Greg's Mayware Formula 4 Rebuild

[Cressy Snr]

The TT with the Mayware arm has settled in beautifully with the rest of the system and the Audio Technica cartridge is performing well; a slight brightness having reduced as a few hours have been put on it.
The compliance of 40cu exhibited by the AT440MLb is very high by modern standards, so I have reduced the effective mass of the arm to its absolute minimum value of 4.5g, by removing the sliding weight altogether, as the manual advises for cartridges such as this. The tracking weight was then set to 1.5g, by moving the counterweight (in conjunction with an Ortofon stylus balance.)
The results have been worth it. The bit of speaker cone flap I was seeing with some warped records is now gone and air and space within a recording, comes over better. Bass from the Audio Technica cart was good with the sliding weight, but is better without it, reaching deeper, with a tad more control.
The grip that the Lenco motor unit has over proceedings is more to the forefront and everything is just that bit more solidly anchored. Shows the importance of optimising the arm/cartridge setup.

[Thermionic Idler]

That turntable setup is scarily good, I've heard allegedly reference class decks with 4 - 5 figure arms and cartridges sound a lot worse.

[Paul Barker]

Have you been over to Cresswel Towers Dave?

[Thermionic Idler]

Yep, Meredith and I took some records and my OTL over for a listening session and another audition of the Mets. I think we're definitely going to be getting our own pair, they are so flexible about room and placement and sound just as good if not better than my current incumbents. The OTL seemed to like them too!

[Greg]

That turntable setup is scarily good, I've heard allegedly reference class decks with 4 - 5 figure arms and cartridges sound a lot worse.

Yes, Dave, so where has it all gone wrong? Both the Lenco and the Mayware arm were in their day considered nearly budget items. Surely the industry must have lost it's way or is sadly lacking in competent designers, or is it really as the industry protestors would have it, a major scam on the hi-fi buying public by milking the factor that listening to a sound and ones interpretation of what is heard is utterly subjective?

By the way, took me ages to realise who Thermionic Idler was until well after Owston. I'll always think of you as Dave the Vinyl Junkie!

[Paul Barker]

Did Monty approve of you?

[Thermionic Idler]

That turntable setup is scarily good, I've heard allegedly reference class decks with 4 - 5 figure arms and cartridges sound a lot worse.

Yes, Dave, so where has it all gone wrong? Both the Lenco and the Mayware arm were in their day considered nearly budget items. Surely the industry must have lost it's way or is sadly lacking in competent designers, or is it really as the industry protestors would have it, a major scam on the hi-fi buying public by milking the factor that listening to a sound and ones interpretation of what is heard is utterly subjective?

By the way, took me ages to realise who Thermionic Idler was until well after Owston. I'll always think of you as Dave the Vinyl Junkie!

Yep, that's me Quite a bit of water under the bridge since those days.

And indeed, where has it all gone wrong? A few weeks before we came to Owston, Meredith and I went to the Hi-Fi Wigwam show. Lots of wildly different systems at wildly varying price points. What struck me was how poor quite a lot of the vinyl replay sounded, when you took into consideration the cost of the turntable / arm / cartridge that was in use. There may have been valid reasons - poor pressings or a rushed setup, but it was obvious on a lot of rigs that you were listening to a record, because you could clearly hear the familiar distortion artefacts.

There was a guy down the end of one of the corridors who was running a Van Den Hul Black Beauty on a 12 inch Audio Origami PU7 - I visited this room near the end of the day as this is the arm I have and I wanted to hear what sort of results he was getting. Well that was the first room I'd been in all day that was playing vinyl, where I truly felt like I was listening to the master tape - as opposed to the master tape via an intermediate medium. The sound was rich, musical, lively, with zero tracking distortion - best vinyl sound of the day by far. The guy pointed me towards a dealer in the Netherlands who was selling them at one third of the list price (which was where he got his) and I was able to sell both my old Koetsus to more than cover the cost.

And as you'd expect, it's wonderful and tracks perfectly and does everything I could possible want, and won't cost an arm and a leg to re-tip, though mounting it was a bit scary with it being a 'naked' design.

But here's the thing. One of the LP's we played on Steve's turntable was Elgar's "In the South" on HMV Greensleeves. This is a very demanding recording with a lot going on - it can either sound marvellous or sound dreadful if your turntable isn't up to snuff. The plain fact is that that budget Audio Technica cartridge in the Mayware arm, one tenth of the price of my vDh, played it superbly. All the detail was right there and I didn't hear it mistrack once. Plus it will play straight into a valve phono stage without need for a step up transformer (I hate those things with a passion). I'm still entirely happy with my Black Beauty but there's an unsettling question in my mind around what exactly I got for the remaining £1170.

Also, overall, the standard of sound at Owston was considerably better then all that bling commercial stuff.

[Thermionic Idler]

Did Monty approve of you?

A few wuffs at first but he was fine after. I think all my classical music caused him to doze off.

[cressy]

Tbh i dont think it's a case of less than competent designers, i think it's simply market forces.
Pretty much every deck that has arrived on the market on the last 20 odd years with any pretensions to 'high end' has been a belt drive deck. There are one or 2 that aren't, but they are few and far between.
Think of it in terms of a business model, you want to make the most money at the least cost. An impex motor with a rubber band to drive a big shiny platter is the cheapest possible, stable way. I.e a repeatable and reliable way.
There has been no need for a manufacturer to innovate, or go back to other drive methods due to the flat earth lp12 style of deck gaining and holding such a huge market share in the late 70s early 80s.
The costs involved in building something like a 401 now would be astronomical, the costs of manufacturing a technics sp25 or denon dp2000 or trio l07d the same.

There is no demand for such a product.

Roy gandy and his cast arm tube and its popularity plus linn and their ittok also changed the face of tonearm design. Cart manufacturers built their carts to be used in these sort of arms, only shure, grade and very few others continued to plough the high compliance furrow, the rest switched their attentions to the moving coil cart. Mm became more budget oriented. Even Sme stopped producing the 3009 and went to the 3 4 and 5 series arms.

To me, this is a product of aggressive marketing and the hifi press.

Thing is, these days there is more appetite for 401s lenco's and direct drives, but there is still the entrenched arm and cart dogma that will not go away. Want a reasonably cheap arm you get a rega derivative, a cheap ish cart, an ortofon 2m red or at 120 or something.

Spend more, you want an origin live arm or similar, an sme m2. Something like that. Along with an mc such as the ortofon cadenza

More again, a graham phantom, sme 5 and a koetsu et al.

There are no low mass arms any more and no high compliance carts outside the so called budget end. That combo on the lenco is a complete oddity. It doesnt mean that the old mid seventies hi comp low mass approach is any less valid. It shows that it is still very relevant

[simon]

That turntable setup is scarily good, I've heard allegedly reference class decks with 4 - 5 figure arms and cartridges sound a lot worse.

[simon]

But here's the thing. One of the LP's we played on Steve's turntable was Elgar's "In the South" on HMV Greensleeves. This is a very demanding recording with a lot going on - it can either sound marvellous or sound dreadful if your turntable isn't up to snuff. The plain fact is that that budget Audio Technica cartridge in the Mayware arm, one tenth of the price of my vDh, played it superbly. All the detail was right there and I didn't hear it mistrack once. Plus it will play straight into a valve phono stage without need for a step up transformer (I hate those things with a passion). I'm still entirely happy with my Black Beauty but there's an unsettling question in my mind around what exactly I got for the remaining £1170.

That was also my experience when Steve and Ant popped over to mine a couple of weeks ago to compare Steve's and my TT - both Ant's Lenco rebuilds. I have an Ekos and Kontrapunkt b on mine, just because I had them laying around so they didn't cost me anything extra. The difference between the Mayware and Shure (? sorry Steve can't remember) and the notionally far more expensive Ekos And Kontra b was negligible. More a matter of taste really, but in real terms very close. And for my money Steve's were more musical.

Ant should be making a ruddy fortune building these things.

[Thermionic Idler]

The costs involved in building something like a 401 now would be astronomical, the costs of manufacturing a technics sp25 or denon dp2000 or trio l07d the same.

About £4.9k I think, for this equivalent:

http://www.peakhifi.co.uk/cgi-bin/ecom. ... db_pid=709

[IslandPink]

Interesting ..
Hadn't seen that before - committment !

[Cressy Snr]

Aye....they have simplified things down to the essentials with that turntable. With modern control electronics, the motor speed can be controlled to give 33, 45 and 78 speeds without the need for all those mechanical linkages that had to be used in the past; and of course, electronics are usually much more cost effective than mechanics, where they can be used to advantage.
It looks like a thoroughly intelligent design and good luck to them.
The only thing I would take issue with is the mat. With a plastic mat on a metal platter, you would need, (and indeed the SMD uses one) a whacking great weight to clamp the record down to avoid slippage under load. I'm always wary of acrylic platter/vinyl interfaces in that it is extremely easy to grind grit into the record surface either from slippage or clamping/weighting unless the platter is kept surgically clean.
It's nice to see small, local manufacturers doing their thing however

[cressy]

I see no way to get the idler away from the motor spindle and platter inner edge when it isn't running though?