Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

so does anyone know when Jean is returning from Greece?

I had the pleasure of having Jean over along with his uber monster Lenco. I'm seriously considering upgrading from the 20XL to the the 17DIII after hearing the NOS Karat.

I would say the biggest weakness of my system at the moment is the lower end response. What speakers are you using Oregon?

So Jean delivered my new Lenco L75 in a 75 lb Cherry Plinth yesterday. He also lugged over a pair of Klipsch Heresies, his home brew speaker wires, Music Boys Petra cables and a couple of cartridges - a Decca Super Gold and Empire 10PE for me to try out, I ended up keeping the Empire and the Music Boys. I've never heard of the Empire Moving Iron cart before, but it was an improvement over my 20XL and a bargain to boot. If anyone has any info on this cart please send me a link.

So now I know what Jean's talking about when he refers to "Amazonian Flow" and speed stability. This deck has this in spades. As a result of the firm grip on the speed, the timing and pacing of the music is amazing, hard to describe but its quite evident. Imaging and details are also greatly improved over my Pro-Ject 9.1. In the meantime I'll continue to listen some more and enjoying the music!

Wow, that's big news!!! until I read the date of that post at least :)

I believe Jean is in Greece again....

That article was such a tease! I can't wait to read the final results. If the new, full out Nantais can beat the Forsell and make Arthur say its the best he's ever heard, that's quite something as he's a hypercritical and fussy reviewer.

All this talk about marketing ploys and Nantais paying off Salvatore is verging on the ridiculous! It makes the guys who are trying to stir up some dirt come off looking like a bunch of jealous schoolgirls! Let's get real guys and lets get back to listening to music.

So the man hisself, Jean Nantais came to my place today to install the new bearing assembly into my Lenco. This is the same part that is featured on the Reference Lenco (the one Arthur raves about). Upon inspection it looks well machined and is certainly a more robust piece compared to the original part that comes with the L75. Despite my probing, he wouldn't tell me what it was made of, titanium, magnesium, unobtanium? After installing it and adding a few drops of his secret recipe oil it was ready to go. I noticed that the platter spun a lot longer than previously also. Come to think of it he may have referred to it as the "8 minute bearing" previously. It doesn't last quite that long, but it certainly goes on for a while. I popped on my Father's day treat to myself, the 3 box set of Miles from India. I was a bit sceptical that there would be much difference because all that I changed was the bearing assembly, but after listening carefully to it, all I can say is wow! The first thing that was apparent was that there was a lot more air and the highs were more transparent. Also, I had always thought my system lacked bass and was toying with the idea of getting a sub to augment my Coral Beta 8s. No need for a sub any more - it really tightened it up and it now goes down to a satisfyingly deep level. Low level noise is now down significantly and that just make the background blacker resulting in sound that "pops" with greater transients and impact.

As Jean mentioned previously, this bearing assembly was only available to his customers before Arthur's review. Now that the review is out, its only available to those buying the Reference Lenco. I'm quite happy that I went ahead and placed my order before the review came out.