Does any Audiogon member have a Holbo air-bearing turntable?

My eight Sorbothane hemispheres arrived a couple of days ago.  Turns out they do have the 3M self-adhesive bottoms that the local office knew nothing about.  They are very black, very squishy and very,very sticky.  If you found them washed up on a seashore, you’d throw them back in the drink.

There was an option for water resistant ones coated in polyurethane!

Obviously they are much less expensive than something similar encased in stainless steel cans with fancy names ...

It really is amazing what some of these simple, easy to get products can do in relation to the audiofool stuff that costs an arm and a leg!  Trust your ears and not the wallet! 

Finally I got my new Holbo home. 

First, I had to assemble the SolidSteel S3-3 stand which was still sealed in its factory packing.  The instructions could have come from Ikea.  Fortunately I noticed there were three different lengths of connections.  I decided to make up the bottom shelf with its screw-on spikes and was going well until one of the spikes rolled down a crack in my 3-seater reclining leather lounge, which might as well have been a black hole.

A gotcha with the rack is that the top shelf is held on by round threaded plates with nothing to grip on except their flat faces.  I hand tightened by rotating the tube below, repeating downward for each shelf.  Next morning I threw the black hole on its backside and lo and behold it disgorged the remaining spike.

Next, the eight Sorbothane hemispheres were positioned diagonally on the top shelf and I added the two sandstone slabs, separated by a sheet of damping.

Next came the Holbo, which I had unpacked a couple of times before.  It comes almost completely assembled.  You just have to add the tone arm balance weight and the rubber drive band.  And a cartridge, of course.

So I set it on the top slab, putting its three aluminium pucks under its three spiked feet.

By this time, the hemispherical Sorbothane thingos had squished down from over 25-mm to under 15-mm and looked like flattened doughnuts.  They allow gentle movement of the 70-kg sitting on them.

The Holbo has to be pretty level, and its three feet are oddly arranged.  One is centred near the back, one is centred near the right, but the third is front left.  There is a drawing of a foot being adjusted with the supplied screwdriver, but in reality the screwdriver is used as a capstan lever with holes positioned around each foot.  Good for sailors.

I figured it made sense to get the back and left feet adjusted first.  Cunningly aligning my 1.2-m German level with the approximate direction of the feet, I capstanned away at the front foot until it showed level.  Never one to totally trust a spirit-level I flipped it to check the bubble position, Same as before - German you see.  Then I just had to repeat with the right foot, adjusting against the left one and checking against the back one.

Now to hook up the power / air supply using the supplied electric cable and soft plastic air tube.  That’s when I discovered one of the ferrules for the air tube was missing.  Maybe I lost it in Sydney.  Anyway, the tube stayed put on its prong without the ferrule, so I was almost in business.

Time to fit a cartridge, which Holbo makes easy because although the tone arm is captive, it can be loosened and rotated about its long axis. My Shure V15 type III was lying around, so I threaded up the mounting bolts but could not fit the nuts.  The Holbo cartridge mounting pad is about 3-mm thicker than a fixed SME head-shell and the only bolts I had were not quite long enough.

It was too late on Saturday to go shopping and the nearest proper HiFi store did not open on Sunday.  I did try a big hardware store but they start at M3 size bolts, and JB HiFi, which started out selling records and CDs, has all but converted to being a pure white-goods seller.

There was one thing I could still do.  When aligning the tone arm, Holbo instructions are to leave the air running, remove the drive belt and then place the heavy supplied puck on one side of the platter.

I was not sure if this was to double check the level, but it turns out the weight is sufficient to overcome the air pressure and ground the platter, effectively locking it in place.

At this point I spotted the missing ferrule lying on the carpet!  To be continued ...

Found this post in my search for cleaning tips for the metall shaft which the arm slides on. Registrered just to post this 😄

@richardbrand how did it go? Are you enjoying your turntable? 

@pal_gunnestad 

Are you enjoying your turntable?

It has revolutionised (pun intended) my listening.  As a platform, it does everything I could ask from a turntable / arm combination. So much so, it set me off on a path to find a cartridge worthy of it, landing on a DS Audio optical cartridge.  This in turn led to a new phono stage from SoulNote that handles MM, MC and optical cartridges.  The full saga to date is here Audiogon Discussion Forum. So the extras more than doubled my original Holbo investment.

Can you tell me about your involvement with Holbo?  I think I can count the number of owners here on the fingers of one hand, with some fingers left over!

I don't have any cleaning tips for the arm bearing shaft, which I believe is machined to an accuracy of 10-microns.  It seems to be important to reduce dust, and my Holbo came with a square, white, micro-fibre cloth which can be laid over the exposed shaft when not in use (I often forget).  I do not have a dust cover, but I cover the whole unit with a black velveteen cloth.  I can't imagine doing that with the delicate SME 3009 tonearm on my Garrard 301 deck.

Overall, I am getting sounds from records (mainly classical) that I would never have believed possible.

I can check for possible stiction between the arm and the shaft by reducing the tracking force to zero, which eliminates friction with the lifting bar.  With the air supply on, and the drive belt removed, I can gently blow the arm from one side to the other - it returns to the centre because of the weight of the Litz wires and that tiny air tube.  Alternately, very slight adjustments of the shaft angle move the arm from side to side.  I have never seen any sign of stiction, but my first approach would be to gently dust with that micro-fibre cloth.