FIRST NIGHT spinning.

By the time I got thru the woodwork, the lube-factory, the arm-placement and all the rest, I realized I had mounted the arm so that it’s VTA tower conflicted with the counterweight’s travel in the course of tracking a complete record.  Uncharacteristically, but wisely, I decided against going well into the late evening to remount the arm and gave it up for that day.    

SECOND NIGHT,  Really spinning. 

By the next afternoon I was playing records, and I thought I deserved to give it a grueling maiden run.  I attached and aligned an average moving-magnet cartridge, plugged into an average solidstate phono preamp, and that out to a small solidstate powered  monitor speaker…. basic bench-test mono.

For the first run, I chose a record both for it's garden-variety-nothing-special Lp sound, and also for it's less-than-perfect condition. With a little relief I found that there was an undeniable impact thing happening, even with an average-to-noisy copy of the Stones doing “If You Can’t Rock Me” on the live recording 'Love You Live’ from 1977. 

This was not about bass extension or something like that, and I wouldn’t have heard that in this bare-bones monitoring setup anyway.   This was about pace, drive, and punch. Time, in fact-- all about Time.  Which is intrinsically necessary to getting life out of an old live set, something hopefully representative of what about a dollar buys at a used record shop.  I was glad to be going  with this least-common-denominator setup to hear this table on it’s first spin in years, since it pretty well validated itself on the first couple of rotations. 

By now I was coming to a theory.  My theory is that, in the hype-driven rush to ‘signal-to-noise’ supremacy, belt-drive technology suspended and isolated each element in the transport at such a remove that it may have just pulled the rug out from under itself.  When motors and platters ( read : engine and load ) are separated with indiscriminate respect to speed stability, then the credibility of the transport system is at risk.  Yes, with beltdrive, there is a deathly black silence between consequently monumental and percussive sonic events, but….

If there already exists the least divergence from ironclad speed control, any advance on the signal-to-noise front is a chimera.  Time, and Time above all, is the central and non-negotiable responsibility of the transport.  Failing that, other “hi-fi” considerations are, well, lipstick on a pig.

In the course of the evening I moved from thick seventies rock to ultra-produced eighties & nineties pop and then backwards to late fifties jazz…  I also moved, a step at a time, first to a real  amp and large speakers, and by late at night to the ‘real’ phonostage and all-tube system. 

By this time I gave up on being objective, and having consumed a few buckets of cabernet, I was completely convinced this was a promising project.  Even still, I knew I was light-years away from getting it into the league of more refined program material, say, Scarlatti da camera, or Correlli da chiesa.

Next up :   Benchwork - time to get a little more elaborate with the plinth.

 *

LUBE TYPES Used.
Spindle bearing grease : Ultra Lube Multi Purpose Grease, Plews-Edelman
Sewing Machine Oil : Zoom Spout Sewing Machine Oil
Linkage Grease : White Lithium Grease, Panef Corp.
Motor Bearing Oil : Extendo All Purpose Motor / Bearing Oil, Sid Harvey 
Motor Bearing Oil : 3-In-One SAE-20 Elecric Motor Oil                                                                                

Cleaning Solvent : Zippo Premium Lighter Fluid, Zippo Manufacturing Co.

If by chance the above sounds a little 'authoritative' --- don't believe it for a minute. Although I've read every last thing I can find on this for several years running, I've still got no certain idea of exactly what's to be done from one step to the next. That's encouraging, huh ? I guess no single 301/401 project needs to be definitive as long as several individual approaches make it to the Internet, and anybody who wants to can plan their own from there .....

The groundbreaking article for most of us on the 301 / 401 was Haden Boardman’s original “Turning The Tables” in Sound Practices of Spring 1994, which neatly set the general outlines.  A much later article by Jonathon Noble “Diy-ing A Time Machine” was written in 2004 and gets to the reason why-- very well indeed.  Both available on the internet, as noted here in LINKS.