Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Hey Jean,

The stock Lenco has a sprung suspension which you wisely recommend defeating. I know first hand that the Lenco is no great shakes with the suspension engaged. Now the Lenco is quite susceptible to foot-fall without a massive plinth, so it's no wonder that the suspension was regarded as de rigeur back in the day of stock, lighweight plinths and dancing in the living room. But the heavy plinth is pretty crucial, by your account, to the superiority of Lenco/idler performance over belt drive. Maybe LP12 belt drive plus sprung suspension beats Lenco idler plus sprung suspension.

My point is this: possibly *you* discovered the combination of idler/nonsuspended/heavy plinth design which is what really makes the Lenco and its similar brethren so superior (as the Lenco Green Monster you made me proves nightly). Perhaps, back in the day, the LP12 really did trounce the competition, suspended and lightweight as it was. If that's so, there was something more than noice reduction theory and cost efficiency that led to the rise of the belt drive.

And one would think there would be more than just theory. After all, Ivor the Linn guy made his case back then by the same sorts of emprical means you recommend -- indeed even more extreme. He went aroud to Hi Fi stores and challenged the staff to put his TT at the front end of their cheap rig, and test that combo against their own best TT in front of their best rig. LP12 reputedly won enough of those battles to become the reference deck, and solidify the belt drive as the system of choice.

What say you, sage of the platter spinners?

"Perfect Sound Forever" does make the point! Of course CDs do have advantages of size and weight, click-the-remote convenience, lack of wear, programmability, etc. that helped them take over the mass market. But "perfect sound"? NOT!

Still, I'm not yet convinced that the LP-12 was an inferior machine promoted as superior. It would be fun to set up a listening comparison between a stock Lenco, with its not-so-good arm and sprung suspension, and a Linn LP 12 with one of the better arms used on it at that time. If the Linn belt drive really was better in some ways, it's really important to acknowledge that. It would take nothing away from the GLORY of the modern Giant Direct Coupled Lenco!

From what I've read of him, it's hard to believe that Linn's founder Ivor Tiefenbrun would have ever pursued a cheapen-it and convince-them-it's-better strategy. Here are some quotes from an interview in Stereophile with him a decade ago. Actually, he sounds a lot like...you, Jean... a true lover of music, an unconventional thinker willing to buck the herd, calling on people to listen to the evidence of their ears, taking his new turntable around to audio dealers and challenging them to compare it to their best.

* * * *

When I grew up, we had a hi-fi system in our home. My dad was a hi-fi enthusiast. When I got married it was natural to put a hi-fi very near the top of my list of things I needed.
I rented a two-ring gas cooker for a fiver just to do until we bought one, and bought a clothesrack to hang my clothes on. We moved into a completely empty house without a stick of furniture. I went out and bought a hi-fi system that cost the price of a good small car. My wife was utterly appalled. She said, "We don't have any chairs to sit on." I said, "We don't need any chairs. We've got all we need—we've got music." You can do lots of things to music: you can dance, make love, relax—you have a bed, you have a floor. If we had to start again, we'd do the same thing.
* * * *
People felt I was some kind of charlatan. The funny thing is that most marginal, or even nonexistent, improvements were welcomed, and yet here was a very large one that was easily demonstrable. But people actually didn't even want to listen. When they did, of course, they were flabbergasted.

It seemed obvious to me that the quality of the input signal was crucial in the performance of the total system, and that getting information off the record was substantially the task of the turntable; it was a platform for both the record and the arm and cartridge combination.... People said to me that turntables can't alter the sound because all they do is go 'round and 'round. I would say, "Well, my speakers just go in and out...."
* * * *
I took it to shops, knocked on the door, and asked if they wanted to listen to it. Most people told me it made no difference and so they didn't listen. Some said they would. Most heard a difference. Some thought it important, some didn't. And some said, "That's real exciting—how can we sell a thing like this?" And I said, "The same way I'm selling it to you. Play it for the people and let them hear for themselves what it does, and let them decide if it's worth it to them. Let them decide whether we deliver the performance."
* * * *
...there were times when a supplier would change something, which meant that we couldn't make the product unless we compromised performance. And a few times, because we refused to do that, we jeopardized the whole company.

There was one point where we didn't make anything for two and a half months because we couldn't solve a problem with motors. Eventually, I managed to persuade the supplier—I think I bought a couple thousand motors a year from them at that time—that they should change their motors to accommodate us....sometimes it nearly killed us. But being Scotsmen, we "die in perfect squares." We never take a step backward.

"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."

The preceding is taken from my post a few back, nowhere did I write these early idlers were superior in every respect. This unplanned putting words/thoughts in my mouth/on the page paints me as an unthinking idler-wheel fanatic who must be pacified: I was and am very precise in putting out my thoughts and the facts. I am an extremely rational and logical man, which explains my constant posts as to the proper understanding of - and corruption - of scientific methods/ideals/empiricism. Was I not right about the idler, those who have tried it? Did I exaggerate one iota its effectiveness as a system, does the evidence not bear me out? It is evidence, testing, comparison and logic which leads me to write what I write, not blind fanaticism, my writings depend on finding, gathering and reporting the evidence and the ensuing conclusions. Now this type of discussion is very important and provides me with a platform on which to further explain which is very useful to me, and I don't want to dampen enthusiasm, so please continue, but with due regard to what I actually write, and have written ;-). To get back to the point, what I wrote above for all to see/read was that "They lied to themselves, convincing themselves THERE HAD BEEN NO PRICE, NO LOSSES."

To elaborate further, the industry and the press and by extension the general audio population believed (at least claimed) there had been no price WHATSOEVER, that the belt-drive was clearly superior in every way and an ACROSS-THE-BOARD improvement. The press and industry never once indicated there had been any loss, that belt-drives gave anything up at all, which explains the state of affairs when I arrived on the scene, where any open mention of idlers as serious equipment brought on a vicious game of Pile on the Heretical Rabbit (check the archives on various forums). Even comparison between a high-end belt-drive and a cheap little idler record-changer like a Dual or Garrard SP-25 CLEARLY shows enormous bass power, PRaT and gestalt - which is to say musicality - in the comparison. Detail and such audiophile niceties is incidental and not germane to this discussion, since nowhere did mention these in the context of the rise of the belt-drive. Once again, from what I already wrote: "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".

This, once again, is an issue of musicality, not of audiophile niceties (though once properly set-up it is clear that idler-wheel drives are superior in EVERY area): again from what I clearly wrote: "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." Musicality is what is important and what I stress beyond all other things, and it is here that the deception (self- and otherwise) was made.

Now it would be greatly interesting to somehow find all the published and germane material from the rise of the belt-drive and analyse it (this is in fact my "official" profession/education/training) - quite a lot was posted back in the old thread - and some day someone should do this. For instance, the Lenco was dismissed due to the nefarious Vertical Rumble Theory. According to this, the idler was the WORST of the three system, and the WORST of all idlers were the Lencos (which is to day the Lencos were considered the WORST turntables in the world, bottom of the heap of audio fertilizer/failures), this is the truth of the matter and provides the missing context for this discussion overall.

The Lenco, it was theorized, was incredibly noisy and rumbly due to its vertical wheel, the rumble thus generated was "in-phase" with the cartridge, as opposed to the horizontal rim-drive of the Garrard, which being horizontal and not vertical produced rumble at a 90-degree angle to the platter and so was not so serious. Now anyone who hears a properly-functioning Garrard or Lenco knows there is no audible rumble from either machine: the Lenco on bricks with no plinth whatsoever does not produce audible rumble (unless one is determines to maximize the problem somehow). So what had happened? The reviewer/review in question had forgotten to loosen the motor transit screws, the theory was then developed and put out to explain the extreme level of noise, and it was so reported, spread about and accepted, eventually to become the first Dogma I faced in the very beginning of the Da Thread. See as follows:

02-11-04: Rich121
Any developments? This forum has gotten very quite. I posted about this project on other sites...boy.. alot of negative feedback about this turntable!!!

Richard

"02-15-04: Rich121
My question before, as to why the hight mass was because, the motor is directly coupled to the platter, any vibration, any non-linear movement of the idler wheel equates to rummble. You cannot remove that no matter how massive you make the plinth, it goes directly to the platter.
When rumble is caused on the platter in this design, since the idler wheel is mounted on the bottom of the platter, instead of at the outer edges (like Garrard), the rumble is out of phase (you can check for this by pushing your mono button on your pre-amp, if you hear less with mono switched on, then, you have this rumble problem).
Also, I have been told by many, that from their experience, that you need to stay with a less expensive (not as revealing) cartridge, as, the rumble is definately picked up. If in the one I build, this becomes true, I will be very dissappointed. The one i'm building will have a brand new idler wheel, so as to not have any flat spots caused by the wheel sitting against the platter while not in use. I would like to use as good a cartridge as I can afford, but, I'm not sure about whether it would be worth the risk."

02-20-04: Rich121
Did you not read the posts? They basically repeated what I said in this thread earlier.... These are Lenco owners who posted... I'm talking about the posts on AA that Musicus53 reported. Obviosly, you did a search of AA to dig up the few positive posts, why don't you tell the truth, about the overwealming negative posts? That are from Lenco owners. Most every one that still owns a Lenco, says that it is only useable for old 78's because of the rumble (which you claim is not there!, Which you claim can be eliminated with a massive plinth...) What it amounts to, is your claiming that it will (plinth) defy physics and magically divert the rumble from the platter, to the plinth!!! What a joke!!!! The plinth is not even directly connected to the motor/idler wheel/platter.... it is connected to the plate, then the plate is connected to the motor, motor to idler wheel, to platter WHICH IS WHERE THE RUMBLE ENDS UP!!!

END OF SEGMENT. It is clear from these postings what the atmosphere was back then at the begining of Da Thread, 2004, much as many would deny me and erase the very vicious and aggressive battles I fought (with my deniers as well) across a variety of forums before idler-wheelers could freely experiment and post without fear of attack/humiliation/implication. This atmosphere was generated by the Belt-Drive Consortium, and having for years suffered condescension, insult and personal attack due to my sticking to the idler-wheel system in preference to the belt-drive system, I determined to shove the idler up their collective asses as far as it could possibly go (which doesn't mean that I didn't firmly believe, due to evidence AND logic, that it wasn't de facto the superior system). Which, I am happy to say, has been shoved waaaayyyyy waaayyy up there, with the help of all those who had the courage (especially in the beginning in the face of a lot of opposition) to go ahead and try it and report on it, and continue to do so :-). So thanks to all those who continue to post and to spread the word, kudos to you all!!

And now for a little bit of history, and more context, from the First Posters, those who accepted the Challenge, which proves the Anti-Idler Pro-Belt atmosphere only 3 years ago, my how time flies:

02-12-04: Dickson
Hi,

I have been intrigued with this "Lenco" project from the first post by Johnnantais. I used to believe that a TT should only be belt drive. I guess this was what was preached from when I was a teenager. Thus all other types of TT's should sound bad, but I never checked this out myself. Thus about 3 months back I started to look for a Direct Drive TT. I now have the table but have not set this up yet. A friend talks of outstanding bass due to the speed stability.

Now I have purchased a Lenco GL75 on Evil Bay and am highly enthusiastic about setting this up. Just waiting for instructions and more details from Master Johnnantais.

02-16-04: Musicus53
John,
I stumbled onto this thread a few days ago and already have my "feelers" out for a Lenco L75 to start the project with (no luck yet). I was about to drop some serious scratch on a Teres (which would probably create more than a little stress in the "marital bliss" department), and would therefore love to give this a shot before doing so. And you're right, it sounds like fun! Since I've always owned belt drive tables (Ariston then VPI, etc.), I'm not familiar with Lencos other than in name. At the risk of betraying my DIY inexperience, do you think I would be able to install a Teres (or VPI, etc.) platter as a possible upgrade, or do the mechanics/bearing of the table make this impossible?
Don

02-19-04: Musicus53
Hi, John

I just wanted to let you know that your fame (or in this case, infamy) is rapidly spreading since you've now a subject in the Vinyl Asylum! I thought the post about you was actually laughable, but I had to repond (as "Vinyldork"). I just hope a "deprogrammer" doesn't kidnap me now and convince me that Lencos are crap before I get to do the project! Some great links from bornin and I'm looking forward to the pics.

Don

02-20-04: Bornin50
Hi John

Respect dude - don't let the doubters get you down! The Swiss beauty gets the stage she's been waiting for.

Cool!

02-21-04: fmunniksma@home.nl
Johnnantais, in response to your 02-20-04 posting: I´m the guy who wrote the VA post you quoted entirely without mentioning your source. I just fooled around with my L78 i just used for 78s and reported my findings at this point. Indeed, with the standard plinth and arm. Not very nice of you to accuse me of suffering from the Dogma that´s obviously becoming an obsession for you. But i´m a good sport and i take up the challenge! I´ve been fooling around with Thorens TT for ± 2 years, stuffing them with damping materials, building heavy plinths etc. I´m already mailing with Tjoeb about the Decca arm(I´m living in the Netherlands, they´re round the corner!). And i´m going to make a plinth, MDF, birch multiply, we´ll see. One question, do you keep the original springs? With the foam inside?

Greetings from Holland, Freek.

03-07-04: Munkienl
Hi all,

again a little update, i got my L78 out of the plinth now. Thanks Willbewill for the template and the pictures, way to go! I will be keeping the original armlift, you can adjust it with the knob on top, i´m going to glue a piece of rubber or whatever on it to get it up to the correct height. I found an alternative for doing the sanding/painting routine for a week, self-adhesive plastic with a convincing maple wood pattern, 4 euro per roll at my local DIY. they had several wood patterns and even Johnnantais´beloved white marble!
I´ve been listening to the L78/Decca/Stanton 681EEE in the original plinth on a very humble system, 1980s Yamaha amp, little Mission 2 way monitors, cheap cables. Even in this humble system the bass is incredible as well as the speed and dynamics. If the heavy plinth really takes care of the rumble we´re in business!
Tomorrow i´ll have the guys at DIY saw 4 slabs of 22 mm MDF out for me. I´ll keep you posted.

Greetings, Freek.

END OF SEGMENTS. The last post emphasizes what I've been saying in this post, that even with almost no work and without a decent tonearm (though the Deccas are very musical, which is another issue) Freek could hear the bass, boogie factor and dynamics of the idler-wheel system, in comparison to his beloved Thorens TD-125/SME 3009/VdH MC combo. He is not speaking of audiophile niceties but instead of MUSICALITY, precisely what I have been writing all along.

Anyway, I gotta run, I'm sure you're all relieved, I'll be back at a later date to elaborate on this, including the question of whether idlers were ever given a fair shake when the belt-drive took over. Thanks for the opportunity of a discussion, much appreciated, keep it up!!

Thanks for the full reply and the history. For those of us who have come into this thread more recently, and now don't have access to the early years of the conversation, this is really interesting background.

You and some of the other early pioneers of the idler wheel revival obviously had to put up with more in the way of dogmatic rejection and personal attack than I realized. But as I said in what was probably my first post here months ago, "Reality bats last." That means you get the last laugh. Bob

I'm baA-Aack! So, to get back to Ivor Tiefenbrun and the Linn, Bob (please excuse my earlier vehemence), let's resort to logic and evidence. What he brought to the party in particular was his philosophy of source first, with which I completely agree (within reason): Garbage In, Garbage Out as they say (this applies to the computer models so often resorted to in science as well). However, did he ever pit his Linn against a properly set-up idler-wheel drive (likely this would have been a Garrard 301 or 401)?

Idlers were already on the way out by 1974, already losing ground to the belt-drives due to bad press and economics (increased profits) for reasons mentioned above. 1974 was the year in which Tiefenbrun introduced the Linn, which was chronologically far behind the Thorens belt-drives and the ARs (each having its claim to be the first to issue a belt-drive, which, it turns out, was actally invented by....Lenco!!! :-)), not to mention the Aristons which legend has it gave Ivor the idea for the Linn in the first place (the story being that Ariston approached his father with a view to having him do the metalwork for their turntable, the deal fell through for some reason, and Ivor adopted the design). So we have to ask: were any serious comparisons ever done between properly set-up idler-wheel drives (and with decent tonearm) during this time and fairly reported, or did the belt-drive designers simply assume that battle was over and the belt-drive "proven" superior, and the reporters and industry go along and promote this view?

And from a practical point of view, place yourself in Ivor's place: and along comes Ariston with its copy of a Thorens TD-150, and you see an opportunity to get into turntable manufacture (don't forget my background is originally high-end and classic belt-drives). A belt-drive requires only very basic metal-work (a lathe, a folded metal subchassis, springs, a motor an an elastic band). So would Ivor even have any interest at all in producing an idler-wheel drive with its much more complex mechanisms, far more demanding metal work and specialized-for-record-playing motors? Since it was an impossibility to take idler production on, and they were on their way out anyway due to bad press and economic reasons, then likely Tiefenbrun never did do this comparison, or even thought it necessary. Which brings me back to an earlier statement: "It was the duty of the belt-drive designers (being experts, and this is true of all scholars and, indeed, Thinking Men on any subject) to think to reinvestigate the Fundamental Assumption of their craft (once the Assumption had been, like Perfect Sound Forever, trumpeted and accepted): that the belt-drive was superior. They didn't, and today we are saddled with $100K machines, an admission if ever there was one that the system is deeply flawed (else why the necessity for such extremes?)."

Now let's turn to another possibility and consider the reports of another early participant of the original thread:

"This evening is the first chance I have had to play with the beastie. I found (it took me a little while) the Origin Live modified Rega 250 that I bought two years ago intending to mount on an Empire 208 if I ever found one. I didn't.
I also found my little used Denon 103D. An hour later we were ready to go. No plinth. I precariously balanced the Goldring on two lead shot filled plwood boxes that I made ages ago to set a pair of Carver Amazing speakers on. The speakers are long gone, but the heavy little boxes thankfully remain. Albert I don't know what TT you had before the Goldring, but my expectations were certainly not high since I have a heavily modified Linn LP 12 with an Ittok arm and Koetsu Black cartridge. I have to say that the Goldring with the lesser cartridge (the Denon 103D at $225, while a very impressive cartridge is no match for the $1,500 Koetsu), unravelled the music and separated instruments better than the Linn with the Koetsu. At first I thought that was hearing over-simplification of passages, but when I started hearing things in the foreground that were either distant on the Linn or very subdued, I knew this was not the case. Separation of lead and backing vocals and clear enunciation of words seemed better on the Goldring. I think I have to switch the Ittok and Koetsu to the Goldring to be completely fair. But then I think that there would be an even greater bias towards the Goldring."

"I continue to be impressed by this TT - even without a plinth - which I know will improve everything. It's subtle for the most part and reveals everything with a very light touch, never screaming "look at all this detail". But when there are massive dynamic swings it is scary. For the ultimate test of just how scary, play "No Pasaran" from Joe Jackson's 1987 LP "Will Power". It will make you leap out of your pants. Also even in it's plinthless state it sails through those classic 'test' tracks like "Sad Old Red" by Simply Red and "Ride Across The River" by Dire Straits - both tough tests of the ability of a system to reproduce bass that stops and starts on a dime with no overhang."

"I am a long time Linnie. I have own LP 12's for 28 years. My current Linn has an Origin Live DC motor and a Cetech carbon fibre subchassis. On a whim I bought a GL 75 and put an Origin Live modded Rega 250 and my beloved Koetsu Black on it. Holy shit, better bass, much better leading-edge dynamics and pretty remarkable imaging. This is all without a plinth. I'm just resting this beast on two lead-filled boxes. I am about to make a decent plinth and see where it goes."

"I STILL haven't built a plinth for my GL 75, OL Rega, Koetsu Black. But I'm playing it all the time. And I get more impressed with every LP. I should mention that I went from thin, model train oil to Mobil 1 grease and then a combination of the last two. My last choice seems to be the best. When I eventually get around to building the plinth it will be on this site. Just listened to Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms" and Little Feat "The Last Record Album". I'm hearing things that were not there AT ALL on the Linn. Buggeration. Is that possible ?"

END OF SEGMENT. So let's consider the context here: a Lenco with no plinth at all, precariously balanced, with a Rega tonearm simply plopped into the original hole, STOMPS a fully-tricked latest-edition Linn LP12. Now no one would say the latest Linns aren't a TREMENDOUS improvement over the original Linns, so we have to come to some conclusion. And, the conclusion is this: either a proper and fair showdown was never done between the belt-drives of the day, or it was and they lied. At some point, somebody, somewhere, lied, or at the very least misdirected. By this last I mean they focused entirely on the noise issue by which the idler-wheel drive was discredited and character-assassinated, and simply failed to mention the fact idlers had in fact more dynamics, better bass and better timing and attack than belt-drives. If they focused solely on the noise issue, as I wrote up above, and ignored/pretended there was no loss, then this is negligence and prejudice. If they lied, then it is quite simply a crime (like the introduction of CD ;-).

Perhaps the world just works this way, and a newer system which allows greater profits wins every time. But, being an Idealist, I say this then provides us the perfect arena in which to re-examine the way our western Consumer Society works (and re-introduce the concept of job satisfaction, pride and fulfillment in knowing you are contributing to a quality product), about the concept and Myth of Progress on which our Consumer Society depends, and how we might begin to rethink our attitudes to both quality and integrity.

So, to get back to my original thought: "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." Since the evidence shows that idler-wheel drives ARE superior in terms of PRaT, slam and bass (after all, it was a cheap little Garrard SP-25 which converted me, with original tonearm, and I get e-mails all the time from fellows who remember how powerful their father's idler-based system sounded in their youth), if not, in their original form, better at high frequencies, silence and detail, then many did indeed deceive themselves and convince themselves there was no comparative loss, and in the process deceived others. The same happened just a while back, no?, when Compact Disc was touted even by owners of good belt-drives as superior in every way, shape and form to their record players. Even Digitophiles will today admit LPs have a warmth and listenability today's much better digital players lack, but they didn't back then when the fight was fresh and on.

So, thanks Bob and Richard for a chance to air out these old arguments, it's good to dust them off and air them out occasionally, and better, due to your promptings and excellent questions, delve into them further, this is much of the reason I had started the original thread (not just to ram point A up certain persons' asses ;-)), as a chance to re-examine and analyze what had happened. But, before we could get to this stage, we had to prove that something HAD in fact happened, i.e. that idler-wheel drives were in fact incredible machines, and, according to me anyway, quite simply the best LP-spinning system we have yet devised.