47 Labs Koma

[PeterKB]

Hi,

Does anyone have experience with the 47 Labs Koma turntable?

 

[marmota]

Watching the thread. Very interesting turntable which is reasonably priced and comes from an innovative, well established manufacturer.
Would also like to read people's experience with it and the matching Tsurube tonearm.

 

[213Cobra]

Here's my public answer to a private query:

I did have a chance to hear the 47 Labs Koma some years back. If one of my modded Luxman PD444s bit the dust, I'd try to get a Koma. It's a sublime turntable, absent the "laziness" of most belt drives, it has drive more like a Direct Drive or Idler, but the quietude and ease of the best direct drives and the musical elasticity of belts. And the counter-rotating "underplatter" sounds quite effective to me. The table also sounds mechanically grounded, for a big, robust, toneful sound. The companion Tsurube tonearm is a champion tracker that has the fleetness of a low mass tonearm, along with the tone-monster attributes of high mass arms mated to low-compliance MCs, like the Ortofon SPUs. In my experience, mechanically-grounded turntables with great resonance control are preferable to air-bearing tables (and air bearing linear arms), plus despite the Koma's pulley-routed belt for two counter-rotating platters, it is fundamentally a simple mechanical system.

Phil

 

[213Cobra]

As follow-up, I was then asked about Michael Fremer's negative review from 2008. My response to that:

First, I don't take Michael Fremer seriously and largely never have. He's right sometimes and often fraudulent. A self-made celebrity more than an actual authority on musical authenticity from vinyl.

Do you live in a house where your listening room has flexy, suspended flooring? That might affect what you put the Koma on, but not whether you can use it. I live in a southern California slab-foundation house, with my Luxman PD444s on 250 lbs. laminated maple tables sitting on engineered wood flooring + 24" of concrete slab underneath and laid into the earth, so isolation isn't my problem. I don't need an isolating suspension. When I lived in suspended-floors Victorians in New England earlier in my life I did need to consider isolation but that didn't preclude non-isolating tables. In fact, I replaced the factory isolating feet on my ancient Luxmans with brass cones on bearings. Bearings solve a lot of problems for direct coupled and isolating turntable mount designs, or any other rotating mechanism.

The counter-rotating "underplatter" is key to the Koma. What you place it on would depend on your floor. Tell me about that and I can offer more specificity.

Phil