Edgewear posted
"As far as I know Micro never moved from direct drive to belt drive. They
simultaniously offered a range of direct drives (DD-series) and belt
drives (BL-series). That being said, they went much higher end with belt
drives (RX- and SX-series) than they ever did with direct drives. This
might suggest that they had stronger faith in the capabilities of belt
drive.
There's one point in their 80's catalogue where direct
drive and belt drive sort of converged. This is the 1500-series
platform, which offered the DDX-1500 direct drive (their top direct
drive model) as well as the RX-1500 belt drive, which was the entry
level of the big Micro's. It could be upgraded to include all the
features also found in the highest end models, including gunmetal
plateaus, air bearing and vacuum disc stabilizer. It would be
interesting to compare the DDX-1500 with the basic RX-1500 (with
aluminum plateau and the motor drive attached to the unit), using the
same armboard, tonearm and cartridge. This would be a fair 'shoot out'
between direct drive and belt drive, all else being equal. Has anyone
ever done this?
The designer of the top belt (or string) drive
Micro's founded a new company called TechDas, modernising his old
designs with current technology. This would suggest that belt drive is -
and perhaps always was - his preferred technology. He's now on a 'world
tour' with the ultimate AirForce Zero. This monstrosity makes the old
top Micro SX-8000 II look like an entry level table......"
Interesting post but Micro Seiki out sourced there direct drive motors for a lot of there tables. They did not have the resources like JVC did. So it's no surprise that they concentrated on belt drive tables when the manufactures gave up on high end DD after CD's came out. I wish the CD era had been held off for a few years longer, who knows what was in the pipeline.
I recently picked up a JVC QL-A7 myself. What a beautiful table, easy to use, dead silent and it just sounds awesome. Best 250 bucks I ever spent on a TT.
BillWojo