The necessity for absolute tt speed control

There is one area where LP playback, especially piano and sustained notes make a difference, self-centering the disc. The famous Nakamichi TX-1000 that I heard made a big impression on me at M&K Sound in Beverly Hills (?). This is a feature which is probably more noticeable than all the discussion of perfecting the speed consistency, which is very important as well. I will never forget the rightness of the sound coming from it. I'm certain that it had great speed consistency.
 
There is one area where LP playback, especially piano and sustained notes make a difference, self-centering the disc. The famous Nakamichi TX-1000 that I heard made a big impression on me at M&K Sound in Beverly Hills (?). This is a feature which is probably more noticeable than all the discussion of perfecting the speed consistency, which is very important as well. I will never forget the rightness of the sound coming from it. I'm certain that it had great speed consistency.
Yes the self-centering mechanism really did work, it was a amazing piece of engineering, and impressive when the extra centering arm came out, found any off centering, and another little arm pushed the top platter exactly the right place, and repeated again if needed. I also had a Forsell LT arm on my Nakamichi Dragon TT and you could easily see how the side to side movement disappeared after having used the self-centering mechanism on records with off center holes. The actual sound improvement was marginal on most records, it had to be really off-center to make any difference. The DD drive was typically for the time, and not the best sounding turntable in general, but i regret trowing mine in the garbage when i was preparing to move continents, i would love to have the self-centering system built into a good turntable like my current one. :)
 
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Things to add to the world's greatest TTs, like Rockport Sirius, AF0 etc
1...Nakamichi-style self-centreing
2...Townshend-style silicone fluid damping trough for tonearm
3...? All suggestions welcome
 
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Yes the self-centering mechanism really did work, it was a amazing piece of engineering, and impressive when the extra centering arm came out, found any off centering, and another little arm pushed the top platter exactly the right place, and repeated again if needed. I also had a Forsell LT arm on my Nakamichi Dragon TT and you could easily see how the side to side movement disappeared after having used the self-centering mechanism on records with off center holes. The actual sound improvement was marginal on most records, it had to be really off-center to make any difference. The DD drive was typically for the time, and not the best sounding turntable in general, but i regret trowing mine in the garbage when i was preparing to move continents, i would love to have the self-centering system built into a good turntable like my current one. :)

Extremely easy to do it the DIY way - find the optical center of the LP grooves, extremely easy to do with a .1mm accuracy. Then enlarge the LP hole and glue a centering hole in the proper position. The unanswered question - do both sides have the same center position? :oops:
 
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Extremely easy to do it the DIY way - find the optical center of the LP grooves, extremely easy to do with a .1mm accuracy. Then enlarge the LP hole and glue a centering hole in the proper position. The unanswered question - do both sides have the same center position? :oops:
Francisco it is time for your wast theoretical knowledge, to be turned into practical projects ! It sounds so easy ! I am still waiting for you to create a 3 phase TT motor controller for your Forsell TT, " the right way " as you have stated. You have the motor on a shelf somewhere ;)
 
Yes the self-centering mechanism really did work, it was a amazing piece of engineering, and impressive when the extra centering arm came out, found any off centering, and another little arm pushed the top platter exactly the right place, and repeated again if needed. I also had a Forsell LT arm on my Nakamichi Dragon TT and you could easily see how the side to side movement disappeared after having used the self-centering mechanism on records with off center holes. The actual sound improvement was marginal on most records, it had to be really off-center to make any difference. The DD drive was typically for the time, and not the best sounding turntable in general, but i regret trowing mine in the garbage when i was preparing to move continents, i would love to have the self-centering system built into a good turntable like my current one. :)

I've thought about making a manual one. It would take you a minute to setup every time, but it's very audible... as you know.
 
I've thought about making a manual one. It would take you a minute to setup every time, but it's very audible... as you know.
On the vast majority of my records it made no difference in sound. On records with serious off center holes it did. Maybe 10 out of 500 lp's. Ask David, he owned one too. :)
 
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Things to add to the world's greatest TTs, like Rockport Sirius, AF0 etc
1...Nakamichi-style self-centreing
2...Townshend-style silicone fluid damping trough for tonearm
3...? All suggestions welcome
Suggestions... not for the table but for the arm: my AMG ‘turbo’ arm includes knurled thumbscrews for adjusting several parameters which is much better than fitting small hex screws, and this makes azimuth adjustment a breeze. Wouldn’t it be nice to have similar for initial cartridge setup/adjustment of zenith and overhang. My fat fingers have a tough time nudging the cartridge one or two 10ths of a millimeter at a time.
 
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Francisco it is time for your wast theoretical knowledge, to be turned into practical projects ! It sounds so easy ! I am still waiting for you to create a 3 phase TT motor controller for your Forsell TT, " the right way " as you have stated. You have the motor on a shelf somewhere ;)
There was a difficult question in my post, that could affect my idea. And yes, the TechDas AF1P sounds so good I am not fiddling with turntables currently. But yes, three phase optimized drive is that way to go with this motor.
 
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There was a difficult question in my post, that could affect my idea. And yes, the TechDas AF1P sounds so good I am not fiddling with turntables currently. But yes, three phase optimized drive is that way to go with this motor.
As for your idea, making a smaller center-pin instead of drilling out all your albums would be a good place to start ;)
 
As for your idea, making a smaller center-pin instead of drilling out all your albums would be a good place to start ;)
I thought about it - it could easily be used with a Roksan Xerxes that is still in my garage queuing to get a new owner ...
 
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I thought about it - it could easily be used with a Roksan Xerxes that is still in my garage queuing to get a new owner ...
Francisco you know the gear in your garage is never getting sold, unless someone comes and knocks uninvited on your door, you should open a audio museum instead ;)
 
Francisco you know the gear in your garage is never getting sold, unless someone comes and knocks uninvited on your door, you should open a audio museum instead ;)

Fortunately the garage content is reducing now. Surely slowly ... BTW, the Lamm's are not in the garage! ;)
 
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Do people realize that, in theory and practice, a 0.5 mm eccentricity makes one part of the LP play at 33.32 peak velocity while the opposite is being played at 33.34 ? :oops: How do we set the speed in such conditions?
 
Roksan Xerxes...now you're talking, one of my earliest, and biggest missteps in this hobby. Maybe that's my one c.1997-1999 in Micro's garage Lol.
 
Do people realize that, in theory and practice, a 0.5 mm eccentricity makes one part of the LP play at 33.32 peak velocity while the opposite is being played at 33.34 ? :oops: How do we set the speed in such conditions?
Do you have a lot of albums with that much eccentricity ?
 
Roksan Xerxes...now you're talking, one of my earliest, and biggest missteps in this hobby. Maybe that's my one c.1997-1999 in Micro's garage Lol.

Why do you consider it a misstep? It is still a fabulous turntable. I could easily live with it - it sounded fabulous with the Eminent Technology ET2.
 
Not a lot, but many with half that value. Enough to make purists of the nth % speed accuracy nervous ... ;)
Personally i have become a correct speed agnostic, quality of transfer is much more important than absolute accuracy. I will take a slightly off speed or slowly drifting speed from a good motor, over a accurate speed from a shitty sounding motor any day.
 
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Why do you consider it a misstep? It is still a fabulous turntable. I could easily live with it - it sounded fabulous with the Eminent Technology ET2.
It's all in the system blend. I just found an all-Roksan front end Xerxes Artemiz Shiraz ArtaXerxes, was a little too dry and uninvolving for my liking at the time.
 

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