Turntable advice / opinion on setup / sound.

@elliottbnewcombjr 

I guess Roy is good looking

If you like that sort of thing!

He is six months younger than me, but he has drifted successfully through his life, seemingly spending his money on wine, women and song while wasting the rest!  We both won industrial scholarships to help with university expenses. 

In the austerity years after WW2, when many things were rationed, we had to make do with whatever we could find, and fixing things was a national obsession.  His dad went separate ways the year after rationing stopped, which would have made life especially tough for Roy.

I like his ethics (which puns with Essex where he lives - I grew up in nearby Sussex) but have no opinion on his record spinners other than their obvious market success.  If I had the lazy cash, I’d buy his book A Vibration Measuring Machine.

In many ways, Wilson Benesch and Rega have set out to tame the vibrations that affect every part of a deck, but come at it from different ends of the market and from different approaches - empirical (Rega) versus analytical (Wilson Benesch).  I only know about Wilson Benesch from their excellent white papers and government research grants, and their home city of Sheffield is where my industrial scholarship took me.  They have an advantage over Rega - they could use computer modelling and finite element analysis from the get-go.  It is quite fascinating that they still made empirical judgements, which could only be validated when measurement techniques caught up.  That’s surely an audiophile parable. 

I am lucky enough to have Ken Kessler’s book on Quad, which was included free-of-charge with my ESL-2905 speakers, and I did meet Peter Walker at his factory.  Peter was an outstanding electrical engineer, and never made turntables.  Roy as a wise mechanical engineer has avoided electronics, leaving that to his staff.  But I digress.

@richardbrand 

he has drifted successfully through his life, seemingly spending his money on wine, women and song while wasting the rest!

Only a "waste" if you fall prey to the status quo!

If I had the lazy cash, I’d buy his book A Vibration Measuring Machine.

You're already so broke after all your success that you can't afford the forty bucks?

I am lucky enough to have Ken Kessler’s book on Quad.

I don't think he has any actual technical background whatsoever other than what the hobby has aspired him to acquire and become a hack journalist.

In many ways, Wilson Benesch and Rega have set out to tame the vibrations that affect every part of a deck, but come at it from different ends of the market and from different approaches - empirical (Rega) versus analytical (Wilson Benesch).

WB uses light weight carbon fiber monocoque to dissipate vibration in its speaker enclosures just as Rega has espoused using lightweight materials in it's turntable plinths. I wonder who thought of it first?

 They have an advantage over Rega - they could use computer modelling and finite element analysis from the get-go.

How do you know? It's been a long time since such tools required a monumental capital investment. I'm sure Terry Bateman has had it in his quiver for decades.

@richardbrand 

Thanks for the info, especially straightening me out about my assumption Rega’s cartridge mounting. (I had only glanced and seen a centerline of three holes, as I was in search of null point answers).

When I was in college, freshman year, studying Interior Design at Pratt Institute there was a lounge with many design magazines. Classmates used to go thru them, actively, sometimes desperately. I decided I wanted to find out what I would do, my solutions to the assignment, and did not want to be influenced in any way by looking at those magazines. Likewise, I did not read books about famous artists, architects, designers.

It’s become an automatic reflex. I do enjoy reading history, forgetting it as I turn the page, but I’m waiting for 3 used books I orderd (too late). Every day it’s ’Where’s My Books’

IOW, if someone gave me a book by .... I might not read it.

Sadly, waiting for these books, 1st time in 10 years, I actually read the front section of the NYTimes. I used to love reading my Sunday NYT, but had to stop in 2016. I don't watch the news, or weather.

My brother in law knows to call me if a hurricane is coming my way. When Superstorm Sandy was coming, he called me and said 'Do you know a category -- hurricane is coming. No. I'm out here in Pennsylvania trying to find a generator. I said "my credit card number is___". he found an old store that had been bypassed by a new highway, they had 2 Honda gererators, Whew, we were out of power for 8 days, luckily while he was bringing them back, I was out buying and filling 5 gal cans. Red ones sold out, I bought blue ones, made for Kerosene. 

The gas stations would not fill them, against the law, so I parked around the corner, filled my 2-1/2 gal red can, dumped it in the blue, back with the red. After we got whacked, gas stations had no power, and stupidly, they didn't have generators to run the pumps.

I couldn't get out of our neighborhood anyway, walking around my 4 blocks, 26 trees were across the roads, not to mention the others that fell in other directions.

//////////////////////////////////////

rx100, Neighborhood before and after Superstorm Sandy
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3368031
 

I try very hard not to let THE GOVERNMENT piss me off, but your story about not being allowed to fill your gas cans because they were the wrong color just sent me into a dark place.  In the teeth of a major storm no less.  Deliver me from people with that kind of mentality.

@faustuss 

Since this discussion is about turntables, could I suggest you familiarise yourself with the white paper on Wilson Benesch's Graviton tonearm.

As for knowing Roy did not have access to computer modelling from his get go, the date was around 1968.  Rega was not NASA.  I was working with state-if-the-art computing in the UK and it was very early days.  Arguably the world's first PC, the Olivetti Programma 101, had a memory capacity of 64 words.

My understanding was that Terry Bateman concentrated on electronics at Rega

In 1973, KEF became the first loudspeaker manufacturer in the world to implement the use of computers in loudspeaker design and measurement