The Reference Lenco Pt LXXIX - New Year new developments
It's nearly March and I've not touched the '75 in quite some time. I've been enjoying the deck and love it's sound but I've now finished with my Valve MM phonostage experiments and my Goldring G99 is also on the final straight with only a few minor tweaks to do. I've been looking at stuff that I don't use and have decided that I might go down the route of a two arm plinth. I want a new plinth anyway because I want a decoupled tonearm pod made from heavy non-magnetic material and possibly with an ebony finish. I love the effect the ebony armboard brought to my Technics 1210 so I suspect a might tweak a little extra detail out of the '75. The plinth redesign will also enable me to change the orientation of the whole turntable chasis, this picture gives you all an idea of what I want. I would like to position the motor to the lower left of the plinth whilst keeping the tonearm top right. The idea is to keep vibration away from the tonearm pod which will be decoupled anyway but it might aid things.
Attachment 22808
The new plinth will also house the new chasis which is now completely filled in. I also have performed some modifications to the idler arm which may or may not be beneficial. The Alphason tonearm should also benefit from the new plinth as I should be able to improve the VTA position of the tonearm. Things are ok and I get a great noise from the '75 but I think could be improved. The new plinth will also have a greater mass, I'm a great fan of extra mass and it should be interesting to see if this helps. I do have a concern that I'm not going to be able to assess each tweak on an individual basis so I guess I'm hoping that all of them when taken as a package will improve the performance of the deck. Construction of the new plinth will probably be birch ply but I do have an important call to make tomorrow to discuss the plinth's design. At the some point I'd also like to decouple the motor so this has to be taken into account when making the plinth. I'll also be looking at dampening again wherever possible under the hood and removing any parts that are not needed. I hate to say this but the only way forward with this deck would probably be to ditch it and then go down the route of a PTP. There is still life left in this old beast and hopefully we can keep this thread alive for a little longer.
As ever stay tuned... :)