Linear-tracking Turntables!

ALF

Well-Known Member
Mar 15, 2012
531
243
955
Southwest
Sparky #101-Rockport

I also agree with Sparky's post #101, a silly millimeter longer...especially his comment to Mike.

"So what was the problem with your Rockport? It should have been better than you described."

IMHO, it was simply was the agency cost and "looked-for" comfirmation bias...

ALF
 

andromedaaudio

VIP/Donor
Jan 23, 2011
8,350
2,730
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Amsterdam holland
Well maybe you should do some more comparisons then before making absolute statements ;)



HI Mike,
. But first, some caveats. I have not heard the Rockport, only great things about it. I have not heard a number of the most expensive pivoted (unipivot) arms either.
 

andromedaaudio

VIP/Donor
Jan 23, 2011
8,350
2,730
1,400
Amsterdam holland
I dont agree on that , i just bought a 4 lp chambermusic box for 1 euro per elpee , a lot of music stores overhere sell those big multi lp boxes from the 60 70 s eighties for next to nothing , its got the best violin music i own .
I have audiophile lps as well , some pretty expenisive some dmm s and what more .


. And not only that, but also the best quality pressings which cost more than what the normal people can afford.
 

karma

New Member
Jun 17, 2011
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White Rock, New Mexico
Well maybe you should do some more comparisons then before making absolute statements ;)



HI Mike,
. But first, some caveats. I have not heard the Rockport, only great things about it. I have not heard a number of the most expensive pivoted (unipivot) arms either.

HI andromeda,
Comparisons are always good, I agree. However, there is no way to audition the vast number of tone arms that are available. My argument is quite simply based upon the geometries and these apply to all arms. These will always establish the base level performance and the limits by which judgments can be made. To a large degree, the geometries will separate the best qualities out without having to audition everything which is impossible.

Sparky
 

WntrMute2

Well-Known Member
Sep 23, 2010
22
0
908
Royal Oak, Michigan
is anyone here running this arm? Terminator T-3 by Trans-Fi. 2012-03-04_11-53-27_816.jpg

I got into a bit of something with Sparky earlier in another thread and for that I'm sorry, but this seems a wonderful arm for the money. Runs on less than 0.2 psi (I usually run as low as 0.16 psi) Easy as pie to set-up. Tracks everything I throw on it. Sound just flows off the record in a way that's unbelievable. Easily adjustable for VTA/SRA on the fly. Adjustable for azimuth but this is a more difficult adjustment. Not temperamental at all, I have tweaked it one time in the last few months before realizing user error was causing the problem. Arm wands with fine silver wire available for reasonable price. Easily competes with my SME-V. Air pump is next to silent and wouldn't be too loud in apartment settings. Downside is the record must be slid under the tonearm that is fixed over the platter. Any other users out there in WBF?
 

mep

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Uh, how much is that contraption?
 

WntrMute2

Well-Known Member
Sep 23, 2010
22
0
908
Royal Oak, Michigan
Uh, how much is that contraption?

Direct from Trans-Fi, it is 750 British Pounds or just over $1,000 US where I am. Additional tonearms with the fine silver Litz wire are $200.00 US in the length I use. The air pump and surge tank are $40-50 US. It is sort of a contraption but sounds as polished as almost anything I've heard and I spend a fair amount of time listening to other peoples' analog rigs. No relation to the business, just a fan that sees a way into true high-end sound at beer prices to mix metaphors
http://www.trans-fi.com/terminatortonearm.htm
 
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asliski

New Member
Mar 26, 2012
3
0
0
Lincoln, MA
Dennesen ABLT-1 serial number 1

Before it was licensed to Dennesen, it doesn't look as good without the gold plating, but it sounds the same. These first generation were simpler, but had the key features including adjustable VTA (while playing, of course). I remember showing it around Boston, the Boston Audio Society and local companies. I remember Tomlinson Holman had a collection of oddly warped records chosen to make anything mistrack. This worked with all of them. There exists a stash of parts from the pre-production run. I restore antique telescopes as well as keep and listen to a lot of vintage audio gear. It was a fun experience, going through the patent process while I was still in college doing physics.
Alan Sliski 1-DSC_6661.jpg Sliski air bearing tonearm sn1 3.jpg
 

daytona600

Well-Known Member
Sep 9, 2012
722
151
955
scotland
I use a uk made air bearing linear tracker on my artemis labs SA-1 made by the cartridgeman - the conductor
 

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Bill Hart

Well-Known Member
May 11, 2012
2,683
174
1,150
Before it was licensed to Dennesen, it doesn't look as good without the gold plating, but it sounds the same. These first generation were simpler, but had the key features including adjustable VTA (while playing, of course). I remember showing it around Boston, the Boston Audio Society and local companies. I remember Tomlinson Holman had a collection of oddly warped records chosen to make anything mistrack. This worked with all of them. There exists a stash of parts from the pre-production run. I restore antique telescopes as well as keep and listen to a lot of vintage audio gear. It was a fun experience, going through the patent process while I was still in college doing physics.
Alan Sliski View attachment 5401 View attachment 5402

It really does look like antique brass medical or astronomical instrument. I'll bet a 'retrophile' builder could come up with a turntable that had an astrolabe and some other stuff that makes it look like something Da Vinci built.
Is this the UR arm of lateral trackers? (I use one, a tad more modern, but this is fascinating. Thanks for posting).
PS. It either was very subtle in the way you described it, or you are being modest, since you apparently invented it, according to the patent abstract:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4455641.pdf
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
81
1,725
New York City
It really does look like antique brass medical or astronomical instrument. I'll bet a 'retrophile' builder could come up with a turntable that had an astrolabe and some other stuff that makes it look like something Da Vinci built.
Is this the UR arm of lateral trackers? (I use one, a tad more modern, but this is fascinating. Thanks for posting).
PS. It either was very subtle in the way you described it, or you are being modest, since you apparently invented it, according to the patent abstract:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4455641.pdf

Yes Alan is one of the original patent holders of the air bearing tone arm. Alan and I happened to meet purely coincidentally through non-audio work about 15 years ago (he was developing a minaturized low energy X-ray machine for treating cancer for Photoelectron Corp in Boston and my group at NYMC was doing the biology). The story of how we met though is amusing though. I was sitting in the company's dining facilities and noticed all these exquisitely restored vintage audio components like a Scott tuner sitting in the room. Immediately my high end radar went off and I asked my host who that equipment belonged to? My host then proceeded to introduce me to Alan and we hit it off immediately. Interestingly we lost touch after I left academics and we rehooked up here courtesy of WBF.
 
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NorthStar

Member
Feb 8, 2011
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435
Vancouver Island, B.C. Canada
-----This is profound Myles, and inspiring to us all in our music hobbies and love.

Hopefully Alan will post some more. I feel that I can learn from people like him, and not just on the outside terms, but also on the inside lessons of life. :b
 

asliski

New Member
Mar 26, 2012
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Lincoln, MA
One of my present restoration projects is astronomical, a 1916 telescope built by Warner an Swasey, it's much larger than a tonearm, but has a lot of bronze parts. I do expect to get my air bearing tonearm up and running soon on my modded Kenwood KD-500, about 70lb of lead and damping material added inside the cast resin base.
 

NorthStar

Member
Feb 8, 2011
24,305
1,323
435
Vancouver Island, B.C. Canada
One of my present restoration projects is astronomical, a 1916 telescope built by Warner an Swasey, it's much larger than a tonearm, but has a lot of bronze parts. I do expect to get my air bearing tonearm up and running soon on my modded Kenwood KD-500, about 70lb of lead and damping material added inside the cast resin base.

-----I wanna know EVERYTHING Alan! ...And with all the small details attached to it. :b

Best regards,
Bob
 

asliski

New Member
Mar 26, 2012
3
0
0
Lincoln, MA
The turntable was put together when I was building the tonearms, being a physicist I don't go too deep down the rabbit hole of high end audio, but if there are actual principles involved, then there is work to be done. Basically, the Kenwood KD-500 spins records at a constant speed, has a flat area and room to place the tonearm, and doesn't generate it's own noise. Acoustic feedback into the structure of the turntable base is a real phenomenon, so i did what I could to minimize this, add mass and lower the Q of the base. The Kenwood is made of a cast resin composite material that is a very good start to this. I took the bottom off and found that the cavities in between the ribbed structure of the casting could be packed with pieces of 1/8 inch thick sheet lead and a material called duxseal, a sticky, non-hardening putty like stuff originally developed for sealing air conditioning ducts. It has been used for acoustic damping of audio gear for years. Layers of lead and duxseal fill the cavities and then I put the bottom back on. It's quite heavy, and does not ring when tapped.

The tonearm was invented to allow the two degrees of freedom that one wants, frictionless linear motion and a rotary motion about the axis of the air bearing tube. The design of the carrier is such that it is passively self-aligning, something I consider an advance over the Rabinow arm of the time. Mechanical bearings cannot be made with low enough friction so that the stylus can provide the only motive force. Making it non-jamming was accomplished by removing the parts of the half-cylinder that jam, another basic principle in physics. There is a row of tiny holes in the top of the air bearing tube that support the mass of the tonearm. Vertical tracking angle was a hot topic of conversation at the time, and I was curious, so I made it adjustable while in use. Very few people could find the same VTA just by listening, of any. There is no need for the carrier to go all the way around the air bearing tube unless you want to use it in a zero G environment. Switching cartridges for A-B testing takes ten seconds or so with a few pre-configured arms ready to go. The only contact point on the tonearm is the stylus, I think this is a good principle.

Here is a picture of some of the parts for the telescope
 

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Bill Hart

Well-Known Member
May 11, 2012
2,683
174
1,150
The turntable was put together when I was building the tonearms, being a physicist I don't go too deep down the rabbit hole of high end audio, but if there are actual principles involved, then there is work to be done. Basically, the Kenwood KD-500 spins records at a constant speed, has a flat area and room to place the tonearm, and doesn't generate it's own noise. Acoustic feedback into the structure of the turntable base is a real phenomenon, so i did what I could to minimize this, add mass and lower the Q of the base. The Kenwood is made of a cast resin composite material that is a very good start to this. I took the bottom off and found that the cavities in between the ribbed structure of the casting could be packed with pieces of 1/8 inch thick sheet lead and a material called duxseal, a sticky, non-hardening putty like stuff originally developed for sealing air conditioning ducts. It has been used for acoustic damping of audio gear for years. Layers of lead and duxseal fill the cavities and then I put the bottom back on. It's quite heavy, and does not ring when tapped.

The tonearm was invented to allow the two degrees of freedom that one wants, frictionless linear motion and a rotary motion about the axis of the air bearing tube. The design of the carrier is such that it is passively self-aligning, something I consider an advance over the Rabinow arm of the time. Mechanical bearings cannot be made with low enough friction so that the stylus can provide the only motive force. Making it non-jamming was accomplished by removing the parts of the half-cylinder that jam, another basic principle in physics. There is a row of tiny holes in the top of the air bearing tube that support the mass of the tonearm. Vertical tracking angle was a hot topic of conversation at the time, and I was curious, so I made it adjustable while in use. Very few people could find the same VTA just by listening, of any. There is no need for the carrier to go all the way around the air bearing tube unless you want to use it in a zero G environment. Switching cartridges for A-B testing takes ten seconds or so with a few pre-configured arms ready to go. The only contact point on the tonearm is the stylus, I think this is a good principle.

Here is a picture of some of the parts for the telescope
The parts are gorgeous. I assume it is manually cranked, gear-driven adjustments? Does it mount on a wooden tripod?
Thank goodness one of us is a physicist (hint: not me).
 

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