Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Jean,
I am very interested in your rumble tests, but I am not too clear on the plinth you did the tests with. Is it your Giant lenco or did you use an older lighter version?
In other words should you need to go substantially beyond The Giant plinth?
Peter

Hi Peter: the experiment was not mine, but reported by someone else on the Hi Fi World forum, and I am guessing the mass was nowhere near that of a Giant Lenco. This report is merely corroboration for what I have already heard: a LARGE improvement in every way with the extra added mass. A "small" (40-pound) Lenco was already unthinkably good, easily crushing a VPI TNT MKII for instance, and in musical terms pretty well everything else in the world (barring other large idler-wheel drives), and in terms of noise too. A Giant at 70 pounds is much better (beyond any known limits so far, but then, so was the 40-pounder ;-)), and I am working on a true Giant, at roughly 100 pounds, to enable me to mount three tonearms at a time: I got it bad!!! I have no idea what the extra 30 pounds or so will gain me sonically (diminishing returns?), I'm building it to accomodate my Maplenoll tonearm as well as two others. I have a G88 to work with for which I will cannibalize the parts from an L78 or L75 (newer motors are better, and metal idlerwheel and carrier arm). When this Beast is ready I will report on whether improvements are even audible!! This extra mass is only truly effective/audible when combined with Direct Coupling.

Adding to the detective work on tracking down sources of rumble comes a poster over at Lenco Lovers who pierced my “stuck-on-stupid” consciousness like a lightning bolt – with the observation that rumbling cutters can be faithfully recorded in the grooves.

Had I been hauling my mass plinthed Lenco back and forth to the workbench these past months because it was actually an over-retriever?

To be sure, this area ushers in a host of new variables, many untrackable cold case files because nearly all of the witnesses are dead. What cutters? Scullys? At RCA? When did idler-driven lathes commence? End? Were some better plinthed or dampened? Does a phono cart’s VTA need to match the cutter’s to dig out recorded rumble?

Certainly, the “real world” signal to noise ratio makes this a phenomenon more pronounced in classical recordings because of distant mic placements and soft dynamics. But that seems to be the case regardless of the source of unwanted transmission.

This will be a difficult case crack. But over time and with continuing improvements to the Lenco, it is any area that greater light may be shed on.

A. Conan Doyle’s empiricism may be apt:
“When one rules out all the probable causes, whatever is left, however improbable, is correct.”

Oh sweet hyperbole, how we've missed thee! Most entertaining, Jean :)

Mike

Hyperbole?! WHAT hyperbole ;-)!?! Up here nuthin' going on but angels clustering in my living-room every night to get a taste of the Heaven they are away from on assignment for the moment.

Hi Mario: I had warned against recorded rumble several times on Da Thread, that the Mighty Lenco (and other idler-wheel drives) has no lower limits and so retrieves recorded rumble, Deccas being especally bad in this respect. The danger being, of course, that the 'table is dismissed for having TOO MUCH bass resolution (and the greater the mass the better/worse it is). On several recordings, I can hear people walking by on other floors of the same building, and opening and closing doors...the shifting of air masses is being picked up!! Now THAT's low-frequency resolution. But one must be very careful not to throw the Mighty Baby out with the bathwater, and take care that the rumble one hears is in fact coming from the turntable and not from the recording. Along with that type of rumble/noise comes, mind-blowing bass, of course.