Firebaugh in House

Kevin P · « **on:** 13 May 2005, 07:44 pm »

William Firebaugh is spending some time schooling Dail in the art of tone arm construction. I've got a few pics of the first prototype tables that we are cranking on before "official" production starts.

Bill gave a talk/demonstration at the Pacific NW Audio Society meeting last night and knocked em dead. These tables are simply amazing. It's going to be a lot of fun cranking them out.

Dail on the left... Bill on the right.

Bill working on an arm.

One of our engineering samples.

The not so secret golf ball. Not a gimmick.

Bemopti123 · « **Reply #1 on:** 13 May 2005, 09:56 pm »

Are you prototyping or are you already ready to sell some kits based on the pics? The design looks enigmatic....great and simple for those like me who have limited table experience and are interested, but not willing to plunge 1K for a table, later to figure out that it is not being played enough. The golf ball part is also interesting.

Kevin P · « **Reply #2 on:** 13 May 2005, 10:50 pm »

Quote from: Bemopti123

Are you prototyping or are you already ready to sell some kits based on the pics? The design looks enigmatic....great and simple for those like me who have limited table experience and are interested, but not willing to plunge 1K for a table, later to figure out that it is not being played enough. The golf ball part is also interesting.

We are going to build the first couple hundred in house. They are not a kit and what we are doing now is just getting the early production issues figured out.

The complete table and arm are probably going to sell for over the $1000 mark. I know what we are doing now looks like Mickey Mouse garage sale engineering but that is not at all the case. Bill has many thousands of hours of design work into this thing, two approved patents and five patent disclosures have been submitted so there is some SIGNIFICANT engineering wrapped into this product. Bill has many decades of experience in designing/building the Well Tempered Labs product and this is a labor of love for him.

The Well Tempered Amadeus will be a world-class product. It will perform as well or better than products you see selling for more than twenty times it's cost. The reason???? Simple... we are not building a vanity piece. We are building something that makes music which just happens to be affordable.

dwk · « **Reply #3 on:** 13 May 2005, 11:03 pm »

Heard the setup briefly at RMAF. Sounded pretty good from what I could tell.

He's got an interesting point with the golf ball. As he said at RMAF, they're actually very precicely made and very uniform - if they weren't they'd wobble or worse off the tee. Probably a fair bit of analysis/experimentation to get the balancing act figured out, but once done it probably eliminates a fair bit of relatively expensive machining.

Is the bearing another evolution of the oddball Well Tempered bearing? I still have a WTT bearing shaft burried somewhere in my junk pile, from a friend that used to be a WTT dealer. I had intended to experiment with the idea, but never got around to it.

Bemopti123 · « **Reply #4 on:** 13 May 2005, 11:05 pm »

Let all of us know how the table turns out, eventhough there are many turntables to be had at the 1K breaking range, it would be more than interesting to see something that is considerably better than things out there at XXX the price, at around 1K. I am really curious to see what sort of turntable it will really be in the end.

Paul from NYC

nature boy · « **Reply #5 on:** 13 May 2005, 11:09 pm »

Kevin,

I am sure the turntable will sound much better with a Titleist Pro V1

NB

Kevin P · « **Reply #6 on:** 13 May 2005, 11:30 pm »

It uses the same concept. The original Well Tempered tables used a five point zero clearance bearing. The Amadeus uses a three point zero clearance bearing.

It's a fairly simple device that is easy for us to make. Bill is the man with all the time behind the wow/flutter meter so I'll take his word that it works.

Kevin P · « **Reply #7 on:** 13 May 2005, 11:33 pm »

Quote from: nature boy

Kevin,

I am sure the turntable will sound much better with a Titleist Pro V1

NB

Actually those have some kind of fluid in them that squirts out when you drill the hole for the torsion string.

Al Garay · « **Reply #8 on:** 14 May 2005, 04:45 am »

I can anticipate debates over golf ball technology... two piece versus balata.

Is Bill living in Port Angeles? I look forward to hearing more about this. I have lots of records in boxes waiting for a quality turntable that is affordable.

Al

Kevin P · « **Reply #9 on:** 14 May 2005, 04:55 pm »

Quote from: Al Garay

I can anticipate debates over golf ball technology... two piece versus balata.

Is Bill living in Port Angeles? I look forward to hearing more about this. I have lots of records in boxes waiting for a quality turntable that is affordable.

Al

No... Bill lives in Southern California. He came up for a couple days to get the TT project under way. I must say we had a great visit.

One of the early engineering samples is at the Adire Audio showroom. If you wanted to borrow it for the weekend you are more than welcome to stop by and pick it up. They will have to give you a quick lesson on how to put the belt on & adjusting the arm but it's pretty bullet-proof and easy to set-up after a couple minutes of direction.