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The SG has been packed away for a few years - I had only just started using it when it developed a channel imbalance - I have a feeling that the problem is in the phono stage but I have not gotten back to it since....It seemed to track fine, given that I always check the tracking when setting up a cartridge, I am quite sure I tested it - but I don't recall the results.... I am sure it wasn't a poor tracker (otherwise it would have stuck in my mind) - but how good I just don't remember.I consider a reasonable tracker to be one that manages the third track - and a good tracker manages the fourth track on the HFN test record. Doing only the first track is a poor tracker... fail - managing the second track is a scrape through pass.Like I said I would love to get some measurements done on the SS SG.... Given that the native behaviour of SG's has a rising top end, I would love to know how he tames that - or whether he just lets it through?
In the TAS review, the reviewer says"the preamp which is integral to the process, delivers a current that flows through the silicon crystals"Peter says nothing in the follow up to correct him.
My Empire/Benz MC1 also tracks at around 1.8g for good results... seems about the right VTF for most of the VDH & Benz carts...Luckydogs recent polar analysis of pitch/speed on AK seems to indicate that most halfway decent TT's are fine - the real difference ends up being arm stability / damping !So as long as there is a decent bearing with low noise/rumble - the focus seems to then need to shift to the arm, and LF damping is the critical bit - once that is right, then you can start looking at subtleties....So table quality may not be the essential ingredient!
I certainly accept that there are gains to be made, it is just a question of diminishing returns....The old Pareto ratio always applies.... It takes 20% of the effort to get 80% of the way to the perfect 100% completion.... and then the same 80/20 rule applies to the remaining and so it goes....Same with costs in audio equipment... and performance!Identifying the key factors the way LD tends to do is hugely valuable in focusing in on the 80% improvements that can be achieved for 20% of the effort....
Platform/Isolation is always a quick easy simple one (unless you happen to have a high end TT with it all already engineered into it!)Cartridge / arm matching - another simple and easy winFluid damping ( or it's equivalents) +1Obviously speed stability is of great value - but there are examples of economical classic tables with excellent speed stability without getting stratospheric in price, and the link between pitch/speed stability and arm damping - along with the observation that W&F with a record/arm/cartridge is a very different beast to W&F "at the platter" .... agreedYou can have a mega-heavy platter, perfectly balanced, but if the cart/arm aren't matched properly and the arm (or entire setup to be more correct) lacks damping - you will never get a piano to sound right on it! True, but if you have the same situation with a tinfoil platter nothing will sound right.Gusten's contributions are valuable too - he has achieved a top performing TT, based on starting with a basic SL1200mk2 - the beast looks horrendously ugly - a true frankenstein's monster! - but it performs, as he has focused on the key aspects, and due to the DIY nature of his efforts the cost is relatively negligible. (the time he has spent on it however is not negligible at all!!) Of course I haven't heard Gusten's table, but no doubt the 1200 has great potential, but it depends on what you consider "top". It will never be an SP10Mk3 or an L-07D will it?Some of the Boston Audio society articles from the 70's all point in similar directions - including the famous edition with the "paperclip" fluid damper....you can buy a ready made trough at KAB and adapt it for most any pivoting arm set-up. John TCG made one out of tinfoil and used a paperclip. Most people have a tendency to overdamp with these so one should listen for dull lifeless sound then back off.I have been somewhat torn between two vues of optimisation for compliance matching of arm and cartridge...Peter Pritchard, stated in the 70's (when his designs were coming out with compliances of 40 to 50 cu...) that his target resonance was 6Hz.... Obviously this would work best in a properly damped system (as the resonance bell curve would definitely overlap the warp zone, and no records are perfectly flat), and also required a well isolated turntable (footfall and other environmental LF vibrations would also overlap with the resonance bell...).The more traditional 10Hz target puts one equally distant (1 octave) from the danger zone at the low end (5Hz) and the start of the Audio spectrum (20Hz) - with judicious application of damping and isolation I would have thought that this would still be optimum.But then there is Peter Pritchards - 6Hz resonance frequency target!? - Was that a compromise, accepting that most arms were too heavy to do better? - Or was there something else going on!?The ADC SuperXLM (40cu) sounds great on the (damped) JVC, with resonance down at around 5Hz.... even fitted to the super low mass Revox only lifts the resonance to all of 7.5Hz (have not listened to it on the Revox)A compliance that high forces the setup to work with a low low resonance frequency - so all the other aspects of the system have to be optimised so as to minimise the LF negatives....But then there are the clarity and dynamic gains of a low mass and low damping cantilever setup.....Are the mid compliance majority just plain wrong? (the MC1 does sound good, but I seem to prefer the higher compliance lower damping designs...)
