Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

Henry, Your point is well taken in general, but in this case I believe Fleib wrote only a few posts above your last one that he did purchase a leather mat and did try it, albeit his was made of deer hyde.

Dear Henry,
Most of the contents of the long passage you quoted are utter hogwash. (1) Because the TT101 looks complex to the uneducated, like you and me, is no reason to believe it cannot be worked on by a trained professional. It is not voodoo. (2) The very same chip for the SP10s is also used in a wide variety of later production versions of the Technics SL tt's, e.g., SL1500, SL1600, etc. There are thousands of those tt's around,and one can buy them cheaply, if one really needs the chip for one's much more valuable SP10. A certain SP10 aficionado from Texas has done that more than once. Moreover, if you renew the electrolytic capacitors in your SP10 before the chip gets blown, the problem will not arise. (3) I have a Denon DP80 that came to me with a partially defective IC. I was told the part was unobtainium, as you suggest. I took the part number off the chip and did a Google search. I found at least a dozen small electronics houses mostly in Hong Kong that had a supply of the needed Denon chip. (Mind you, this chip was made only up to 1983 and only for the Denon tts, so my results were quite amazing.) I acquired not only an NOS chip for my tt but two extra ones, for less than $25, and there were offers to sell that went as low as a couple of bucks. (I actually paid too much but went with the guy who wrote the most coherent English.) It seems there are thousands of those chips out there. The only problem is that those few who need them don't know how to find them or don't try because they believe they will be unsuccessful. (4) In general, in many cases where discrete transistor parts are no longer available it is because the part has been replaced by one that is functionally superior. Bill Thalmann (one of those "trained professionals") also replaced all the transistors in my DP80, not because any were bad but because Bill knew that the newer part was superior and more reliable and would improve the function of the tt.

So, don't panic or cause the rest of us to panic. You know what is really unobtainium?.... a 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa.

By the way, I will gladly take a TT101 off anyone's hands, to allay fears that it will fail and can't be fixed.

Dear �Nandric, Go ahead and buy that TT101, if you want it. Here is a URL for the owners manual AND the service manual, which can be downloaded from Vinyl Engine:

http://www.vinylengine.com/library/jvc/tt-101.shtml

Armed with the service manual, any really good technician worthy of the name can repair the TT101, save for the "unobtainium" chips, that might not be so unobtainable. To add to Ralph's cautionary comments, I would say that the first thing to do after acquiring a vintage dd with unknown service history is to have all the electrolytic capacitors replaced. After 20-30 years, it is quite likely that at least some of the caps are leaky or otherwise defective. Leaky caps can lead to destruction of one of those precious ICs. Also note (Mgreene) that no vendor asked me to purchase the Denon chip in bulk. I had the choice to buy only one or as many as I wanted.

In the US, Bill Thalmann of Music Technologies in Springfield, VA, can repair any of these tables, is extremely smart and honest, and is an audio hobbyist as much as we all are. Music Technologies has a website.

Dear Nandric, I read a little about the new data that call into question the actual speed of light. Compared to other previously existing data that confirm the Theory of Special Relativity, I think the data from CERN are rather weaker. I am going with Albert on this one.

I wouldn't "dabble" in vintage dd turntables if I did not sincerely believe based on listening in my own home on my system that they offer superior value for money, based on performance alone. The fact that they will not depreciate if properly maintained is only an added bonus. Of course, some are better than others.

It does seem odd that the owner of a business that thrives on selling used gear would make the statements about dd attributed to him by Henry or Henry's source. Based on the results of my Google search, those Denon chips seem to be available all over Hong Kong, if he would stick his head out of his door. C'est la vie.

Dear Banquo, What I did point out is that the service manual of the TT101 is available on Vinyl Engine. With the service manual, a competent person can trace a problem to its source. That is the first step in the repair process. As to its possibly unobtainable chips, I would bet that like the ones we know about (Technics and Denon), Victor also used a family of parts that is common to several of their designs in that lineage. It might be a little more difficult to obtain the donor tt, for the Victor family, since so few of the best ones were exported, but it could be done, I would be bet. And then too we have the internet as an unprecedented way to find odd parts that our local distributor might say is "unobtainable". I would not be the least bit afraid to own a TT101, except I would prefer a TT801. Isn't that the very top of the line? Or is the TT101 uber?

Yes, after listening to my L07D, I suspect there is magic in coreless motors. Note that Brinkmann has chosen to use a coreless motor in its direct drive renaissance. But one can hardly make a firm conclusion based on one sampling, and I am sure motors with an iron core can sound great to. To wit, the SP10 Mk3. I have no idea about the NVS motor type or its speed control mechanism, except I think I read that they have eschewed the use of a servo.

Hiho, FWIW, that's the first thing I noticed once I got my L07D up and running, an uncanny sense of "fluidity" (good word for what I hear), plus the L07D's signal to noise ratio seems to be unusually low, which adds to that same sense. The turntable gets out of the way, and the music is just "there".

"Small ones" does not tell me much. Some electrolytic caps in solid state devices can have values as low as one microfarad and below. Such caps are tiny, but they are nevertheless electrolytic. If they are electrolytic it would seem to me they are subject to aging, leakage, etc. I would change them all, and I did so in my own SP10 MK2. If the term "small ones" refers to film and foil or metallized film capacitors, that is a different story. Film caps are also "small", but they have a very long life and don't really need to be changed unless grossly bad. That's what I think.

A belated response to Henry's question about the complexity of the SP10 Mk3 vs the TT101: There are no on-board electronics in the Mk3 save for the on/off and speed selector switches and wiring thereto and the brake solenoid. All the electronics are housed in the outboard power supply, which is much larger and heavier than that of an SP10 Mk2, for that reason. This arrangement allowed Technics to build the chassis proper such that resonances are minimized. (No hollow cavity or thin-walled structures, etc) And I reckon it also allowed more room on board for the humongous motor. As to what's inside the Mk3 power supply, I deemed it to be so "special" that I did not want to mess around inside it. (As you may know, my Mk3 was acquired in NOS condition.) I simply handed it to Bill Thalmann and let him do the work. Ergo, I don't know what it looks like inside. But the schematic is available on VE.

Dear Henry,
The question you raise has also interested me from time to time. The internet is full of information on motors. However, much of it is written using jargon that is unfamiliar to me and therefore quite dense. But here goes my current understanding: (1) Not all cored motors have 24 poles. A cored motor can have as few as 2 poles, but such a motor would exhibit a pronounced cogging effect. Cogging is the tendency of a motor to want to stop when the magnets are aligned such that the distance to the attractive element is minimal. Obviously, in turntable motors, we do not want cogging. In general for cored motors, the more poles, the less cogging effect. A 24-pole motor is likely to exhibit markedly reduced cogging compared to a 12-pole motor. The SP10 Mk3 has a 24 pole motor. If the Victor TT81 does, that's good. (2) Coreless motors either have zero cogging, because there is no iron in the windings, or they have very little cogging. (I have trouble with this issue, since I see contradictory statements on the internet, but it seems to make sense that coreless motors would not "cog"..) As far as I can tell, coreless motors do not have "poles" per se, so the question is irrelevant. I have also seen the statement that "slotless" motors have zero cogging. Whether coreless and slotless are synonyms in motor jargon world I have not yet figured out. In any case, the L07D and TT101 motors would have zero cogging, most likely. I think this gives rise to the "fluidity" that Hiho and I hear. Did you notice such a thing as regards the difference between TT81 and TT101? If anyone has a clearer understanding of the consequences of coreless motor design, please jump in here.

PS. Yes, coreless = slotless. Just found a site that confirmed my impression. And coreless motors do not exhibit cogging.

Aigenga, I think what you wrote could also be termed an increase in "fluidity". In any case, what you wrote would be another fair description of what I hear with the L07D as compared to other DD turntables I have owned which use motors with iron or steel cores. (Jury is still out on a comparison of L07D to Technics SP10 Mk3, however. Mk3 has fantastic "liveliness", for sure.) However, let me caution that this is the type of deductive reasoning one should really avoid (relating the L07D's fluid sound to the lack of cogging of its coreless motor), even though I am guilty of it here. The one observation is not necessarily related to the other factoid.

Henry, On that last post, one would have to peer into the brain of a Victor engineer to find out why all Victor tts were not equipped with coreless motors. The motor in the TT101 is not only coreless vs the TT81, it also has considerably higher torque, I believe. Those two characteristics definitely would add to the cost of producing the motors, for sure. It is more costly to make a high-torque coreless motor than a cored motor of similar torque characteristics. Also, coreless motors are more prone to overheating under stress, so that had to be considered in their design. And finally, what was the actual price difference between TT81 and TT101?

I know for Kenwood, their KD500 (I think that's the model), which was one very giant step down from the L07D in all other ways, nevertheless also came with a coreless motor. Pioneer used coreless motors in their Exclusive line of tt's; do the upper end of the Pioneer line tt's also have coreless motors? Don't know. Technics seems not to have used coreless motors at all, but as you pointed out, their best motors have 24 poles and the DC power supply could further reduce cogging to a non-issue. Motors and their power supplies are an art form unto themselves.

Hiho, The information I have been able to gather suggests that it is simply more difficult to get torque out of a coreless motor than out of a similarly sized cored motor because the coreless motors tend to trap heat and thus overheat, and overheating is lethal to them. (The iron or steel core in a cored motor also makes a good heat sink, so motors intended for heavy duty and continuous operation tend not to be coreless.) However, the Pioneer Exclusive P3 (coreless) motor is second only to the Technics SP10 Mk3 motor in terms of torque among the TOTL Japanese DD's, as far as I can find out. (Perhaps the Denon DP100 motor develops more torque than that of the P3; don't know. It's as big as a coffee can, so I would not be surprised.) If you read about Kenwood's thinking in the design of the L07D, they actually did not favor high torque in principle. So they were not concerned with competing in that "horsepower" race. Also, the drive system (the implementation of the servo mechanism, use of a quartz reference, handling of the AC and/or DC, speed of the sensor mechanisms, etc) are also determinants of the success of a DD design; cored motors can be made to work just fine, IMO. The fact that Denon and Technics stuck with cored motors does not necessarily mean they were "stubborn". However, like you, I am not a motor engineer. Motors and how they work, what makes one better than another for this or that application, are fascinating and complex subjects.

Apropos of that, you cite the Brinkmann Bardo for using a coreless motor, and I did too in one of my earlier posts, but does anyone know about the Grand Prix Monaco, the NVS, or the Teres Certus? For that matter, what about the Brinnkmann Oasis?

Hiho, In some magazine or on the internet, I saw a photo of the Bardo motor with its coils exposed. It is striking how much the whole construction resembles either one of the L07D motors you showed in your photos. Makes you wonder whether Brinkmann intentionally took a page from that book.

Reference to "12 pole" in the description of the Monaco motor should tell us that it is a 12-pole motor, not coreless, if I my understanding of the jargon is correct. But I read in one of the original reviews that the motor is a very advanced modern space age design specifically aimed at eliminating cogging. I also read on the NVS website that they have eschewed the use of a servo system; I hope I am re-stating it correctly, but as I recall they make the motor operate against a specified drag, in order to keep speed stable. Much like the eddy current brake used in the Garrard 301/401.

On Technics. My early impression of my SP10 Mk3 suggests it lives up to the hype.

Has anyone here (hello, Shane) been listening to an Exclusive P3? I'd like to get a better feel for that thing.

Way cool! Did not know about the Dual. Perhaps I should have gone to R�MAF after all to hunt down each of the modern DD's that we know so little about.

I take it you were dissatisfied with your Mk2 on other grounds besides "bass dynamics and tightness", One big diff between my Mk2 and Mk3 is that I made a better more sophisticated plinth for the Mk3. The Mk2 was all slate. The Mk3 plinth is equal parts slate and cherry wood and weighs around 90 lbs. I found that the addition of the stiff hardwood dampens the slate, whereas the slate is very good for channeling energy away from the Mk3 chassis. Anyway, the Mk3 plinth is very neutral. The Mk3 itself imparts a little more energy than the Mk2 and has very low coloration, if any. However, I thought the Mk2 in slate was very fine and could have lived with it. I firmly believe there is such a thing as "good enough". After good enough, the rest is a hobby.

Far as I know, the motor with the symmetrically arranged coils is indicative of a second generation L07D. There are photos of such a tt on the LO7D website hosted by Howard Stern, who serviced both of my L07Ds. But in real life, I have never seen a second generation LO7D for sale or known one to be in the hands of an end-user. (It differs from the first generation type in other ways besides the motor structure; the tonearm rest and the adjustable support feet were also built differently, and there may be some differences in the electronics, or not.) I suppose if you canvas the LO7D email group, you might find one. Last year there might have been one for sale on the Hifido website. Which is a long-winded way of saying that my L07D(s) (both of them) are the much more common first generation type with the assymetrical coils. There has to be a reason why Kenwood chose to build it that way, but I cannot imagine it. Do you think it was to avoid infringing on Dual's patent? Note that the Bardo coils are not symmetrically placed around the spindle, either.

Hiho, His second post was in response to something I must have written, since he is addressing me. Yet I have no recollection of ever reading this treatise before. Also, he talks about "poles" in coreless motors, so this means I am full of baloney (to put it nicely) when I said that the Teres (was it?) motor cannot be coreless if it has "12 poles". I have to do more reading on this subject because obviously I am not qualified to have any opinion. Now, where can I buy a Dual 5000CS? That would be a great motor for my Lenco.

Thanks, Downunder. I hardly think that the speed and precision of the P3 is due to its fast start. One is not listening at the start. Yet there does seem to be a consensus that a sense of "speed" or pace or whatever like that is superior for most direct drives vs most belt drives. For one thing, this may have to do with belt creep or belt stretch; no matter how sophisticated is the motor drive, it's work is applied to the platter via that belt.

Hiho, Great photos of the LO7D motor coils but the photos at the website only get one to an index page and for me the URL goes dead at that point. Not to worry. I am wondering whether the guy you referenced is correct when he implied that the assymetric placement of the coils on the original LO7D motor and on the Bardo motor would result in aberrant drive from the motor. I think the field created by the coils would average itself out. (I also think there would be a limit to the odd spacing where once reached the field would no longer be able to average itself out and would result in a dead spot on each rotation.) But this is just idle speculation and curiosity.

He said or inferred that the Dual CS5000 would have an EDS coreless motor. But based on what I read at the Dual history website, that may not be the case. Just what models of Dual DO in fact have the EDS motor. I think their idler drive tts, like the 1019, have induction motors (a la my Lenco).

Yes, the direct-drive school does seem to have two camps, high torque motor/light platter vs low torque motor/heavy platter. And yes I think the LO7D is more in the latter camp, certainly compared to Technics stuff. There is an analogy in belt drive turntables too. Notts and Walker (to name two of many) favor weak motor/gigantic platter. SME and (argghh I can't remember the name, begins with an "A") would be in the light platter/powerful motor school.

The only guy I know for sure who would understand this stuff and could explain it to us is Mark Kelly, but he is preoccupied with other things at the mo'.

Avid. That's the name I was trying to think of. Nice stuff. Light-ish platters/high torque motors.

A vibratory hum from the transformer is nothing to worry about, as long as it does not intrude on the listening experience. If you had an amplified hum coming thru the speakers, that is another story, but don't worry about the local mechanical hum. Why yours hums and Henry's does not is possibly only a function of the voltage and/or frequency of the current coming from your wall socket vs Henry's. (Don't know the voltage/frequency in Australia.)

Henry, are you using that stethoscope to identify nodes in your shelf? As a doctor, of course I was born with a stethoscope around my neck, and even though I never use one in my chosen field, I have always owned one or two.

Where to begin?
Dear Gary, Henry makes a VERY good point; if you have plugged your TT101 into the 120V wall outlet, that could very well be what is making your transformer hum. Even though the voltage is only slightly different from 100V, you had best use a step-down transformer. You may eventually damge the TT101, otherwise. They are available on eBay. You only need one that can handle 50W or slightly less.

BUT I am not clear on what you are hearing. In your last post it sounds like you may indeed be hearing hum through your speakers. If so, this is unlikely to be due to the power transformer. Look for another cause. As for EMF, the transformer and turntable motor are emitting EMF no matter whether they are noisy or not. I use a shield on my (coreless) LO7D motor (between the platter and the platter mat, made out of TI Shield available from Michael Percy). There never was any hum problem with LO7D; the shield reduces or removes a kind of gray-ish glare that colored the L07D output. TI Shield blocks both EMI and RFI. If you are hearing only a local mechanical hum directly from the tt, then go back to my first paragraph. If you are already using 100V step-down, then you just have one of those transformers that hums. Try reversing AC polarity; sometimes that helps.

Dear Henry, Of course you have to tap the shelf!!! The node will be at the same place regardless of how you stimulate the shelf to vibrate, so the result achieved by tapping and listening with the stethoscope is always valid. However, I do not think this has much if anything to do with airborne vibrations. This has to do with structure borne vibrations emanating from your environment. Even a wall is not inert, as you know better than I do. Plus there is the issue of micro-seismic activity. And your huge feet clumping around the room as you dance to the music.

When I was a medical student, everyone wanted a Littman stethoscope. But there is at least one other very good brand. I have not only two of my own but the one that belonged to my father, from before WWII. A�nd my wife would lend me hers in a pinch. (That is, if I pinched her.)

Gary AND I should have written "EMI", not "EMF". EMF stands for ElectroMotive Force, which is another term for voltage. EMI stands for ElectroMagnetic Interference, which is undesired low frequency radiation from a transformer or motor. I picked up on Gary's error in my response.

Based on your last post, I would not worry one bit about that hum. (Obviously your TT101 was built for 120V.) But if you like to worry, I still would not go to a lot of trouble and expense to move all the electronics out of the tt chassis, if indeed it could be done with the TT101, which as H pointed out is quite complex, and quite a bit more complex than an SL1200.

Do you like the EPA100 significantly more than the UA7045? I always thought those Victor tonearms might be sleepers and have been tempted at times to buy the 12-inch version.

The TI Shield is not going to kill the hum, because the hum is of mechanical not electrical origin, but you might find it benefits the sound and is definitely worth the effort. I ordered a 12 X 12" sheet and cut it in the shape of an LP, so it fits under my tt mat and does not show. For best results, it should be grounded to the tt chassis. If your platter is made of anything conductive, e.g., alu, that should take care of itself. Let me or let us know if the TI Shield cleans up the sound in surprising ways.

Mind you, the Littman was preferred by cardiologists, not audiophiles. As I recall, it was quite good for picking up murmurs. But another virtue if you are schlepping it around a hospital all day is that it is very small and light compared to some others that have complex and heavy bells. (The bell is the business end of the scope.)

I finally do understand why you are concerned about the mechanical vibration of your transformer. A good platter mat can isolate the LP from such low level disturbance. Also, sometimes you can make mechanical transformer hum go away by judicious tightening of the bolts that hold the transformer laminations in place. You have to do this very carefully (don't just crank down on them with all your might) and symmetrically (tighten all of the usual four bolts a little at a time and see at each step whether the hum is reduced or finally gone).

Can you hear the hum with the bell of your stethoscope placed against the platter mat, where the LP sits? If not, no worries.

"Mercury" in flu vaccine
Sorry this is way OT, but it is one of my pet peeves.
There never ever was any "mercury" in any vaccine. In some vaccines, like inactivated influenza virus vaccine, there is and was thimerosal. Thimerosal is not free mercury. Thimerosal is an organic (carbon) compound which contains one atom of mercury per molecule in covalent linkage. The thimerosal is there to reduce the risk of bacterial contamination of the vial; it is basically an anti-septic. About 15 years ago, someone added up the amounts of all the thimerosal then contained in all childhood vaccines and discovered that it could exceed the safety limits for an infant. There was a furor in the US, and thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines very shortly thereafter. Currently, there is no thimerosal in influenza or any other vaccines given to children. There is still some thimerosal in multi-dose vials of flu vaccine(but not single dose vials) intended for adult use. Thimerosal intoxication is not linked to Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, except by hysterics, and anyway was never at issue with vaccines. The amount of thimerosal in vaccines where still in use in rare cases is (and always was) way way below even theoretically toxic amounts for adults and even for infants, except for the potential cumulative dose to infants as of about 1995, as noted. (No thimerosal now in any childhood vaccine at this time, to repeat.) Naturally, the anti-vaccine folks have seized upon this and other red-herring issues, as a reason for people not to get vaccinated. The long term consequences of not being vaccinated are negative for all of us (because of the loss of herd immunity against certain diseases). This is why we lately have outbreaks of polio, mumps, and measles in the developed world. People die from those diseases, sometimes children.

My profound apologies.
That blather about thimerosal was in response to a post on another thread. As the late great Gilda Radnor might have said in the guise of her TV character, Emily LaTella, "Never mind."

A little stethoscope is a dangerous thing, because it imparts a little knowledge.

FWIW, my "other" LO7D (the one I still own), came with the Kenwood record weight. I do not like what it does at all. In fact, my experience with this weight parallels all my other experiences with record weights; they seem to take some "life" out of the sound. I realize that that sense of liveliness could also be called "distortion" due to LP resonance, etc, but it is a kind of distortion that brings me closer to the experience of real music played by live musicians.

I think I already wrote this, but I agree with others that the SAEC mat is excellent (now using it on my SP10 Mk3). I would not be inclined to mess with the stock mat on the LO7D, because I think it was carefully engineered for the turntable, but I do not like the typical rubber mats that came with Technics, Denon, etc. (I used the SAEC on my Denon DP80, also with good results.) Which is to say to Halcro that there are lighter weight metallic or graphite or other types of mats that I believe would outperform the stock rubber Victor mat, which in photos looks like the Denon rubber mat. You might try Boston Audio Mat 2, if you don't fancy the SAEC SS300. I have the deja vu feeling I have said this all before, more than once. Mats make a crazy big difference, IMO.

No one can assail Thuchan's stated preference based on his listening, but I tend to agree with Geoch; using the felt mat will certainly change the sound from that of the bare copper mat. However, if one does not like the bare copper mat, I believe the better cure would be to get rid of it in favor of a mat made of some other material. I am not sure that the impedance mismatch between a vinyl LP and copper is any worse than the impedance mismatch between felt and a vinyl LP. But that's the key, as Geoch says, IMO. Now Halcro mentions a pigskin mat on top of copper. That may be a completely different story vs felt. (Where the heck did you get a pigskin mat, Halcro?) I like the idea that the LP will probably not slip on pigskin, nor should the pigskin move against the surface of the platter. Also, the impedance of pigskin is likely quite different from that of felt, when matched with a metal like copper. I use the SAEC SS300 mat on my SP10. I have no idea what metal(s) its made of; I read once that it is an "alloy" of something. I tend to like it but I am open-minded about other materials that in principle may have merit, like graphite (or pigskin?).

I once owned a SOTA with a felt mat. Every turntable I have owned since then has sounded better to me in terms of ability to separate notes and musical lines and in bass definition particularly, so I am biased against felt, even though I think the main problem with the SOTA was a stretch-y belt.

Dear Halcro, Prompted by Geoch's posts above, I read up the thread from there and came to your post about the unusual behavior of your motor/platter with the 1.8kg M-S copper mat on it. What is the weight of your platter alone? If the weight of the Cu mat is a significant fraction of the total weight of the platter, what you are observing means to me that the brake mechanism of the TT101 simply cannot stop the platter "dead', because of the increased momentum of the platter/mat combo. This alone would not trouble me, but it could also mean that the servo system might be "confused" by the increased rotating mass during LP play, so at the micro level, the speed control with the copper mat might be subpar. It is a fact that these systems were designed as a whole; the servo is calibrated to the mass of the stock platter/mat. I have repeatedly mentioned this; super heavy mats on a direct drive might not be such a good idea for that reason. (And then if one adds one of those 4 or 5 kg record weights, one is making the situation worse and also inviting rapid bearing wear.) What I like about the SAEC SS300 metal mat is that it weighs about the same as the stock Technics rubber mat on the SP10 Mk2A and Mk3 (they use the exact same rubber mat), so screwing up the servo is not an issue.

Dear Banquo, Based on your recent experience, it is possible that you have not yet fried irreplaceable parts or circuitry that is inscrutable to even Bill Thalmann. So it could not hurt and might help a lot if you just have someone remove and replace ALL the electrolytic capacitors. Bill is probably tired of spending most of his time repairing direct-drive turntables. If you can dig up a schematic or a service manual, you might eventually arouse his interest. You might try a Japanese source. But meantime, my advice is do the lytic caps; it is probably necessary and certainly cannot hurt. The parts cost will be well under $50.

Even Howard Stearn, the guy who runs the L07D website, has given up on repairing and restoring L07D's. I think my second one was the last that he was willing to do. He's an orthopedic surgeon by day, so one wonders why he ever got into it in the first place. There's more money in hip replacements.

You have to ask yourself what is the cost of "tech time" as compared to the value and rarity of a TT101 and the pleasure you derive from it. But meantime, you can order the capacitors from Mouser or Digikey on-line (assuming you live in the USA). I recommend Panasonic or Nichicon brand. Dirt cheap compared to the consequences of not doing it. Once you have the parts, you might take it to a technician and get an estimate of labor cost. I would be surprised if it would take much more than 2 hours to do them all. I would offer to do the work myself, except..... I won't. The other side of this coin is that you may not be getting the best out of your unit at present, even if it "works", due to a few bad capacitors. (Last time I looked, DD turntables were not generally designed to require a push-start in counter-clockwise or clockwise direction.)

Let's say, at most he needs 3 hours. (I am fairly sure I could do it myself in less than 3 hours, and I know good techs are faster, neater, and better than I.) Let's say he charges $80 per hour. (I have no idea what they charge these days.) The capacitors might cost $30-$40, if that much. So you are talking around $300 for peace of mind and probably improved performance. One of those "no-brainers".

If you do it yourself, which I endorse also, it is worthwhile to invest in a "solder station". This is essentially a soldering iron with feedback, so it maintains a constant temperature, which you can set on a dial control. They cost more like $50 to $100 but a good one lasts forever and you can use it for other minor repairs in future.

Was the "reputable tech" named Bill Thalmann? If so, Bill would do much more than just R&R the caps, which is probably why his estimate seemed high, if it was Bill (but you already told us that Bill declined the job, so maybe not Bill).

Banquo, If, God forbid, you ever do have a problem with the quartz clock or any other unobtainium ICs that may be lurking in the circuit, you are not necessarily out of luck. If Victor was anything like Technics, you will find that some of the individual parts of this type were also used in lesser models, often available at much lower cost vs the TT101. Thus you can probably find a lower level Victor to use as a parts mule for your TT101, if push comes to shove.

Henry, This time I emphatically agree with you; someone got a steal on that TT101.

Cat9, Capacitors are cheap, available, and better than ever. That's why I repeat ad nauseam that one ought to routinely replace electrolytic capacitors in the circuits of these old DD turntables, because failure of one of them can lead to destruction of a "microprocessor" that might be unobtainium. (In fact, your DP45 probably has only one IC, at most, but it controls major aspects of tt function. I found 3-4 years ago that it was not unobtainable, if one does a parts search on Google. I don't know whether it's still buy-able.) There are several discrete transistors in the Denon DD turntable circuits; all of those are either available or replaced by better versions. You will have no problems replacing the discrete transistors, if needed. It's that single IC you need to worry about.

I've got two spares for my Denon DP80, but I believe it is not the same IC as what was used in most of the other models. If the caps are kept tip-top, and if one does not plug a 100V Denon into a 115V AC outlet, all should be well. (I am pretty sure someone who owned it before me blew the IC in my DP80 by doing that. Or, as he told me, "we always plugged it into the wall directly with no problems". This means that since the turntable continued to rotate, there could not be a problem. No matter that it was off speed and that the strobe light no longer functioned as a strobe.)

Halcro, That's great news about your TT101, and it is useful to know yours was malfunctioning due to bad power switch. Can you describe again the symptom that it exhibited before repair? Bill Thalmann often wondered whether the switch on mine was bad as well, and that could account also for the fact that mine would work well off and on, once it had been re-capped and re-soldered. Also, it explains why leaving the Power ON is a form of solution to the problem short of replacing the switch. Where did he get a replacement switch; perhaps you can ask him what he used, just in case any of the rest of us has issues.

By Sunday, I will have completed my mods to the stock QL10 plinth. They are anti-Copernican. I will post photos, and best of all I will finally get to listen to a TT101.

Dear Timeltel, You wrote, "the 71 lacks the reverse eddy current braking both the 81 and 101 implement in regulating overshoot incurred when correcting for speed". According to everything I have read and observed, that is not correct at least for the TT101. The TT101 is unique among 71, 81, 101, in that it has a reverse servo mechanism to correct for overshoot. Nowhere have I ever seen this described as eddy current based. I have no insight on whether or how the TT81 can slow down its platter. I do know that one sign that my TT101 is running as intended is that when I press the "stop" button, the platter comes to a dead halt. When I was having problems, the platter would stop but then rotate backwards for about half a turn before lazily stopping. This indicated to me that the reverse servo was not working properly.

Someone else suggested that Exclusive P3 and P3a did NOT have a coreless motor. My information says they both DID. (They were not really two different turntables; the way I hear it, there was a change in the way rumble was measured and Pioneer re-named the table from P3 to P3a so they could claim the new re-calculated lower number for rumble was associated with something they actually did to the table to improve it.)

Also, Denon tt's were said to have an "induction motor". That would be hard to do with a servo-controlled DD turntable; so far as I know the Denon DP80 has a 3-phase synchronous motor.

Wow! I am overwhelmed. But nowhere in your many quotations do I see the words "eddy current", so is it fair to guess that you agree with me? Also, and I have no dog in this fight, nor is it a fight, I had been led to believe from my own internet reading that the TT81 differs from the TT101 principally in the fact that it does not employ a "bidirectional" servo (Victor's parlance). But I always could be wrong. I believe I got that idea from Vintage Knob. (Where else?) The main reason I targeted the TT101 when I needed another tt like I need another... (name anything useless to have two of), was that coreless motor. I think it is key to what I like about the L07D, wanted to know whether that is a general property of coreless motors or some other magic of the L07D.

The earlier Denons with induction motors: did they employ servo feedback as well? It is hard to imagine how that would work well. Did DP6000 use induction motor?

In this discussion of those horrible SP10 Mk2 and Mk3 turntables, let me point out, as I did to Richard privately, that there is a world of difference between Mk2 and Mk3. I think I can say that with some authority, as I have owned both, in similar plinths, serving as signal source for the same system in my home. The Mk3 is worlds better in the area of grayness or "irritation" compared to the Mk2. I could and can happily live with my un-modified Mk3, and I do not hear the problems I associated with the Mk2. With the Mk3, one has a very energetic sound that could be accused of erring on the "clinical" side, whereas I definitely did hear the gray-ish coloration with the Mk2. That said, I am a believer in the Krebs mods; I've just got to get the cash together. Every Mk3 owner who has had the Krebs work done is ecstatic, so far as I can determine. (Do you think I should sell a turntable, maybe?)

Richard, Did you refer to the Technics motors as AC synchronous types? Since the PS puts out pure DC, I assumed they were DC motors.

Hiho, I do agree with you; no plinth can totally take away the coloration of the Mk2, but a good plinth can take away other colorations and leave one with only that and less of the other. Which is why I think the gray-ness was so evident in my pretty darn good slate plinth. Is it not interesting that when the adjective "gray" (or "grey") is used to describe this coloration, all or most of us who have owned or do own the Mk2 know exactly what the writer is describing? Which is to say that there are subjective judgements with objective truth of a sort. To think that the Krebs mods on the Mk2 are less expensive than the mods to the Mk3, around the cost of a medium price cartridge or vintage Japanese tonearm, makes it indispensible to the Mk2, I think.

On the subject of "are we living dangerously", I would like to report to anyone who followed my travail with the TT101 on the "other" thread, where it was OT, that after my TT101 ran reliably for more than a week on our kitchen counter, I decided to spare my wife the sight of it and brought it down to my basement system, where I hope to use it. I plugged it in and turned on the Power, due to my (our?) conviction that keeping it powered on was advisable. I left it alone for about a week, because I was preoccupied with other issues. At that point, I tested the function again, ever the paranoid. Now the TT101 was malfunctioning again exactly as it had been doing previously: It starts up and runs for about 90 seconds. While running it displays speed errors, typically 33.32 or 33.34. Then it shuts itself down with no braking and the platter coasts to a stop. At this point, I have spent several hundred dollars with a machinist making alu parts to beef up the QL10 plinth, based on my previous confidence that the TT101 had healed itself. Out of curiosity, I moved the TT101 back up to our kitchen counter. In that locale, it malfunctioned for a while, just as it had done in the basement. However, within about a half hour, it had "healed" itself again, and now it is working perfectly, every time, on the kitchen counter. I am absolutely sure this problem is due to a poor electrical contact somewhere in the circuit, because the problem is associated with moving the unit around. I do not think this has anything to do with my basement or witchcraft. My plan is to take the top panel off and re-solder every contact on every switch. I am also concerned about the many multi-prong plugs that connect the various circuit boards. I don't know how to disassemble them in order to access the soldered joints within, but any one of them could be a culprit.

Thus I declare that the TT101 is the most "dangerous" vintage Japanese direct-drive tt of them all. I've never had any problems with any of the 5 or 6 others that I have owned that did not respond to the simple expedient of replacing the electrolytic capacitors.

"Witchcraft", written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, is absolutely one of my favorite songs from the Great American songbook. But no one is running her fingers through my hair when I contemplate the TT101. Nor does the TT101 give me a "sly come hither stare". Voodoo, maybe.

Only Thuchan would luck into a PS-X9 in what appears to be mint condition. Damn him!!! (Kidding of course.)

From the site referenced by Halcro:
..."The engineer quickly responded that the motor was the toughest challenge, which led to another series of discussions resulting in the design we see here in the Classic Direct, where the platter is actually the main component in the motor. In this case, the motor in the Classic Direct is an AC motor, which Weisfeld prefers over DC motors. He smiles and says, “An AC motor knows where it is, and a DC motor only knows where it was.”
The secret here is that a three-phase motor is used, eliminating the cogging effect that always plagues direct-drive designs. This uneven power delivery results in a slight unsteadiness to the music at worst and a shrinking soundstage at best. These issues are a thing of the past with the Classic Direct, as my listening quickly reveals."

Two little white lies: (1) Speaking of the new VPI Direct as if the platter being part of the motor was not a property of every direct drive that came before this one, and (2) the statement that a 3-phase motor per se has no cogging issues. It would have been better to stick to actual facts. Kind of gutsy for HW to point out the problems inherent in belt drive, elsewhere in this blurb, since he has made a living from belt drive heretofore.

Halcro, Luckily for me, I have two systems, one of which is on the same floor as our kitchen, if it should come to that. So push come to shove, I can as well use the TT101 in my "upstairs" listening room. But I really do not think there is anything going on related to the basement environment. I don't know why you are not convinced by my observation that malfunction occurs after the TT101 is physically picked up and moved from one room to another, or shipped, or transported in my car. It's just a fact, one of the only consistent findings. Also, once it is up and running properly, it very consistently runs properly from then on. Which is why the last repair guy never could duplicate the problem. He told me that what he did was to turn it on and leave it on, for a week in his shop. Since the problem only occurs at start-up, and not thereafter if start-up has gone well, it is no wonder he could not reproduce it. One could say he never really tried to reproduce it, since that requires starting and stopping the tt. But he treated me like I was a moron who needed hand-holding, so I am happy to have it back in my possession. (I am not referring to Bill Thalmann, who is a great guy and very attentive.)

No malfunctioning transistors. First, Bill checked them all. Second, a transistor does not give an intermittent failure; it's either good or bad. However, the wiring up to and out from a transistor could certainly be "cracked" or more likely cold-soldered.

Nilsvala, Any SP10 should be reparable, because the only unobtainable part in an SP10 is one single integrated circuit ("chip") that is no longer made. However, the same chip was used in the SL1500, 1600, 1700 series, and some of those are so cheap that it is not a problem to buy a whole tt and cannabalize it for that part, in order to keep an SP10 in service. If you need specifics, I can try to find out exactly what models to buy. Albert Porter has done this several times for himself and his friends. I believe he stockpiled a few extra chips salvaged in that manner.