About 11 years ago, my son was two years old and first discovered my JA Michell Synchro turntable. Needless to say he was fascinated by it, especially the belt and tonearm. I learned pretty quickly that fragile analogue systems and two year old children do not mix well, so I packed up the Synchro and stored it away under the stairs.
I thought at the time that in a few years I'd pull it out and get back to vinyl.
Well, 11 years later I finally got around to it. After replacing the belt, tonearm (a Rega RB300) and stylus (Grado MCZ), I realized that a 13 year old son was just as likely to destroy the Synchro v2 as he was the original 11 year ago (not to mention that he has a younger sister). Also, I wanted the analogue system in the living room, which has bouncy wood floors. The commercial wall shelves I found left me cold, so I ordered a 2" thick cherry and walnut cutting board from Timbernation (beautiful!), waxed it up with bees wax, and mounted it on painted wooden wall brackets from Menards. I placed strips of heavy roofing felt between the brackets and both the wall and the cutting board to reduce transmission of vibration. The result exceeded my expectation.
It easily passes the "kid running by at full speed"
test without a glitch. This was an easy weekend project for a guy with very little DIY talent.
I used some of the tweaks mentioned on this forum. You can probably see the "longhorn" on the Grado, which was also treated with a bit of silicon oil. I also added a pound + (as much as would fit) of plasticlay inside the aluminum undercarriage of the turntable. Even with the open design it's very hard to see.
Finally, since I've acquired a Promitheus TVC I wanted to retire (again) my trusty old Adcom 565, so I bought a Grado PH-1 phono stage. It sits to the left of the turntable since it looks too cool to hide in a rack.
So, after all of these years and with all of this time and money invested, I fired her up. The first record was a MFSL Original Master Recording of Supertramp's Crime of the Century. This is a disk I never replaced with CD, and I remember how good it used to sound back in the day. Now, I bought this nearly 30
years ago when I was in high school. For the whipper snappers out there, this was before Cd's, so when you had a party in the 70's (from what I can remember
) you played a lot of sides, one at a time, all night, and sometimes the vinyl was treated with less care that it deserved. I hadn't played this for years even before the arrival of rugrats, so I expected the worst.
Vinyl can be very quit. Shh, don't tell anyone. I was shocked. Where was the surface noise? Oh sure, there was an occasional pop, but very few, and all I noticed was the dynamic and open sound. I've since played a dozen or so old recordings (one from the late 50's) with the same result. Sometimes a few pops, but no surface noise. This is far quieter than I remember, and the rest of my system now is FAR more revealing than it was in 1995. I have to believe the shelf, the longhorn (which makes mistraking a thing of the past), and the plasticlay are all contributing in a synergystic way to reducing noise.
Did I mention the soundstage? Sound can go WAYYY back behind the speakers. The word "relaxing" also comes to mind. Listener fatigue is a distant memory. This is a sound I've been trying to get with digital since 1987, and I finally got close with my current Paradisea NOS DAC. Overall the Paradisea is more dynamic, has better bass, cost less, and plays endless tunes from my music server via my PDA without the regular 20 minute ritual of flipping sides. The Syncro is still more natural sounding and relaxing (especially on jazz), even if I do have to get up to change sides. Neither front end is embarrassed to be in the presence of the other, so I'm calling this system a success.
Oh, and my son thinks it looks really cool in a retro sort of way. He also understands that if he touches it ...
Anyway, the main intention of this post was to pass along the idea of the cutting board shelf. Thanks to Chris at Timbernation for making such a beautiful piece.
