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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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In Reply to: is it still an EMPIRE? ... And what did all that cost? Nt posted by bjh on February 25, 2015 at 15:23:31:
It's a home-made turntable using a Papst motor and an Empire platter/main bearing.
Yet it retains all of the main functional design elements of the original Empire, including the Lord rubber suspension grommets for the motor, the belt drive and geometry of the drive.
Most, if not all of the "improvements" are detail changes. It's the little stuff that I found to be of greatest sonic consequence.
A stethoscope held on the base of the main bearing reveals it to be orders of magnitude quieter than the original (at least in the condition I received it). The platter retains its dynamic balancing and the tolerances around the platter shaft remain as Empire manufactured it, within about 0.005"
The base plate no longer rings as the original did. In fact, by clamping an aluminum plate to an equal-mass steel plate effectively cancels ringing in both materials without deadening the sound. Too much damping material results in a flat sound, like a pure MDF plinth sounds to me. The residual vibrations are damped by the MDF which is exactly half the mass of the aluminum.
I did experiment with various layers of damping material in the plinth. I produced versions with layers of cork, or natural rubber, or EAR Isodamp. The EAR Isodamp is interesting material (stinks awfully when new). I've used some selectively, particularly between the plinth and the walnut frame. The plinth actually has a tenon extending into the walnut frame and the routed out recess in the frame has a layer of Isodamp on which the plinth rests. The frame itself is supported by three feet which are equidistantly arrayed every 120 degrees around the center of mass. The feet are attached to the frame via the usual threaded 1/4" x 20 inserts. I've been experimenting with different feet. Current best audible performance is with Edensound Terrastone footers.
To address your cost question, the answer is dependent on what my time is worth. I consider my time on the machine lathe spinning the base plate against a diamond bit to be worth zero dollars. And the weeks I spent learning to plane a board flat with jack plane, jointing plane and smoothing plane are zero dollars as well.
In terms of materials, the aluminum plate was about $120, the tool-steel plate was about the same, the wood was free from my own backyard tree that came down in Hurricane Sandy last year, the MDF was maybe $50. When you add in the 3 M Epoxy, the Isodamp C-1002, bearing materials, etc. I'd guess the total materials bill is about $900 or so. So the biggies are the original table cost (about $500), and the new tonearm ($700 or something like that).
If I had paid someone to do all this, I'd be looking at $5,000 or so. But that was not the point, it was all about learning for me.
"Knowing what you don't know is, in a sense, omniscience"
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- Probably not - CometCKO 16:15:29 02/25/15 (0)
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