Greg's Mayware Formula 4 Rebuild

[Greg]

.............and i dont really like the rega/ol arm.

You appear to have some association or understanding of what Geoff Spall does. Personally I endorse his Audiomods alternatives as the very best options for a Rega arm. For me, O/L was an absolute disaster when I visited their highly disfunctional and untidy factory several years ago, not to mention their ridiculous approach to trying to sort out the problem I had at the time with my then owned top of the range TT. After that visit I would never again consider any of their products.

A Rega based AM arm is frankly, just not a Rega. It's simply a different product and my Series 5 arm coupled to my 401 Slatedeck using an Ortofon Kontra B, sounds (IMHO), outstanding. I have no reason to try something different.

Well..............not at the moment anyway........

[cressy]

Yep i had a really good read through tue audiomods site you dropped the link for. I agree with alot of the things he has done and his approach to the modifications is logical and thoroughly thought out

[shane]

About 10 years ago I replaced my 1986 vintage RB300 with a Mayware and was impressed by the improvement in transparency, detail and fluidity. Five years ago I replaced the F4 with a Mission 774. Still get the detail but huge improvements in image stability, solidity and depth. Definitely a keeper.

[Ali Tait]

Yes second that, best arm I've had by a country mile.

[Cressy Snr]

Dose of reality amongst all the hype eh!
There are probably better arms out there than an ancient out of fashion unipivot that, let's face it was a budget arm in its day, but it does the job for me, with the high trackability, high compliance cartridges I favour.

[shane]

Didnt mean to belittle the Mayware in any way, Steve. It's a brilliant arm which does everything it does well, and does nothing badly. To be honest, I wasn't really expecting the 774 to be significantly better, so was a bit surprised at the difference. If experience is anything to go by, sooner or later you'll get the itch. The 774 will be a good way to scratch it.

[Cressy Snr]

No problem Shane, I' m well aware that there is better to be had. I'm more talking about the low mass philosophy that the Mayware represents, being as good, if not better than some of the modern stuff being foisted on the vinyl fan. Hadcocks, Missions and the Audio Technica AT1100, may be better arms, they may not. As everything depends on how your arm cartridge and TT work together, but it's nice that if you look hard enough and long enough, the choice is still there.

In the late 70s, my mate's dad had a Technics SL150 with an AT1100 arm with Shure V15 III. It was fantastic sounding and a thing of beauty. That mags in the 80s tried to make out that front ends such as these sounded inferior to a Rega Planar 2, and that idiots like me believed it, frankly beggars belief.

[shane]

A lot of those 70s Japanese arms from the likes of AT, Stax and SAEC were really beautiful bits of engineering. We weren't supposed to like them, living in the shadow of Ivor, Roy and Julian, but you couldn't look at one close up without coveting it like a piece of jewelry. What fools we were!

[simon]

Yes, we'd love to hear what you think of the TT once you get it home and fit the Kontrapunt in the Ekos.
And a pic of course

Will do, once it's properly up and running. I didn't have much time last night and moving the 401 in twin deck slate plinth took a bit of doing first. Then getting the Kontra mounted on the Ekos was a bit fiddly with the Ortofon leads - I've set it up approximately but it needs a good fettle. Initially it sounded a little bass heavy - I changed the load resistor in the phono to load the Kontra with 47R rather than 470R, which surprisingly didn't make much difference, but I backed off the tracking force which made a little more. I need to have a look at VTA next. But it was 11.30 and bed beckoned.

The whole system hasn't been switched on for 3 months though so it's not wise making too many judgments till things have settled down first, especially as the 208s sounded a bit bassy and boxy until they've opened up again

[Cressy Snr]

A bit more on the TT adventures,
OK, so I was being all effusive about the mastertape quality brought on by the addition of the silicone damping fluid to the arm dashpot. Should've known better than to post initial impressions. But unfortunately, although the presentation was impressive for the first day, by mid morning today I was starting to get irritated. The sound was too tight, and was starting to seem stilted and mechanical. Also a peak somewhere in the upper mids had appeared, giving an unpleasant edge to Van Morrison's voice in particular. Voices started to sound flat and lacking in any sort of emotional content. IOW musicians and singers seemed to be going through the motions as if waiting for pay day.

Anyway, I ended up cleaning out the dashpot with a cotton bud to remove the siicone fluid, then replaced it with the olive oil.
We are now back in business. I could, I suppose, have experimented with the amount of fluid, but I couldn't be arsed, when with the olive oil, I had an already known good sound from the arm/cartridge combination.
I suspect that the high compliance Shure, tracking at 1.2g was being overdamped, and the fluid was exerting too much drag for such a light tracker. The level of damping I had would have been more appropriate, I think, for a lower compliance heavier tracking MC.
Anyway music is now coming out of the turntable rather than hi-fi.

[Cressy Snr]

@ Simon
Look fwd to hearing your impressions, once everything is set up.

[IslandPink]

Interesting.
I should say I use the Mayware with an extra 6g of lead on the headshell, and an additional brass counterwight to balance this. Maybe Shane's experiences with the Mission 774 might be partly to do with effective mass ? - would be less of an issue with a high compliance MM cartridge.

[Cressy Snr]

Fitted a TV wall bracket today, which in turn freed up the "altar" between my two obelisks of speakers so that the turntable could be sited somewhere out of the way.
One bit of marble floor tile later and a general rearrangement of the computer bit of the stereo, and we have the Lenco in its final resting place.

[Mike H]

Marble floor tile eh?

[Cressy Snr]

Yeah I found it outside a house on the next street last year. It had been there three months so I asked the houseowner if I could have it. Knew it would come in handy someday.