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Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

“For those who want the moon but can't afford it or those who can afford it but like to have fun and work with their hands, I'm willing to give out a recipe for a true high-end 'table which is easy to do, and fun to make as sky's the limit on design/creativity! The cost of materials, including 'table, is roughly $200 (depending, more or less), and add to that a Rega tonearm. The results are astonishing. I'll even tell/show you how to make chipboard look like marble and fool and impress all your friends. If there's interest I'll get on with this project, if not, I'll just continue making them in my basement. The next one I make will have a Corian top and have a zebra stripe pattern! Fun! Any takers?”

The Lead in “Da Thread” as posted by Johnnantais - 2-01-04

Let the saga continue. Sail on, oh ships of Lenco!
mario_b
oregon
807 posts
 
Jean and Rick,
Thanks for allowing us to hear about your findings. I agree that the Lenco is superb where musicality thrives- the midrange. Most likely due to stability of speed. Of course, the highs and lower frequencies are powerful, defined and clear.
The Denon 103s have impressed me, but now I find that the Dynavector 17D III has opened up the sounstage- bloom and depth- to another level.
The 17D is an excellent cart.
Have a great Summer ya'll!
mgreene
107 posts
 
I had never heard that HP recommends 47K but I have always wondered about folks that say that such and such a cartridge sounds better loaded at 50 ohms or 100 ohms. They always sound better to me at 47K - I even built a fancy resistor switching scheme into my preamp but after the first few tries, I never used it again. It makes me wonder if the loading down an MC is something that works in bright (SS) systems.

Mike
mario_b OP
147 posts
 
Hi Jean,
The shoot-out sounds great. It'll certainly be interesting if and when Peter's plate enters the fray. But getting back to our stock top plates....
Can you tell us a little more about the marine grade glass epoxy that you’re using on the underside of the top plate? Is a fast or slow cure? I take it that you invert the top plate; level it, then fill it “to the rim”. Obviously, you’ve got “dikes” of some sort to prevent the resin from flowing to “no go” areas like the idler/speed control assembly. Do you use a putty for this. Any brand names?
All best,
Mario
gadfly's avatar
gadfly
194 posts
 
This seems more like a personal blog space than anything else.
lewm
12,456 posts
 
Dear Jean, I know that I sound like a nattering nabob of negativism (thank you, Spiro Agnew's speech writer), but very widely experienced analoguistas like Raul have written on this site that the tonearm/cartridge combo has far more to do with the "flavors" of the resulting sound from an LP than does the table per se. I take Raul very seriously in this instance since he owns a staggering array of tables, arms, and cartridges and seems to play with different combinations of them ad nauseam. Therefore, the experiment conducted by you and Rick is at least as much a comparison of the respective tonearms and cartridges as it is a comparison of two turntables, if not moreso. (I will disagree with Raul to the extent that I heard a huge difference when I moved my one and only Triplanar and Koetsu Urushi from my Notts Hyperspace to my giant direct-coupled Lenco.) Would it be possible at least to swap the two cartridges between the two set-ups and re-evaluate?
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