Review: KAB SL-1200 Fluid Damper Tweak

Category: Accessories

I got my KAB fluid damper kit for the Technics SL-1200 installed yesterday, and I managed to audition one cut twice in close proximity both with and without the damper, by playing it just before I put the silicone in the trough, and again just afterwards. I also replayed a few other things with the damper activated which I had just played the day before without. So these are my very initial impressions, and since I'm writing this after only one day, I'll have to post any further findings another time if need be.

The 1200 is not renowned as an audiophile TT, I know, and it is currently the only piece of equipment in my system which I have not upgraded to something 'better' and more expensive since becoming a real, practicing audiophile several years ago. However, I have never felt it was out of place in my improving system, and I have made a few tweaks to it along the way, which are detailed in the equipment profile below. (There are previously archived threads which address this question of the 1200's bona fides in detail, or just wait for Psychicanimal to respond here :-) In any case, I am certain that the 1200 is a perfectly legitimate test bed on which to base my report concerning the addition of fluid damping to an analog disk playback system.

First of all, let me say that this damper is a very nicely turned-out product, and it doesn't detract in any way from the appearance or operation of my SL-1200, but at half the price I originally paid for my whole TT/'arm new back in the 80's, there's not a lot of perceived value at $150 when you crack open the small foam-lined plastic box and find a little curved machined metal tray (embedded with a set screw for attachment to the 'arm's base, engraved with the KAB logo, and painted silver to match the 1200), a tiny plastic paddle with an integral collar and thumbscrew to tighten onto the 'arm (sourced from SME), a syringe of goopy fluid for filling the trough with (sans replaceable cap for storage, an ommission KAB should rectify), some fairly prefunctory instructions, and a hex key, although I don't doubt that KAB's return is fair on this quite specialized accessory. I was unprepared for just how viscous the 'viscous fluid' really was, never having used this type of damper before - that gunk be seriously thick.

In addition, I noted that the paddle which attaches to the tonearm presented less of a resistive 'face' to the fluid contained by the trough in the directions of motion (horizontal and vertical) than I was expecting might be the case (the KAB website has some good new pictures up of the damper in set-up and operation). Its broad side is a bit curved though, in the opposite direction of the curve about the pivot point made by the trough, and it is oriented at a slight angle to both the 'arm's arcing path of horizontal movement through the trough, and to the vertical component of a record warp, since it's not installed pointing straight down from the 'arm, but is offset about 10 degrees toward the direction of the platter.

I listened to three disks from the 60s, acoustic jazz from the Jazz Crusaders LP Uh-Huh, rock from The Who LP Sell Out, and pop from Gary Lewis & The Playboys LP New Directions, and two from the 70s, acoustic jazz from the McCoy Tyner LP Extensions, and rock from the Richard Lloyd LP Alchemy. The Jazz Crusaders 9 1/2 minute cut entitled "Blue Monday" was the track critically auditioned back-to-back first without and then with the damper. Differences noted with the damper in use were pretty consistent across all the cuts I auditioned.

OK, now to the listening. As a preface, let me say that I wasn't expecting huge changes, and I didn't hear huge changes. After all, everything else is staying the same besides the addition of the damper and paddle, so why shouldn't it sound more similar than dissimilar to the sound I have come to expect? I haven't listened for long yet, but I think I do already have a pretty good handle on what this product is going to do for the sound.

I certainly did look foward to some degree of positive improvements for my investment. However, as is often the case in actual practice, the improvements I got turned out to be not the ones I necessarily had in mind when I ordered my unit. I suppose after years of making step-by-step upgrades to my system, I should be better prepared at this point as to just what to anticipate for the next tweak or change. Yet I still manage somehow to be surprised as often as not, a situation which is funny to me, because there are definite similarities underlying a lot of the fundamental improvements I have experienced in the past - such as the principle Less Is Sometimes More.

I decided to acquire this tweak based partly on a set of expectations I had intuited from my deductions about how such a thing must work in operation. I reasoned, if the damper prevents the 'arm from dissapting as unwanted motion energy which should instead be going into forcing the stylus to faithfully transcribe the groove, then I should hear 'more'. More impressive dynamic peaks, more bass slam and weight, more soundstage space, more transient impact, maybe even a little more overall volume. There were a couple of things I was hoping for less of - less surface noise, less HF grain, although I wasn't consciously aware of any objectionable presence of the latter. KAB's inscription on the damper's box promises "deeper bass" and "clearer midrange", as well as "improved tracking", and Kevin A. Barrett (KAB) also mentioned that customers sometimes find more of a sense of 'time slowing down' when listening with the damper fitted, though I don't personally tend to subscribe to such notions myself.

Well, if I had been expecting 'more', in many ways 'less' is what I got, and the things I did get more of were generally not what I had suspected beforehand. In retrospect, everything I heard does make sense given what the damper ought to be doing, but it definitely took my experiencing it to arrive at that conclusion. The very first things I noticed when listening with the damper activated were the cymbals on The Jazz Crusaders cut. They were exhibiting greater HF extension now, and were noticeably smoother. I wasn't expecting that, but I liked it.

I tried to listen for deeper bass, or more explosive transients, but couldn't find them. The soundstage didn't really seem any more expansive than before. The horns did sound a little less foward now, though. When the piano solo came on, I realized that an obsidian-like sort of dark glassiness that had somewhat shrouded the instrument before, had been replaced with a more open, pillowy-natural gentleness as the keys were being purposefully tickled from the outside left rear of the soundstage. When the stand-up bass solo followed, the centered image floated in space just as effectively as before, but had lost a certain talky, PA-like quality to the sound of fingers on strings which had previously rendered it as more of an electronic reproduction of a bass, and instead sounded more naked and true.

I slowly started to realize that although the soundstage wasn't any 'bigger'-seeming, it was effectively deeper, because I could now 'focus my ears', so to speak, more precisely all the way to the backmost reaches and still maintain the sense of clarity and definition. It began to dawn on me that, instead of enhancing the leading edges of transients, what was actually happening was a cleaning-up of their after-effects. Everything within the soundstage was less perturbed by everything else.

Rather than seem incrementally louder, the overall volume, if anything, was actually slightly subdued with the damper doing its thing. But added background texture was reduced even futher, resulting in an apparent universal improvement in S/N ratio. I'm not talking about surface noise as such here, which I didn't notice too much one way or another on these relatively clean disks, but a reduction in what must surely be the artifacts of spurious vibrations and their reflections. The whole presentation sounded tidier, tighter, and clearer, the ever-so-slightly reduced apparent amplitude probably a function of the effective subtraction of reradiated stored energy in the form of ringing. Less is more.

Dynamic events taking place in different areas of the soundstage had less of an effect on one another, permitting the instruments to go about their business without smearing or the imposition of added harshness as compared to before. The result, prehaps paradoxically, was to make gains for my analog reproduction resembling some of the more favorable attributes of CD, for aspects such as separation and contrast, while at the same time actually adding liquidity through the removal of intermodulation. Decays, not the onsets, of transients were the big winners with the damper in place, exhibiting a newfound cleanliness and precision that allowed me follow the flow the music with less guesswork. Image focus became more crystalline-pure and unwaveringly stable, less prone to fluctuate with attacks and crescendos. Although I'm not big on the concept of 'pace', I would actually say that, if anything, the music now seemed to move along at a slightly brisker clip, unencumbered by the dragging disturbance of throwing a larger wake in its trail.

In the big picture, I'd characterize the changes wought by the addition of the fluid damper as being on the order of about 10% or so (quite good), but in the particular areas upon which it has its greatest effects, I'd say they were more like 50%, which I think is excellent. No, I didn't get 'more' bass or dynamics, but I got less of what the presence of such information in the grooves can do to the more fragile parts of the sonic tapestry. In my estimation, what I'm hearing now with the damper is more faithful to the music mastered into the vinyl than what I was extracting previously, mostly through the reduction (if not the outright elimination) of some of the more pernicious effects engendered by the process of attempting to trace microscopic squiggles with a flexibly mounted needle attached to the end of a freely swinging arm.

I have not yet tried to ascertain the improvements wrought, if any, on the trackability of warped records, or the possible effects of the damper on reducing susceptability high-level acoustic feedback, for instance, but I will post updates when/if further developments make themselves known to me. For now I am exploring and enjoying the smoother and cleaner ride through the grooves the KAB damper is affording my cartridge and tonearm.

Associated gear
Benz-Micro Glider M2 .8mv MC cartridge > Technics SL-1200 TT and 'arm (modified with: Symposium shelf underneath sitting on Focalpods soft footers, Michell delrin record clamp, MusicDirect polymer tonearm wrap, and Sorbothane replacement mat) > Camelot Technologies Lancelot battery-powered op-amp phonostage with 54dB gain (modified with 392-ohm Vishay VHS loading resistors and resting on Audioquest Sorbothane pucks) > Cardas Cross 1m RCA IC > InnerSound FET preamp (with Synergistic Research Master A/C Coupler PC) > Harmonic Technology Magic One 1.5m RCA IC > VTL MB-185 Signature circa-200w all-tube monoblocks (with Shunyata PowerSnakes Sidewinder PCs) > Cardas Cross 8ft speaker cable > Thiel CS2.2 3-way floorstanding full-range speakers > and all electronics fed from Audio Power Industries PowerWedge Ultra 116 PLC (balanced AC to front-end components) and supported on a Salamander Synergy Twin 40 rack. Everything is set up a comfortable distance away from walls in a medium-sized living room, with the listening distance being about 10ft.

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