewish New Year's AND Muslim Ramadan started the same day I arrived in Israel). And to be more specific re. the EMT/Rek-o-Kut comparison: the EMT had the same character/sound as the Rek-o-Kut Rondine I heard via the same speakers (I'm NOT saying equalivalent in audiophile terms), and I am truly dying to see how far the Rondine can go when Direct Coupled. Vive la Lenco, Vive la Idler Wheel!
