-edible zone-
No.6435
Overview
Starting Line Arrival
Deconstruction
Beneath Decks
First Night's Spin
Listening to Plinths
Motor
System:The Tonearm Tweaks
Articles
Bookshelf Transit
The Lp Analog Playback System
Something should be said about the confluence of Music Composition,
Performance, Recording, and Playback that happened in the mid-twentieth
century.....
Post-war optimism and economic boom (later in EU
than US, but still) added to the real palpable presence of the 'Modern'
(in all genres, but most certainly jazz), which produced a kind of
bubble of musical creativity and fertility .. all geared toward a
synthesis of styles. A half-century of Popular music was confronting the
Classical canon ......... Delta Blues had come chugging up the
underground railroad toward Chicago.....classical composers were
'quoting' elements of folk or popular..... 'Race Records' began to
affect the mainstream..... Every pop genre was confronting every
other--- bigband, swing, jump, blues, vaudeville, jungle, broadway,
bebop----- were converging.
Add a World-war to the mix, and
things managed to get even smaller...... take American vaudeville, for
example, and annex French chanson, British musichall, and German
kabaret. Add Hawaiian, Boogie-Woogie, Hillbilly, Neopolitan, Western,
Yiddish, Hungarian, Polynesian, North African, Flamenco--- a million
colors were brought into the new postwar blend.
It was often only
an insistent rhythmic motif, a jingle or trill here or there, but it was
all now in the mix. Andrews Sisters would knit a military 'reveille'
into a swing tune. Django Reinhardt had taken swing and made French hot
jazz out of it... Bing Crosby would whistle a cowboy lullabye in a
negro-spiritual inspired vocal track.... Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and
others would take Gospel music into a parallel universe and Soul would
emerge.... Bebop, for one, in it's free-flight solos, felt free to
"quote" any 8 or 16 bars of anything, for effect, association, comment,
or irony, in the middle of a larger composition. Sonny Rollins would
toss off a couple bars of 'Santa Claus Is Comin To Town' mid-solo, like
he was daydreaming..... And significantly, a cross-cultural whirlwind
was being slowly fired up at the Sun Studios, in Memphis, Tennessee.
On the recording side, electrical recording had been practiced since
the twenties commercially, and really came into it's own with the
institution of the Long-Play 33rpm twelve-inch microgroove. Records were
routinely "cut" on-site by the resident mastering engineer, rather than
being sent to an outside source, as is done today. One track, one
groove, one sound. Mono was then the norm, you have to remember, not a
"choice". Before commercial stereo arrived in the mid-fifties, what we
now call "mono" was originally referred to as "sound recording". Period.
Add to this the golden-era professional audio gear -- Neumann
condenser mikes, Studer transports, RCA Ribbon-mikes, Ortofon Cutting
Lathes, Telefunken tubes, etc etc etc........ And you've got a
convergence that wouldn't really happen again till four or five beatles
found that you could do surprising things with a four-track tape
machine, and blow everybody's minds.....
Moving ahead in time to
our topic here, and just to set the record straight, as regards the
resurgence of Idler Drive tables... The postwar era of course produced
the Long-Play Microgroove record, and it initially was driven by
idler-coupled motor. The resurgence would happen quite a bit later, but
is still with us now.
Renaissance
It
happened sometime in the early eighties in Japan, and was notably
imported to the west by the French 'ultra-fi' practitioners who were
already in pursuit of transformer-coupled vacuum tube amplification by
then, as were the Japanese. A well-placed audio journalist named Jean
Hiraga began to write about all of it, and it became a central part of
their movement's "Sound". Along with twelve-inch arms, Spu cartridges,
field-coil speakers, mono lp recordings, and other practices even by
then (80s) considered very much anachronistic...
Regrets to
current self-appointed originators, and other present-day auteurs, but
this is one of those Populist (albeit niche) Groundswell Movements that
we're probably just not ever going to be able to 'credit' any one
individual with.
It's one stop short of hilarious to credit
anyone on the current scene with the innovation of renouncing compliant
coupling for turntables, and installing heavy Idler Drives into
high-mass stacked-ply plinths, utilizing the classic transcription arms
and cartridges. It was originally done long long ago, and probably
better off having no exact provenance, which would only narrow down what
might be deemed acceptable anyway.
Tonearm Considerations
Too
much Introduction, but, alright, here we go :
The Tonearm itself can
be said to "triangulate" the dynamic elements of the full phonographic
system : The steady onward rush of musical wave ( groove modulations )
provided by the transport system -- meeting the sonic transducer of the
cartridge-- a language translator, of sorts, and the successful
interaction of all under the management of the arm's capabilties.
Getting this beast together took me nine months. The objective here
was a 12" transcription arm to complement my gray Garrard 301 and to
(eventually) be able to accomodate an Ortofon Spu head. I wanted
something period-appropriate and not clinical sounding, and that put the
current 12" Sme, Ikeda and others to the rear of the running. So it was
really the Sme 3012, or the Ortofon 309, which wouldn't have been wrong,
either. The beautifully made Fidelity Research I reluctantly ruled out
as fiendishly expensive, some kind of uber-cult item at this point,
though an extraordinary arm, designed by Ikeda-san before there was an
Ikeda tonearm as such.
Much was researched amongst the Ortofon
and Sme long arms. A critical component turned out to be the vintage &
materials-composition. The knife-edge bearing, of the Sme, for example,
could be steel, nylon, or retro-fitted with a bronze knifedge available
today. The prevailing opinion from many sources was that, if you could
get it, the Steel Knife-edge yeilded the most natural yet concise,
broadband tone. Also entering the fray was the armtube composition, with
the Stainless Steel of the heavy Series One 3012 being the preferred
edition. So it narrowed to the Sme 3012/I or the classic Ortofon Rmg
309, the tonearm built for the Ortofon Spu cartridge.
As I
continued to weigh the variables, it eventually came to this: I was
looking for an arm to eventually mount an Spu, but didn't want to hinder
the ability to mount other cartridges. Both arms are heavy and meant for
low compliance cartridges, so that sets up a slight limitation for
starters. The SME was simply more adept at supporting other cartridges
as well as the Spu, and had flexibility with the rider weight
configuration for various and sundry carts, present and future. So the
Sme it was to be. Series One and perfect condition, please. Alright,
they're thirty years old, very good condition.
What took forever
was the search for the basic arm (found in N. California) and then the
missing or inadequate parts. Ended up with rider weights manufactured by
a guy in Holland, an early Series Two bias arm from Uk (can't be seen in
photo), and a very nice, expensive, & appropriately mass-y Fidelity
Research headshell also from northern California.
The tricky
thing here is that I really couldn't find much on the Series One arms
(got manual from Vinyl Engine, though) and wasn't entirely sure if they
would even be able to balance carts like my Benz L2 @ 9g., considering
the enormous stock counterweight and rider-weight. This arm was from the
era of giant war-of-the-worlds carts and heads like the Spu @ circa
40g., and I certainly wasn't about to start adding a 30 gram
extra-weight to balance.
The answer came together in the form of
the circa 20 gram FR headshell FRS3, and oddly enough, from the fact
that the 3012 arm I came up with had no rider weight at all. Lots of
emaillage -- Thanks to Holger Trass and Brian Kearns-- got me more info
on the whole Sme universe, but still no absolute solution. What I ended
up with, though, was to go with a pair of Series Two Improved style
riderweights, turned by the the Dutch guy for not-too-crazy a price, and
I think it worked.
(One Series One single-weight would have been
too much for my current cartridges, and the Sme Series Two "split"
weight doesn't allow both riders to move independently. My unorthodox
arrangement does, and with both onboard gets up to that Spu mass
neighborhood.)
I've found a suitable ingot for a bias weight
(under hexkey in photo), which I'll use till I stop seeing thirty-dollar
prices for a dead weight on a string.... For what it's worth, the Series
One wasn't originally designed with a bias weight system in the first
place, though a mickey-mouse add-on arrangement was later brought out.
At any rate, all I need is a length of monofilament and I'm in business.
I heard a rumor that the original bias line was a stainless filament...
but in this case a 2 lb weight mono line worked out.
Why The Twelve Inch Tonearm
It's
not just 'slightly reduced distortion' at the peaks of the tracking
arc...... although a twenty-eight percent reduction at the null points
doesn't strike me as minor at all .....
It's an altogether more
benign tracking curve which not only achieves Big Distortion Reduction
at the peaks, but manages a much closer adherence to tracking fidelity
throughout it's distincly flatter arc.
So in general terms, with
distortion and tracking error always somewhere in the picture, you can
at least dial it down. If tracking an Lp can be like driving through a
desert sand storm, not only is the sandstorm reduced with the longer arm
as much as that 28-percent-down figure at the nulls, but the intensity
of the storm is lowered along the whole drive.
A better, more
civilized trip overall. Or something. Possible drawbacks, of course, are
alignment accuracy, construction rigidity, and the higher effective mass
isn't right for all cartridges. Consider this one, though : A 12" arm
puts your armbase three inches of solid plinth real-estate further from
noise sources like spindlebearing and motor. Another overall win in
building a quiet, high-resolution system.
Twelve Inch Arm Sound Considerations
There's an undeniable ease and confidence in the sound of the
Twelve-Inch Arm.
Having heard numerous inter-combinations of this
gear by now --(koetsu black and benz L2 on sme 3012 arm, benz & koetsu
on graham (9"), vice-versa, and now spu meister silver on sme.... )--
and considering I regard the Graham as a high-caliber no-slouch arm ---
I'll say that it's the Geometry advantage of the 12" arm that really
works for the "inevitability" or "confidence" aspects reliably heard in
the sound. And that's no matter which of the cartridges is mounted.
Much as lp analog sound avoids a coarse glaze of 'fatigue'
(vis-à-vis the same material on cd)---- so too does the 12 inch arm
remove a bit of 'concern' in the sound and, certainly, the loss of inner
or outer tracking distortion artifacts. Recall too, that --for
idler-drives--- the arm-mount is that three inches further-from-motor
than with a nine-inch...... the advantage is heard, although this
lowered-concern factor is one of those don't-notice-it-till-it's-removed
things. Once you go back again, the regular 9" rendition feels a little
'cramped' after the expansiveness you hear with the longer arm.
I
think you want to differentiate between Arm Geometry producing better or
worse alignment characteristics -- and 'User Set-Up Error' producing
better or worse alignment charcacteristics.
That's where people get
lost on this one, and it's easy to do. There are those (me, once--) that
for some reason assume that it's extra difficult to set up and
accurately align a 12" as compared to doing the same for a 9".
It
is not.
Somebody, somewhere along the line, though, decided they
could un-sell everybody on 12" arms (might this have been someone with a
money-interest in 9" arms-- or, even more likely, in small tables that
couldn't support a 12" arm anyway ?) ... by making the 'smaller-arm,
smaller-error' claim.
What they were claiming was that a similar
error in Set-Up would produce a small error in the nine-inch, but-- a
large error in a twelve-inch. Which, by their analysis, would vitiate
any Arm Geometry claim the 12" might have had in regard to lowered
tracking error. All that is either misleading or outright wrong, though.
What needs to be known about 12" arms is that most turntables cannot
support them. So they'll never really have a broad-based support group
amongst the 'expertise' merchants that also, by the way, need to sell
"most turntables" ....... The critical science is that vastly lower 28%
Tracking Error Reduction is achieved by 12" arms as compared to the
standard nine-inch.
The listening evidence is that you hear a
more relaxed-while-resolved sonic with the 12" arm, complete with lesser
listener-cramp at the off-nulls in the tracking path. More of a
'confident' sound, and ... 12" arms are, in fact, more tolerant of
alignment errors than shorter arms--- start with the fact that the
longer arm has a mathematically-provable reduction in error. You could
actually misalign the cartridge, which would eat up some of that redux,
and still come out ahead.
If you can accurately align a Tonearm,
though, you can accurately align a 12" Tonearm.
So what it comes
down to is the Ikeda, the Sme, the Ortofon or the Fidelity Research
models. (There are current reiterations of the the Twelve Inch design
available, but they tend to be re-worked variations of the Ortofon.)
*
James Donahue, 2006
