A Picture Of My Heavily Modified AR XA Turntable

[jayman67]

I think this is all getting rather silly.
You 2 obviously hate the tt so your never going to say anything good about it.
As I said before I'd really love to hear a good dd turntable just do I can make my own mind up.
For now I'll just carry on listening to my lp12 and enjoying it,apart from any piano solos
Later down the line I'd also like to hear a Nottingham analogue spacedeck,dare I ask you doc what you think of them?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

My dislike of the LP12 is a poor second to my dislike of the company and the owner, and my even poorer third is the irritation with all the people who fell for it.

People have been trying to shut me up about it for over 40years, at one point in the mid 80's I was talked into becoming a fringe member of the bullshit but just couldn't do it being too honest a person. It started in the early 70's with me defending Hamish, but all I had was word of mouth and it started the fantasy that I am a nutter as Ivor went about creating his control of the industry. And at one stage I was almost a lone voice, but by the wonders of the web more and more people are finding out the truth, and more and more people are questioning their choice of turntable and breaking through the brainwash.

I will NEVER shut up about it.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Jayman, the LP12 is better than some cheap TT even a rim drive like a BSR or Garrard SP25. The problem for me is i tend to ignore anything good about it as I cannot abide its character that it surplants on all music. It is that character and the perception that it is right and not the truth that it is an anomaly and distortion of reality that IS the basis of the flat earth. Once brainwashed into it you then *now* that character is right and everything else was wrong. They used this to try and put down CD when it was launched. The most hilarious thing I have heard was an owner saying listening to a band live was not as good and foot tapping as listening to them on his LP12

I have very little experience of Notts jobby and never done direct comparisons, what I have heard was OK to good but still belt drive problems. There is a musso who used to post on the forums but now very rarely does called Grommit. I use to (when he was in London) visit a lot and I used him as ears as they are very good ones. He went from LP12 to Spacedeck, then I took him around my 1210, he preferred it, then I took him round my PL71 when I first got it. It was a bit of shock for him and he bought one. This put him on a DD search and found a Sony he preferred to the PL71, can't remember the number (6750?). But he made the journey from a brainwashed flat earther to discovering what crap it all is and how bad the LP12 is in reality.

[_D_S_J_R_]

Back in 1998, I first heard a Spacedeck, fitted with with RB300 and K9 compared to a then up to date LP12/Ittok/K9 using the same stylus on each deck. The Spacedeck out-Linn'd the LP12 in every department, tunefulness, rhythm, clarity and perspective and it wasn't a small difference. I've NEVER heard an RB300 sing so musically as it does on an NAS deck either, which is why I defend it when everyone else is slagging it off for sounding 'grey.' My mind was already open to this as the year before, I was up at Linn, where they cut an acetate of a couple of favourite Blue Nile tracks at 45rpm on their Sculley twin-belt driven lathe (The Tinseltown/Regret 12" master-tape being a 30IPS half inch tape, no noise reduction and played on I believe, an ATR 102 machine). The acetate sounded good when played on their demo LP12/Ittok/Troika, but more importantly, the 12" 45rpm single (an adaptor was used, this before the Lingo) sounded truly dire, the emotion, clarity and precision of the original master being lost. The 33rpm LP track of Tinseltown was laughably bad in comparison. When I quizzed Ivor's then number 2 about it, the response was "Vinyl is crap, our crap is better than everyone else's crap, but it's still crap!"

Make of the above what you will. the Spacedeck made vinyl records sound more like the acetate did originally and the bigger and better NAS decks refined it further - I ended up with a Mentor, a beast of a thing to have wall mounted as the weight is around 90lb complete. Bearing in mind the whole long-held piano note issue and comments made about the original Dias turntable back in the late 70's and the end-joined silicon belt that barely stretches over the years, I believe I recommended an AceSpace (updated bearing and so on over the original and better finished) with a heavy kit to increase the platter mass, as well as having the superior graphite platter which all but removes thuds if a record is tapped when playing.

My own Mentor had its own arm and the Microscanner cartridge. Amazing it was, until the Decca committed suicide and I couldn't afford to get it fixed. The mentor arm needed some tweaking too and once again, I was paying a high mortgage at the time and had no extra funds to update it. I kept the Decca, finally getting it fixed ten years ago and all but gave away the Mentor, which hurt. A couple of years ago, the chap who took the deck from me still had it, although the arm had changed a few times since.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

So you agree with Grommit, the Spacedeck is better than the LP12. So how much of your and other "experts" time does it require to make it work properly next to none. Well that means at least it was designed properly in the first place.

[_D_S_J_R_]

Current LP12's are far better toleranced in the plinth than they were and this has a massive effect on set up. They all but fall together now compared to my time in the 80's. It was thanks to hifi dave that I discovered Notts Analogue maker (I remember Tom Fletcher from his original Dias days, but his was at least ten years previously and he was shafted too by his then distributor I seem to recall).

Anyway, I understand the Rega RP1 is a total giant killer it's so good. The new version about to be looks amazing and for under £250 it should cream anything Pro-ject make. And no, I'm not comparing with a used forty year old classic direct drive - I think the best loved ones are going for rather more these days

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Why do you keep talking about latest LP12. As there are damn few about at their latest stupid price, are you expecting something from them. The LP12s everyone here and elsewhere have are the CRAP one.

So now your shilling for Rega and Hi-Fi Dave again are you

[_D_S_J_R_]

The RP1 is one of the cheapest bloody decks out there and the dealer profit margin on one might buy a nice pub lunch for two! They're available all over and the sonic performance is very good indeed, despite the low price and probably better than an 80's LP12 for all I know.

Bloody hell, you tell me off for not talking about other products and when I do I'm shilling them. I'm only here because I have a need to share my hobby interests

[The Permed One]

Yeh their cheap alright

[Daniel Quinn]

Anybody who says I understand such and such is a giant killer is clearly shilling . You have not heard it so why mention it !!!

And I really am buggered as to why a rega can be that much better than a project , same mdf base , same ac motor , adequate arms , same well engineered but cheap bearing .