Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

How can the Lenco sound so good? I want to be able to explain this to sophisticated audio friends as I demonstrate my new Lenco That Jean Built. Some people will more readily believe their ears if there's a clear, plausible explanation for what they're hearing!

As far as I know there are only two things that determine a turntable's sonic quality, speed stability and the absence of any extraneous vibration where the stylus meets the record grooves.

It makes sense to me that the Lenco's 1800 RPM motor will have a momentum that minimizes motor speed imperfections as opposed to a motor turning much more slowly, and that an idler wheel provides a firmer connection to the platter than a belt drive.

I suspect belt drive turntables got the jump on idler wheel drive machines because they often had less vibration, especially after they began to be designed with the motor separated and isolated from the body of the table itself. It's taken the kind of experimenting being reported here to demonstrate that massive plinths, direct coupling, motor tuning and other techniques can reduce vibration in idler drive systems down to a level comparable with good belt drive systems. At which point the idler drive's inherently superior speed stability makes it the superior alternative.

Have I basically got it right? Are there other factors that explain how wonderful my Black Beauty sounds?

Bob

That's exactly it Bob. The reaction that it CANNOT BE simply superior speed stability that accounts for the Lenco's (and Garrard's, and idlers in general) incredible sound is a very common one, and I hear it all the time both via e-mail and from those who actually hear my own Lencos here in my area. The idler-wheel drives, once properly set-up, show just how bad belt-drive (and DD) speed stability really is, which is difficult to accept due to endless oceans of ink (and bytes) devoted to their "superior" speed stability measurements. Evidently, the tests devised to measure speed stability were in fact designed to support these claims, like loaded dice.

The CLD plinths, which are dead neutral and I believe superior when made up of humble birch-ply/MDF, absorb and kill off noise (ESPECIALLY when Direct Coupling is implemented), and the more the mass, the more effective it is. The massive CLD plinths also ensure more and more stable platforms, which in turn improves speed stability even further.

As I had posted long ago in the very beginning of the original thread, and as posted under my "system": "We know things now they didn't know when they were manufacturing idler-wheel 'tables. We can now realize their potential. Due to the high rotational speed of these motors, great relative mass and so high torque, no expensive solutions need be made to address the weak motors now used in high-end decks. The platters on the Lencos weigh about 8-10 pounds, with much of the mass concentrated on the periphery: the old boys understood flywheel effect to ensure stable speed. The Lenco platter is a single cast piece, of a zinc alloy of some sort, very inert for a metal, and then machined and hand-balanced in a lab. No ringing two-piece platter problems to overcome. Even the motor is hand-balanced in a lab, and weighs something like 3-4 pounds, and runs silently on its lubricated bearings. Think of it: a high-torque motor spinning at well over 1500 RPMs (compared to a belt-drive motor's average 150-300) which pretty well wipes out speed variations by itself. The idler wheel contacts the motor spindle directly, while contacting the platter directly on its other side, thus transmitting most/all of that torque without any belt stretching. Many high-end decks offer thread belts which don't stretch, thus giving an improvement in sound. The Lenco does the same with its wheel. But the platter is also a flywheel, and so evens out whatever speed variations there may be in the motor. It's a closed system (motor-plattter, platter-motor) and speed variations brought on by groove modulations don't stand a chance in this rig, and it is clearly audible. The trick is that big, solid plinth you build at Home Depot."

Believe your ears: idler-wheel drive is THE superior drive system currently available to us, and provides de facto PROOF (auditioning and comparisons) the other systems do not achieve the speed stability they claim to do. Implementation and understanding (and the fine details) is the key to unlocking their full potential.

Jean, what about my comment that vibration is the other killer of turntable sound quality, aside from variations in the speed of rotation? I used to be able to FEEL the motor vibration in my old Rek-O-Kut (and I confess I never did a thing to tune or even lubricate the motor). I think its plausible that belt drive turntables came to dominate partly because they introduced less vibration where the stylus meets the grooves, especially after they began to be designed with the motor separated and isolated from the body of the table itself. It seems to me that this explains why the vibration-killing techniques you've been developing - massive multi-layer plinths, direct coupling, glass-reinforcing, motor tuning, etc. - are what have allowed the inherently superior speed stability of idler wheel drive systems to come through and Crush the Belt Drives. (I realize that saying belt drive systems may have been superior in any way is asking for it! But one of the many things I've liked about this thread is that it's non-ideological. The enthusiasm for discovering how good Lencos and other idler wheel drive machines can sound has been based on HOW GOOD THEY SOUND, not on an ideological belief in their inherent superiority in every respect.)
Bob

I don't argue at all, and never did, that belt-drive was developed to reduce noise and pitched that way, Bob, it is implicit in what I wrote already: "The CLD plinths, which are dead neutral and I believe superior when made up of humble birch-ply/MDF, absorb and kill off noise (ESPECIALLY when Direct Coupling is implemented), and the more the mass, the more effective it is," and "The trick is that big, solid plinth you build at Home Depot." Meaning that I acknowledge the plinth is to reduce noise first, and to improve speed stability as a consequence as well. But the fact is that the Lencos when in production had lower rumble figures than the then-rising belt-drive Linn LP12:

"02-20-04: Willbewill
Here are some interesting facts about idler drive decks and rumble: In 1962 Garrard 301 cost £ 17 14s 6d plus tax whilst the Goldring Lenco GL70 (predecesor of GL75) cost £ 22 10s plus tax (admittedly it had an arm and 301 didn't) but it shows it wasn't a cheap deck. Interestingly in 1976 GL75 still had a £ 10 price lead over 401. Rumble figure for 401 was quoted as 'almost non-existent' - I haven't been able to find a rumble figure for GL75 but the GL78 which was more expensive and had a slighly bigger and heavier platter (but I think it used the same motor?) came in at -60dB (original LP12 only quoted 'better than -40dB!).
regards
willbewill"

Anyone who has set up a Lenco on bricks can attest to the fact there is no rumble, assuming the basics have been attended to. The most popular plinths at the moment for Garrards are low-mass two-tier designs with open architecture which have no Direct Coupling and no high-mass, and yet no rumble is reported.

Which is to say, that when the facts are gathered, it is evident that the rumble issue was always exaggerated by the Belt-Drive Conspiracy in order to promote - and sell - the belt-drives. In fact it was also in the best interest of both Garrard and Lenco (as they saw it) to go along with the belt-drive thing, as it was much cheaper to build a belt-drive, and the profits accordingly greater. It didn't help that Garrard themselves recommended that worst of all possible solutions: fixing the Garrard to a flexible plywood sheet and depending on rubber to isolate, and placing that on a hollow box. What amounted to a determined effort to exaggerate and amplify any noise coming from the deck.

So, while the noise coming from the latest belt-drives are lower than they have ever been, it is seen that this is true also for the idler-wheel drives. The plinth does not remove an audible source of noise, what it really does is reduce an inaudible noise, the noise-floor, even lower so that finer and finer details (and consequently things like transient attack and atmosphere) become more and more audible. The mass also focuses even more the drive system so that speed stability is even further enhanced (by preventing even contaminating micro-movements, like a noise-floor).

So, to put it plainly, I see the whole noise issue as incidental and not crucial: the plinth, and proper restoration, removes that as an issue. Or in yet other words, of course noise must be attended to, and it is. That taken care of, as it must, it becomes purely a matter of which drive system is superior. As I have repeatedly written since the beginning, in adopting the belt-drive they threw the baby (music: PRaT, SLAM, bass, gestalt) out with the bathwater (noise), and ignored the evidence of their senses, i.e. that with the [purely theoretical] banishment of the noise, they had lost the musical POWER. They lied to themselves, convincing themselves there had been no price, no losses. And, as I have written repeatedly, since the music is paramount, even if there had been a noise issue, it is a better choice to live with the noise and embrace the greater musicality, than to make great sacrifices in musicality in order to reduce noise. All who prefer vinyl (with its ticks and pops) to digital make this choice. But, since the noise issue was in fact a phantom from the beginning, we do not have to make this choice, we can just go out and try to hear an idler-wheel drive and see what it brings to the party, without any fear of noise, and decide which is the superior drive system!!

That's fascinating! You're asserting that when the new LP-12 was becoming all-the-rage, the then current production Lencos (at least the GL 78) actually had better rumble figures, as well as superior speed stability! If so, there goes my speculation that belt drives became dominant because they actually had something to offer - less vibration, to compensate for their poorer speed stability.

If that's true, then I can only think of two explanations. One is that the tonearms that came on the Lenco, Garrard, etc. weren't nearly as good as the newer designs people were putting on the LP-12, and this disadvantaged the belt drive machines by comparison.

The other is that turntable companies knew that belt drive turntables were inferior, but favored them for the sake of making higher profits, and deliberately misled consumers with advertising proclaiming the superiority of belt drives. And audio reviewers were taken in by the blitz of hype and/or subtly bought off with ad revenue and free samples. I hope this wasn't the case.

But if it was, it wouldn't be the first or only time companies have acted like that. I have a friend who was once a designer for GM. He was getting assignments in the 1970s to do things like take door handles that bolted on and redesign them with plastic plugs that push/snap into place (easier to assemble) and eventually break (so GM could make money on selling parts at outrageous markups). At the same time, Japanese automakers were going all-out for quality. The U.S. car company "cheapening" strategy raised profits for many years, but eventually caught up with them. My friend quit GM, by the way, and turned to making high-end bicycles.

If I had read Da Thread from earlier on, I would have known your views on this, Jean. But now that I see what they are, I suspect your ultimate objective is to force those degrading-for-profit companies to eat their belt drives as they're confronted with a surging demand for ilder wheel drive turntables. Bob