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In Reply to: RE: Empire 698 tonearm overhang measurement ( ? ) posted by gwarejp3 on September 26, 2021 at 06:37:40
What is your overall experience with the 698 gwarejp3? I bought one years back at a garage sale. The table had an interesting design however no amount of fiddling with the mechanical speed adjustment could get the thing to run on speed. Also the electronic controls were twitchy and as noted by other posters, the Empire series including mine were a poster child for sloppy American manufacturing QC of that era (happily, vastly improved to global standards over the last couple of decades by Basis, VPI, Merrill, Mobil Fidelity etc). Finally resold the 698 in frustration.
Follow Ups:
Basher52, I've owned 3 x Empire 698s and like all aging Empire turntables their Achilles heel is the tonearm
Speed: there's only Esoteric Audio as a source for the correct belt I've found, all others run about 5 percent too fast, apologies to any other supplier of belts that's got it right ( ! ) something to do with the belt thickness and compliance
Quality: a very handsome piece of furniture and extremely well made, the Papst motors are excellent and the only other turntable I know that's used these is the mega-buck TechDas; decent Empire 698s can fetch over USD 3000 it's only the failure of parts from old age ( always tonearm ) that are the issue and there are fixes
The platter run-out, balance, noise and speed accuracy were state-of-the-art when these were new and a nice example can still be a pleasure
30 plus years ago I was talked into trading a tidy 698 for a Rega Planar 3 and it was a significant downgrade and a real disappointment
Graham
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