I wish that all who love LP playback as much as I do could hear a Thorens TD 124 or Garrard 301 or EMT 930 in their systems, but those products are subject to the vagaries of supply and demand: They are rare and pricey.—Art Dudley
I have a friend named Yale, a record producer, who lives in a capacious, art-filled SoHo loft with enormous windows, craggy wood floors, and a high, tin-tiled ceiling. I enjoy Yale’s company because he has extraordinarily diverse, highly evolved taste in music, art, architecture, books, home furnishings, and hi-fi equipment.
In one part of Yale’s loft, a large, tin cow weathervane stands on a bureau. Bolted to the ceiling above the dining room table is a greasy black 300lb electric motor with a wide pulley—the kind formerly used to turn the belts that powered sweatshop machines ca 1920. In the purest essence of 1970s SoHo style, a loft bed is situated above the closet and bathroom, and the kitchen floor is raised to shelter plumbing pipes. There’s an unnamable piece of machinery, about the size of a small dog, on the floor next to the couch. It sits there because it looks elegantly mysterious, inspiring curiosity and contemplation. Yale and his architect wife spent decades creating this dreamy, comfortable space, which leads my mind to reminisce—and loft envy.
One sunny winter weekday, Yale invited me over for the express purpose of helping him decide which amp does a better job powering his patinaed 1970s Tannoy Cheviot speakers: his newly arrived, 1956 Fairchild 260 tube amplifiers or the shiny Line Magnetic 2A3 amp he’d been using for some time. His “gear table,” he said, was too small for both.
As we unpacked the Fairchilds, we agreed: Those push-pull 6L6 mono amps are museum-quality masterpieces of industrial design. The Fairchild 260s are, along with the Marantz Model 2 and the Brook 12A, top classics of American mono-era amplifier design.
As we unwrapped the NOS tubes, I reminded Yale that RCA released the 6L6 beam tetrode in 1936 and that it was designed specifically to have a distortion characteristic high in second harmonic and low in third harmonic, for use in push-pull, audio-frequency amplifiers in which the second harmonic gets canceled. Push-pull 6L6 tube amps are notoriously musical, revered especially for their vocal reproduction. These rare Fairchild 260s are the holy grail of 6L6 design.
When we got the tubes in and the wires connected, only one channel worked. After some fiddling, we had sound from both channels, but one speaker was out of phase. As Yale troubleshot, I sat myself down in a random chair about 30′ from the speakers and began to check my email. Suddenly, both speakers jolted into loud, in-phase action, making my head jerk so fast I hurt my neck. When I looked down, I saw my right foot tapping like a sewing machine. Then I felt my head bobbing. I was having an “Oh my! Listen to that!” moment.
Full-strength Pace, Rhythm, and Timing (PRaT). Unsuppressible forward momentum. Music grooves owned the room. Artists’ intentions were coming through. My brain gave no thought to “how does it sound?”
When the second record ended, I turned to Yale wide-eyed and exclaimed, “Wow! You were right. You’re not an audiophile. You are a music lover!” I said this because, earlier, Yale had denied being an audiophile, saying he just likes “gear.”
It was obvious he cared little about all that “audiophile checklist” stuff and not at all about those speaker setup–room arranging rules that place a high priority on a strategically positioned listening chair and precisely focused image mapping. To me, it seemed that Yale’s system was carefully curated to do one thing perfectly: remind himself and show his friends how good his records are.
I asked Yale how he chose this particular mixture of stuff. “I chose most of it because I liked how it looks,” he answered. “I don’t compare equipment. I just go by what moves me.” That made me smile. “I believe that strategy works,” I told him. “Because … in my experience, most components do sound like they look.” I complimented my friend and his wife on their good taste, saying, “I think your audio gear is ‘of a piece’ with your art and furnishings and taste in music.”
Watching me swoon over the gray, hammertone beauty of his EMT 930 turntable, Yale explained that he had owned quite a few turntables, “but once I realized that idler wheels were close to god, I bought into the myth.” Yale told me his EMT cartridge came from Art Dudley, whose writing had been “an inspiration” during his gear-buying journey.
Yale has a second system, set up along the long, high books-and-records wall. It features a crisp-looking Thorens TD 124 (completely stock, restored by STS Turntables) with an SME 3012 arm and a Denon DL-103 moving coil cartridge wired into a 1960s Voice of Music, EL-84–based integrated amplifier powering some snappy-looking Altec Model 14 speakers sitting on the floor pointing out at no particular chair. When he played it, this system filled the room with sound and gushed boogie factor like the first one.
Both of Yale’s systems moved the music forward better than any newfangled system I’ve encountered. I wasn’t sure why. When a sound system excels at PRaT and momentum, those talents swamp all other considerations. PRaT is engagement factor. It’s what seduces listeners. Forward momentum is what holds their attention. When PRaT rules, noise, distortion, and frequency response become secondary. In order for me to love an audio system, it must have a strongly coercive nature: It must invite me in, pin me to my chair, and force me to listen intently. For me, it’s PRaT (and authentic tone)—not SINAD (footnote 1)—that makes recorded music believable and exciting.
Ever since that day at Yale’s, I’ve spent much time thinking about why idler-drive turntables excel at pushing music along. All my belt-drive and direct-drive players run at the same 33 1/3 , 45, and 78 speeds, but compared to that EMT 930, my 1984 Linn LP12 feels like it’s dragging a hind paw. And Dr. Feickert’s Blackbird plays brisk and surefooted and makes records exciting, but it’s not a locomotive like that EMT.
In the quiet passages, my LP12 is quieter than all forms of direct or idler drive, and its lower noisefloor exposes more of that inner detail we audiophiles crave. But EMT’s 930—and also the PTP Audio idler-drive turntable I am about to describe—do something unique with quietness, momentum, and what Art Dudley called “touch,” which I interpret as a commingling of tactility and corporality.
What probably makes vintage idler drives so supercharged, PRaTwise, is the precision-made, high-torque AC motors they use to turn heavy platters with no speed correction or belt decoupling. To my subconscious mind, idler drive feels more solidly connected to the music’s forward momentum than direct drive does. To my conscious mind, idler drive appears less conditioned, less electrically affected, than direct drive. Compared to idler and direct drive, belt drive feels like it decouples the platter and record grooves, not just from the motor’s noise and vibration but from the essence of its torque and power. I can’t swear that I hear this, nor can I describe what idler drive sounds like any more than I already have—but I can feel it, as I did that day at Yale’s.
Since that day, belt-drive decks feel like cars with automatic transmissions. Yale’s EMT idler feels like it has a sturdy gearbox and a stiff clutch.
PTP Audio’s Solid9 Record Player
I am home now in my studio, listening to PTP Audio’s simple-as-a-rock Solid9 turntable (footnote 2). The Solid9 is a restored, hot-rodded, replinthed Lenco idler drive (footnote 3) that my Eurofriend Peter Reinders builds in his shop in the Netherlands (footnote 4). Every time I place a disc on its rubber Lenco platter mat, I admire every no-frills thing about it. It looks solid and purposeful.
Back in the ’80s, when I was buying and selling used, broadcast-quality decks, my Japanese customers’ first choice was always the rarest: a gray, hammertone, grease-bearing Garrard 301, followed by an ivory-colored grease-bearing model. In third place was Garrard’s ivory-colored oil-bearing model.
Farther down my customers’ want list (and my price list) were idler-drive models from Gates and Lenco. The made-in-Illinois Gates was a cool-looking, truck-tough turntable with a gearshift-styled speed-change lever and a choice of 16″ or 12″ platters. Its most distinguishing feature was the idler mechanism: The idler wheel didn’t drive the platter’s outer rim as in the Garrard and EMT; instead, it drove a massive inner hub surrounding the cast platter’s spindle. According to Gates’s advertising, this “hub-drive” strategy reduced rumble by allowing the motor to operate at a lower speed.
Between 1946 and 1979, the Lenco AG offered a third approach to idler drive. These Lencos used a long, gently tapered, horizontally positioned motor shaft to drive the bottom of the platter via a skinny (4mm) spring-tensioned vertical idler wheel. Where the idler is positioned against the tapered shaft determines the platter’s speed. This is the mechanism used by the PTP Audio Solid ‘tables.
Footnote 1: SINAD stands for signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio. See headphones.com/blogs/features/evaluating-sinad-why-its-not-important.
Footnote 2: Art wrote about PTP ‘tables several times including here and here.
Footnote 3: See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenco_Turntables.
Footnote 4: PTP Audio/Audiomods, Email: [email protected] Web: ptpaudio.com
NEXT: Page 2 »
ARTICLE CONTENTS
Page 1
Page 2
Click Here: men football tracksuits