Our Ant as you know is heavily into building his own turntables.
This afternoon he delivered this "bitsa" made from an old Micro Seiki belt driven TT he got off eBay. He fitted a Jelco arm rewired with silver cable and a Lenco magnesium headshell. My Daughter paid for the cartridge; an Audio Technica AT110E and a cheap SS phono stage.
The plinth is a two-part section, with the motor mounted into the lower half. The baseplate is separated from the bearing mount (top plate) by three Foculpods for vibration isolation. He made the base out of a bit of 2'' thick floor joist he found in a skip on a building site near his house. Nobody could accuse him of not being green.
Even the cartridge is NOS as it says "Made in West Germany" on the box.The 4 pole motor is mounted at 2 o'clock in a similar manner Pink Triangle's 8 o'clock method, which sets any motor noise in line with the fore/aft axis of the cartridge so that the cartridge is agitated, by motor noise, in the direction in which it is least responsive, unlike conventionally mounted 10 o' clock motors that agitate the cartridge in a left/right direction precisely where it is most susceptible.
Now nobody would claim that this is anything out of the ordinary, especially with the Jelco (Linn Basik LVV) and cheapo MM cartridge but the lad has put a great deal of thought into the design of this turntable and to be honest it sounds absolutely wonderful.
The sound is rock-solid and pitch stable, fast, clean, dynamic and neutral. The soundstage is deep but does not extend much beyond the edges of the speakers. But what it does, it does brilliantly. I'm very impressed with it.
He's done his homework with this TT and it shows. A great birthday pressy I'm quite choked really.
Here's a couple of pictures. One of the turntable and the other showing how it integrates with the rest of the system.
I'm going to have to build a valve phono stage now.
Steve
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