Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Don't really know why I continue to use the clamp (as a record weight, really). Probably it has something to do with a deep-seated insecurity, perhaps some fear that if not weighted down, the LP will rise from the platter like a flying saucer. I am going to try to go cold turkey on it. The "speed controller" you are trying out - is it an AC synthesizer type? If so, does it have phase adjustment? If not, try flipping the wall plug; you may find that one orientation of the plug sounds better than the other.

Hi Lew, I hope yout records haven't flown off into space since you removed the clamp/weight!! I have tried all sorts of electrical tricks with the Lenco motors so far over the years and have found no difference. I'll wait for a motor controller with phase adjustments, simply flipping the plug results in no difference to my ear. The Speed Controller I am playing with doesn't have these adjustents handy anyway, I'll propose it to Sander.

On the Lenco adventure front, I brought over my Demo Lenco (Giant Glass-Reinforced Direct Coupled standard L75) back to the fellow living in Montreal on a sunny "summer" day (22C and ah the beauty of the women and the food!!!), he of the 100-pound acrylic/lead/glass French belt-drive, and I thought I would have to fight him to get the Lenco out of there! He was grinning from ear to ear to hear Harry Belafonte Live at Carnegie Hall (one of the TAS must-have reference LPs), it is SO great to see a Music Lover (first) and audiophile (second), simply playing discs with musical presentation foremost in his mind (all the other LPs he played were just ordinary pressings, Deutsch Grammophone, CBS and so on). This is the fellow who was obssessing over the gestalt the Lenco achieved, and not the usual qualities of detail and slam (though he was delighted with these too). He's asked for one and wants to tool around Montreal showing it off to others in their systems, so the Idler Revolution is poised to sweep Montreal too!

I stopped by another audiophile's place who was curious (a Blue Circle/Monitor Audio system), and he found the Lenco to have vastly better bass, realism and even detail than his Audiomeca Mephisto CD player, and he has asked as well for a second helping, to be arranged in the future.

On my Personal Audio Journey, I have found THE Speakers of my Lifetime, in the form of a pair of antique-looking Electro-Voice speakers in relatively enormous cabinets (about half the size of a fridge, and with filigree wooden grills with arches looking like a Turkish bath-house or wooden cathedral). They are made up of a pair of alnico-magnetted 12" dual concentric drivers, augmented by a pair of roughly 18"-long horn-loaded Electro-Voice tweeters, with an Electro-Voice X-8 crossover, looking very impressive in a square power-transformer-sized potted case. WHAT sound, I have NEVER heard bass like this, not from subwoofers or from extremely high-end systems with woofer towers, I don't know how it is done! Of course, it is very high sensitivity, and it has those fab alnico magnets (reputedly anyway, will have to do more research). The PRESENCE was astounding, only being beaten with the actual instruments by the actual musicians could beat it, I have NEVER heard anything like it! The PRaT was Reference quality, the SLAM unbelievable, but the quality of the bass, the extreme detail, definition and speed, and the reach and POWER was simply unbelievable, in all these senses well above what I have ever heard, and by a HUGE margin. The midrange, highs, lows were all stunning, detail could have been better, in some ways more detailed than what I have heard (hearing some things I have never heard), in others less (not hearing some things clearly which were clearer in other systems), but I believe rewiring and careful reassembly will improve this aspect. All this played via a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco (this the secret of the bass, as only an idler can retrieve this sort of bass information and POWER) mounted with a Grado PLatinum on a MAS 282 tonearm, played via a Sony TAE-5450 preamp, and through budget ASL Wave 20 monoblocks, cheapies, still can't understand how that BASS emerged from this. All this shows that bass is not a tube weakness (relative to solid state), but instead that tubes require the proper speakers to show just how good their bass is (i.e. vintage and not modern designs)! The build quality of the Electro-Voice drivers has to be seen to be believed, the "legs" of the woofer basket are 1" cross-sectional castings! I'll take photos of the drivers and place them next to modern high-end drivers to show/reveal the concept of "Progress".

Of course, all these astounding sonic and musical qualities were there to be heard due to the presence of the source, the Mighty Lenco. Thinking about progress, I pondered the fact that this was a Fifties/Sixties high-end system: large Electro-Voice speakers (making the giant-screen TV in the room look suddenly much less large and cheapish/toyish) with tubes, and backed-up by an idler-wheel drive. The PRESENCE was SO FAR above what I have ever heard from ANY system it was laughable (not to mention that supernatural bass), we have given up a tremendous amount in the search for "information", i.e. controlled detail, digital-inspired "neutrality" which is in fact music stripped of music to end up being sound. Add to that the move to tiny slim cabinets with tiny woofers: speakers get smaller and smaller in the search for domestic harmony - unobtrusiveness - while TV screeens get larger and larger, showing that the search for domestic harmony has nothing to do with unobtrusiveness but instead simple arbitrary fashion, as the TVs are anything but unobtrusive these days! This vintage system (admittedly with the idler-problems stripped away and the Idler Potential realized, which it wasn't back in the day) was like being immersed in MASSIVE tidal waves of music, washing endlessly with endless power over the listeners. Almost too much, sensory overload!!! A guy could get addicted to this :-). WARNING, this could lead to the end of marriages and family life, exposure will have to be restricted and controlled.

Anyway, though I have found the speakers I want to marry ;-), I'm not out of the woods yet, as I haven't the sound-room needed to set them up, NO WAY they can be assimilated into apartment living (I'd be evicted after the first night of listening), and not where I currently am either. So it looks like I'll have to settle down, abandon my Gypsy ways (after my next trip ;-)) and buy a house (with a BIG soundroom)!

Anyway, working on that Lenco vs SME 30 showdown, I'll take this challenge seriously enough to take over the best I currently have, rather than my Bauhaus Lenco I'll bring my own Reference Ultra Lenco (almost too large and heavy to even consider carrying, but Mass is Class) with JMW or RS-A1 tonearm, and appropriate cartridge. In the meantime, have fun all, I'll be listening to those Electro-Voice speakers at my buddy's place later this week (where they currently reside), I can't wait!!! Have fun all!

Those great speakers of the 50s have never gone out of fashion for some and are now in a mini-Renaissance of sorts, as more and more folks tire of modern, constricted, and dead sounding "hi-fi" speakers that need 250W of transistor power to make them move at all, because they generally present a very low input impedance which is anathema to any good tube amp, in addition to being ridiculously inefficient. Other good bets (besides Electro-Voice) are Altec Lansing, early JBL, Bogen, Klipsch. I plan to give one of these a try myself in a second all DIY system.

Recently came across a pair of orphaned Electro-Voice EVS-16Bs - technically a bookshelf speaker from the early 1960s, but with a full cone 12" woofer, they'd easily pass as floor standers. After refoaming, rewiring and recapping, these sweet things have easily supplanted by workbench Rectilinears. Tremendously clear two-octave midrange comes out of the 5" Danish made mid-range cones. I believe the tweeters are also Danish. The Michigan made woofer is a pleasure, ready to thump when called upon.
The crossover is geared a little to the bright side, but not unpleasantly so.

On the idler front, my first summer overhaul is in progress - a Lenco B-52 - of all things. Ironically this lightweight platter/bearing design has a much better topplate for plinth coupling than the latter-day heavyweights (thicker and panless) – so I’m going to see what treatments I can come up with and then enclose it all into a huge boxed plinth with dustcover (plinth within a plinth). An entry-level Lenco, to be sure, but I’m hoping for a bit of stealth in this re-armed B-52.

Then it’s on to the Big American Idlers where I think I’ve come up with a way to incorporate on-the-fly fine pitch motor control. It’s in my head, anyway.

It’s house clean-out time. Get down to those thrifts and rubberneck those yard sales. There’s still plenty of treasure to found out there!

- Mario

One of the biggest problems with the Lenco (this being relative, as membership in Lenco Lovers now hovers around 1000) is just how incredible-"y" good it is. I use the word "incredible" literally and accurately, as it describes the problems audiophiles and music-lovers have believing the reports of the Lenco Mightiness, which so far FAR outstrips every legendary belt-drive, Direct Drive and even Idler-Wheel Drive so far thrown against it, up to the $20K barrier, this being the ceiling it has hit so far in its quest for definition. By "definition" I mean as in an idea of just how good the Lenco really is, where it measures up. Best in the World? Good as a $30K turntable? Good as a $40K turntable?!? Good as a $100K turntable????!!???? Better than a $100K belt-drive (only belt-drives so far reaching these stratosperic price points)!!??!!??

Now audiophiles and music lovers have to bear something in mind, which I have always emphasized, and which has always represented a significant roadblock/wall in the Irresistable Lenco's Path: if the humble Lenco may be better than the best belt-drive in the world, it is NOT because claims for the Lenco are exaggerated, or a reflection of how literally unbelievably good this particular not-so-impressive 'table is, but instead that the drive system - which just happens to be the most evolved idler-wheel drive ever manufactured - is quite simply superior to the belt-drive system AS A SYSTEM, which in turn means the Lenco is inherently superior to belt-drives because it is not a belt-drive, but instead an idler-wheel drive. Which is where "inherent" comes in. Like pitting a car with round tires against a car with square tires: the round-tired car will win every time, even if in every other respect the square-tired car is its superior. To reiterate, it is not that the Lenco is so good, but that the drive system which the Lenco uses - Idler Wheel Drive - is so good. It's just that the Lenco is the most evolved idler-wheel drive ever manufactured, if not the best/most impressively-built (the EMTs make it look like crap). But, to caution against yet more undeserved conclusions, though the Garrards and EMTs (especially) make the Lencos look like relative crap, the Lenco design (vertical idler-wheel and relatively light platter) ensures that the main bearings remain practically pristine/untouched (no lateral push/friction, mimimal wear) ensuring decades of reliable use, the idler-wheels themselves practically NEVER show signs of wear (the metal ones in fact never in my experience), and the massive motors can be relied on as well for decades, or centuries (considering 40 years of use, another guaranteed forty years after reconditioning, we're not so far away from a century), of use. The platters of course do not wear out.

Well, finally, we will have a showdown between the Lenco and a $40K turntable, that being the SME 30. This means more than the $40K price tage suggests, as the SME 30, despite being less than half the price of some of its competitors, is considered by some The Best Turntable in the World. But, this SME 30 has been modified to accept the Graham Phantom tonearm. Now, if I were to mount a simple Rega RB-300 tonearm on a smaller Lenco, which well might outstrip even the SME 30 (I have a feeling that the EMT 930, outstripped by the 100-pound Ultra Lenco, would itself make mincemeat of the SME 30), then the usual problems with credibility would arise, and this would show as well a certain amount of disrespect, which while useful in the early days of Da Original Thread (there was nothing to lose and everything to gain as the idler-wheel system was Bottom of the Drive System Heap, and the Lenco was bottom of THAT heap, and so disrespect and outrageousness had great PR value), is no longer so useful or constructive now. So, I will consequently take this Showdown VERY seriously: I have bought a SME IV tonearm (used, of course ;-)) to mount on my best Lenco, the 100-pound Giant Direct Coupled Glass-Reinforced Ultra Lenco. The fellow who owns the SME 30 is admirably in search of the simnple truth, he is simply curious and interested, and is not threatened in the least by this comparison. What a chance is given here, and to him we should all be eternally grateful!!

So, today I mount the SME IV to my Ultra Lenco, and I will play with the variety of cartridges I have to see which will be included in the demo. I may even buy a cartridge specially for the comparison. I'll also lift weights and train in preparation for carrying this monster around :-).

Speaking of lifting weights, it looks like my Leak Stereo 20 will be ready this week, which means schlepping the monstrous E-Vs back to my own listening room, I have no idea how I got those monsters into the basement of my buddy's place all alone (he has a broken leg, lucky him ;-), must have eaten my wheaties that day! Not looking forward to lugging them UP the stairs, MEDIC!! But O the Sound I look forward to! If the E-V sound SO incredible with budget tube stuff, how much better with the legendary Leak?!? I feel faint!

Good luck in finding/choosing a good vintage system Lew, I'm sure you'll be loving every minute of it!! And great to hear you having so much fun Mario, thanks as always for backing me up in my outrageous claims! I'll be opening up and dissecting my E-Vs to write accurately on the drivers and their standing, and may do some things to improve the crossover, wiring and cabinet too. Have fun all, and back later with more Lenco/Idler news!!