Trans Fi Salvation rim drive tt and Terminator air-bearing linear tracking arm

Finally after 22 long months, I get my analog rig reinstalled. If there’s any interest in it, I’m very happy to chat further.
To kick off, here’s the link to the designer’s web page:

www.trans-fi.com Step009.jpg
 
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After a little bit of deliberation, have gone w Stacore CLD footers incorporating M12 threaded rods to replace stock ceramic rollerballs under the Permali/Aluminium plinth. Recent changes have been so positive, good chance these will be as well.
Kind of full circle to the first meaningful change to my analog rig back in the heady days of nearly 5 years ago, the Stacore Advanced vibration isolation platform.
 
Just installed the three CLD Stacore footers using M12 threads to replace the stock metal/generic ceramic rollerballs footers.
Very impressed w the machining and apparent quality of these Stacore babies, they certainly weigh enough compared to the feather light stock jobbies.
Using Decca box Brahms Complete Works For Solo Piano, and Violin/Piano featuring Julius Katchen, Josef Suk and Jean-Pierre Marty. Well, I could have gone Black Sabbath/4, but thought, no, some nuance, decorum and delicacy better as a test.
Not gonna claim any epiphanies (I'm epiphany'd out over the last few years). No, this change is an evolutionary or refining one, after the more dramatic changes wrought first by Stacore platform, then SOTA motor/Farad LPS, and most recently, the Permali/Aluminium plinth upgrades.
If I had any minor criticism of the plinth change it was that a small but discernable level of stridency entered my sound, noticeable mainly on stuff like this Brahms where fast piano strikes had a slightly hard character. But was a hint rather than a spoiler, and everything else so much improved.
So upon fitting the Stacore footers, was interesting to return to these Brahms LPs.
Immediately noticeable that stridency is much less marked. Piano strikes maintain percussiveness, but hardening up much less, even in fast runs. I'd call this an extra level of calm, in live classical there's no feeling notes are clashing even at full throttle. Much more the case here now.
Allied to this is much greater natural warmth in the sound...not the cloying comfort blanket I've heard with some cartridges and tubed amps and cables. No, this is just a subtle but welcome reproduction of tone density and texture, at no penalty on slurring or slowing tempos.
Last difference is somewhat greater seperation of instruments, less congesting. So I'm getting much greater resolution of the piano and violin as individual instruments, but at no compromise to the holistic presentation.
Or piano WITH violin, not piano SEPERATE FROM violin.
So, a really nice uptick in warmth, texture, staging, less stridency. All round another home run from Stacore, to add to the solid gold effects of their Advanced Platform.
 
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My decade-long evolution on *Salvation rim drive/Terminator air LT/Straingauge system* analog front end took a really dramatic, beyond positive uptick recently.
I've been working very hard to reduce noise in my system, from wholesale attention to tubes in my preamp and big 211s in my power amps, to moving my balanced transformer and LT arm air pump as far away from me as possible, one or two walls intervening, and caps overhaul in my amps.
This has provided big dividends, as has the change to Permali plinth w Stacore footers, the improved material construction of updated LT arm (incl superior silver Litz wire change), stylii changes and bespoke Straingauge LPS, more accurate and torquier motor drive, and the venerable Stacore bulletproof isolation.
A few days I ago I installed an upgraded Sablon Bocchino power cord, silver Prince to my Straingauge cartridge energizer LPS.
I'm not sure what I was expecting other than the typical uptick I get w Mark's wire.
However nothing quite prepared me for such a dramatic clarification of why despite all the teething issues we all have as vinyl lovers, we can't look the other way. It's a total love affair.
My digital has always been more consistent than my vinyl...up to now.
For every LP that comprehensively beat CD replay, I had a bunch more CDs that had the edge. This has always troubled me, why could I not get vinyl to totally rule.
And I'd never really got to the bottom of this, so stellar is my Eera Tentation CDP.
Well, removing these sources of noise, rejuvenating my amps, opening up my whole sound with the Airblades, seems to have been the foundation for my late career breakthru.
And now installing this Sablon silver Prince on my Straingauge is sealing the deal.
LP replay for the first time feels like it has no shortcomings, no deficiencies, certainly no inferiority to CD.
I'm struggling to reconcile this. I can only think that my system was racked with noise, and this noise was limiting or bottle necking ultimate analog performance.
So yes, my analog rig changes from motor, to plinth, to isolation, to better arm, to LPS over wall warts and superior stylii on Straingauge, has made my LP spinner more neutral, resolved and transparent.
My newly rejuvenated amps are reproducing more.
And my strenuous efforts to eliminate hash in multiple areas has reduced noise floor to the point that maybe for the first time, the full magic of LP replay is readily apparent.
Whatever, this power cord change is building upon all this and then contributing an extra level of help, that synergistically is lifting the whole sound.
I've had real periods of doubt that my sticking to my guns in modding the heck out of my system rather than going anew with something else (modded Thorens 124 w DaVa sounds quite tasty) could have proven to be ultimately a dead end and inefficient use of cash and mental energy. Certainly no shortage of people hinting that my approach could be a cul de dac or dead end.
And my stubbornness could really not have produced the goods.
It's almost as much a relief psychologically that I'm getting such positive results as it is the emotional high of sheer rejuvenated love for LP sound.
 
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