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For no reason at all, I put together a list of the coolest-looking vintage gear I've known - at the link.WW
"Put on your high heeled sneakers. Baby, we''re goin'' out tonight.
Edits: 08/20/22 08/20/22 08/20/22 08/20/22 08/20/22 08/21/22 08/21/22Follow Ups:
Western Electric and RCA.
Edits: 08/25/22
I did that very thing. It works great. I even found some of the proper thread. The Celebrated Talbot.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
and except for the tonearm I thought it was quite capable. Lots of power from the motor. nice suspension, and a beautiful and sturdy base and dust cover.
The only reason I got rid of it was the tonearm and its headshell. Another 'wish I'd kept it'
I fitted a Sumiko Premier MMT arm to this one back when it was my main table.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
jar? It looks like the Empire table was in good condition before the change.
That's just the waste jar. The liquid falls into the jar and doesn't go through the vacuum pump. I have an intake filter fitted to the output as a muffler.
The 598 was my main table. I had a aluminum ring machined so I could us a flat platter mat (Platter Matter), that is not what is on it now. The ring fills the space of the stock ribbed platter mat.
The 598 is not being harmed in it's role as a record cleaner.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
The Maplenoll shown in your list was actually the Apollo (not the Ariadne) and was indeed cool looking, I'll give you that. But as far as "best-ever", well, maybe if it had worked. A guy in my audio club bought one which never functioned correctly, right out of the box.
The LP would start to skip about half-way through, and no amount of arm/platter air adjusting would correct it. The poor guy even tried using a 240 V air compressor in an attempt to remedy the problem, without success.
Maplenoll was no help, and the guy ended up with a multi-thousand dollar lead and Corian paperweight. Years later, I posted this experience on the Vinyl Asylum, and another guy said one of his friends had a similar issue with his Apollo.
I owned both an Ariadne (which I still have) and the Ariadne Signature (as shown below), both of which worked, albeit with an oil smell (from Maplenoll's supplied air compressor) filling the room.
The Transcriptors turntable overflows with cool factor. Apparently Stanley Kubrick thought so too, since the turntable looked futuristic enough to be used in his A Clockwork Orange film.
Thanks Bill, your list brought back some very nice memories, especially the Magneplanar Tympani speakers, which I thought were about the coolest thing I'd ever seen, back in 1976.
Don't expect you'd remember but I replied to you 2009 post on Maplenolls. I bought a new Athena and for the first month it was one of the best TTs I've owned. Then problems developed with the air supply to both the platter and arm. My dealer attempted repairs but was never successful, so gave me full credit back.
That was too bad since I believed it had so much potential. As many know, the ET 2.5 tangental tonearm was the evolution of the Maplenoll original.
"The only cats worth anything are the cats who take chances. Sometimes I play things I never heard myself." Thelonious Monk
Maplenoll tables really were capable of stunning sound, but their quality control was suspect. Even if you got a good one, they required frequent cleaning of the air bearing surfaces, due to the invisable mist of oil from the air compressor. I used to do a preemptive cleaning of my arm's bearing prior to every listening session, to try and avoid binding/skipping.
It's like those tube amps guys post about, which run their tubes hard. They may sound great, but go through tubes far more often than more conservatively run gear.
It all comes down to how much frustration someone's willing to endure in the quest for better sound. I find, especially now that I'm older, that reliability means more than that last fraction of an inch of "better".
Thanks, that was great!.......MarkKorda
Thanks Bill,
Built my first stereo (Dynakits) in mid-'60s, then discovered Stereophile in 1971. It's all been downhill since then!
Anyway, nice list, and I remember most of those pieces. That is except for the KLH R2R.
"The only cats worth anything are the cats who take chances. Sometimes I play things I never heard myself." Thelonious Monk
Thanks for posting that, Bill. Good fun and good nostalgia. I saw some of those pieces in the day, but never owned any but the AR turntable (didn't everybody). Oh, and I owned pieces of the the KLH reel to reel, bought from a surplus outfit that swept up the factory after KLH quit making them. My brother used the transport (into his PAT4 which had a tape head input) as playback to save wear and tear on his other machine. The transport was quite well made.
John
... I won it on ebay, sent the check to the seller (pre-paypal), about a week later I got an email from saying where is the payment, I answered that I had sent it a week ago, and a day later he apologized saying that he mixed my sale with another and that he would "compensate me for his mistake". A few days later the 598 arrived (in great shape) and the seller included an lp as "compensation"; an almost mint mono copy of Iron Butterfly's IN-A-GADDA-DIVIDA (sp)! I am not sure how (or why) he chose that specific record, we never mentioned records and I had been looking for that very issue for several years! Great compensation.
Later Gator,
Dave
Thanks, that brought back some memories! I was privileged to own that same Transcriptor but with a SME tonearm in the mid-'70s. Worked on many of the Advent cassette decks and also KLH products as a bench tech. Very cool to see them again!
I'm going nuts with this - old versions keep popping up despite deleting files, re-uploading, and clearing cache. It is a true gumption trap, for those who remember "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."
But tomorrow is another day.
WW
"Put on your high heeled sneakers. Baby, we''re goin'' out tonight.
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