HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

I built this for a friend
just finished it apart from a little bit of tweakery.
it was a gl69, its not really now, just the dna is left

Gl69 one off by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

It has an acos lustre gst1 on it at the moment,although i'll be keeping the acos if he has found a different arm before its collected. if not, the acos will stand in until a suitable arm is located.

Gl69 one off by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

a slightly different character to the 75, i think a little more musical in some ways, steel platter means mm carts, no biggie, im of a glen croft sort of mind when it comes to mc carts,a love hate relationship. and nigel who it is for uses mm carts too. but not this bloody awful at 3600 in the photos. its nasty, but suffices for testing it.

Gl69 one off by anthony cresswell, on Flickr

turned out nice

That is stunning. I have often wondered about getting a gl75 and having this sort of thing done. How much ballpark are we talking to have a similar design on a 75?

That's lovely!

Its a bit of a different take on lenco's, rather than keeping the original looks, i built what i wanted to and tried to address the shortcomings I saw in the original design and layout
It started with a 75 a few years ago that I did the same to, my dad has that one.

The 69 and 72 get overshadowed by the 75, the running gear is the same, but the bearing is smaller and the platter steel instead of alloy. Interestingly the steel platter seems alot less resonant than the alloy 75 platter and the mat damps it alot better.

Im glad I did this one, the 69 doesnt seem any worse than the 75 in any area tbh. They seem to get a bit overlooked cos of the steel platter, but other than not being ideal for an mc cart I cant see any reason why now I've compared it with my 75. People are abit sniffy if they cant use an mc cart perhaps?

I built it because he asked me ages ago to build him something like my 75 as a swap for the benedict phono stage he left with me to try that had to stay, this is as close as without getting a 75. Same amount of work to do it, a little reengineering as the chassis isnt quite the same, and Robert's your father's brother.

Nice.

Ant:

Hows the Rega 'R200' fare against the Mayware? The missus gave me that look & a comment i shall not repeat on an open forum , when i said i was getting shut of all the vinyl The Mayware is great sounding arm but a pain in the arse, i wanted something s shaped Vintage with Removable shell that dont cost an arm & a leg..

Whats the going rate for a 'R200'?

Honestly, its like comparing apples and oranges. The mayware is a 4g effective mass, the r200 is 16g so opposite ends of rhe spectrum. its difficult to compare directly.

The r200 I did with a goldring e3 in it is a really nice combo, the mayware and at440mlb is just as nice in a different way.

Me personally, I like the mayware 440 combo more, but the r200 and e3 combo is really nice too. I could live with either. I stuck an eroica medium/low comp mc in my formula 4 and thought it was dire.
I put the 440 in the acos arm on this, which is a close match to the r200 ( same effective mass as the arm wand assembly is identical) and got flappy cones and a not altogether dire sound, but nowhere near as good as it is in the mayware.

Oh and the r200 is not a pain in the arse to set up, but it does lack height adjustment, i had to turnup a spacer for it so that it's the right height for the e3

For a better description of the relative merits best ask my dad steve, he lived with both combos for a good while as its his deck they were/are on

Just make a collet for the R200 arm pillar minus the plastic spacer it comes with.. NAS do this and it works on Rega arms old and new...

The GL69/72 wasn't supposed to be as quiet as the heavier models and the main bearing is lighter in construction, confirmed last time I visited NVA Towers. The arm you threw away by the look of it and that was the other main difference, platter aside.

Thats really wiersd Ant because i bought a new Goldring 'E3' when they came out a bit back.. Dont worry about Arm height as its for a Rega TT