Power supply (for Garrard) question

[Bigbird]

Hi guys im looking into different power supply options for my garrard project.

After speaking with James at Whest , he has recommended the VPI ADS supply as one of the best he has come across. It is completely analogue which (apparently) makes it quieter than supplies that have any digital parts in the chain , but im not sure wether it is compatible with the Garrard motor?

Can anybody tell me if they’ve had experience with this or even if it has the sufficient specifications to drive the Garrard motor.

Ive now read up on the usual Monarchy , LDA , CTC , phoenix etc supplies which all seem to be an improvement but this analogue one has got the juices flowing and i like the sound of it.

Cheers

Karl


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[Ali Tait]

I haven’t heard it, but I don’t see how it can be better than the LDA power supply. Providing the motor with the cleanest and most accurate voltage and frequency is surely the most important thing. It’s been specifically designed for Garrards and Lencos.

[Ali Tait]

Just noticed that VPI spec a max motor wattage of 10w. The Garrard motor is specced at 12w.

[JohnG]

The LDA as said will work with various types of Idler Drive making it very verstile, so if a opportunity arises to use another Idler TT Model the LDA owner can rest assured that they will be supplying it with good matching power supply and exceptionally clean mains signal.
The versatility of the LDA is not limited to Idler Drives, it will have a similar effect on certain belt drive TT's, the list of Belt Drive TT's it has had a noticeable improvement on is growing.
I had the pleasure of talking with a individual on the weekend at the Sheffield Event,
who was informing me it has transformed their TT to another level,
the 'icing and cherry are now on the cake' as claimed, as a result of the LDA being used on their belt drive.

[Bigbird]

I haven’t heard it, but I don’t see how it can be better than the LDA power supply. Providing the motor with the cleanest and most accurate voltage and frequency is surely the most important thing. It’s been specifically designed for Garrards and Lencos.

Thanks for the reply Ali. I think that is essentially what the VPI does also but it just uses analogue oscillators to supply a clean stable 50hz sine wave( or at least thats how I understood it when I spoke to James) ???.
Also that it has a power output of 15w not 10w .


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[Bigbird]

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This is what James sent me with regards to digital sinewaves. That they are in steps so therefore will be noisier.


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[Bigbird]

The LDA and Monarchy were top of the list before i had spoken with him so this has now thrown a little spanner in the works . I also liked the idea of the Monarchy audio regenerator as it not only does the clean sine wave but the voltage is adjustable which is also said to be beneficial to the Garrard motors, i think Artisan fidelity use them. LDA doesnt have this feature


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[Ali Tait]

Nick will supply it with whatever voltage you want. Frequency is also adjustable to lock in exact speed, very useful with a Garrard.

[IslandPink]

The VPI one is no cheaper than Nick's, it doesn't look as slick. I'm not sure how they compare technically but I know a fair bit about the LDA one as a few years ago I supplied Nick with an abandoned DIY supply unit I'd built from a well-known circuit - which didn't cut the mustard. He sussed out all the faults in that design, then designed his own much better and higher-power unit which eventually became the LDA product. My mate in N.Wales, Lenny, who used to work refurbishing Garrards, got a loan of one for his 401 a year or two back, and I came down for a listen. It didn't take more than a few seconds to realise how much better it is than normal mains or mains via a variac etc. Nick found that you could hear surprisingly low level of distortion on the waveform.

[Lee Henley]

I use the LDA on my Lenco and Spacedeck it’s an amazing piece of kit and makes quite a noticeable difference

[Bigbird]

Thanks for the insight gents. I wonder if Nick can make a voltage adjustable version. I know a fair few people have talked of the benefits of being able to take the voltage down to around the 220-230v mark in order to get motor vibrations down to a minimum. This is said to have a positive effect . I also think i will try source a 401 motor aswell which is widely regarded as an improvement over the 301.

Has anybody seen the Hanze hifi HAT CPS-2 ? It looks like this is a dutch power supply on the market . I really like the vintage styling but can only find one write up which seems positive. Ive emailed them to ask for some more piccies , prices and specs but it seems to have the best of both worlds with voltage adjustment and analogue oscillators for a clean sinewave

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[Ali Tait]

AFAIK Nick supplies it with 225v output, you could ask about the variable output, pretty sure he could sort that for you.

[Ammonite Audio]

Jaap at Hanze is possibly the most knowledgable and competent person when it comes to idler decks, so his HAT power supply should be one of the best, but I suspect it’s not a cheap option. Well worth investigating though.

[WESTLOWER]

Another LDA quartz TT power supply user here.

It's a no brainer, quality build, No foo, easy to use and very very effective giving the presentation more focus & snap. (if that's what you want from your vinyl!, obv. but an essential question to ask yourself!)

No too sure why you would need it variable voltage, as well documented the optimum seems to be 220 - 230v, which Nick would set to your requirements.

I had a very flexible Variac on my Garrard for a while and below 220v it lost some of the drive that is essentially the Garrad's DNA signature.

Anyway IMHO the cleaning of the power is more important than dropping the voltage.

[Bigbird]

Ive had a word with Alexander at hanze and he has said that the engineer(possibly Jaap?) is on vacation but essentially it can be built fully customised to any spec that suits the TT and motor. Prices are 1600-1900 euros so not cheap, but it does look the business

The reason i was wondering about voltage adjustability is that from what i can gather in reading the forums , people seem to have had good results with a range somewhere between 220-232v so would be nice to have a tinker to see what setting ,if any, sounds best.

I know a few of the power supplies offer this as standard


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[Bigbird]

Does anybody know if its cheaper to buy direct from Nick rather than through MCRU etc ?


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[Ali Tait]

I can mail him for you if you like?

[dave2010]

I'm not quite sure what the requirements are here. Are we talking DC to AC or AC to AC?

Of course some AC -> AC circuits may go via DC.

I suspect it's AC and a good clean sine wave with accurate frequency control may be the requirement. I do actually have a Garrard, recently rescued from my loft, but I haven't looked at the motor to check it out.

Some DC->AC converters don't generate a very clean sine wave, and probably also lose energy which must result in heat.

I wasn't thinking about driving motors, but did look into this some while ago while considering good inverters for use with DC output from PV panels.

[Patrick Dixon]

This is what James sent me with regards to digital sinewaves. That they are in steps so therefore will be noisier.

Sorry but that is simply not true: the 'steps' are filtered by a low pass filter and the output is an analogue sinewave. Any 'noise' (actually harmonics) would be the result of poor filter design.

If you are able to diy, there is a design available on lenco heaven that works well with my 301. Search for Nigel's Speed Controller.
PS. it's analogue too.

[Ali Tait]

I'm not quite sure what the requirements are here. Are we talking DC to AC or AC to AC?

Of course some AC -> AC circuits may go via DC.

I suspect it's AC and a good clean sine wave with accurate frequency control may be the requirement. I do actually have a Garrard, recently rescued from my loft, but I haven't looked at the motor to check it out.

Some DC->AC converters don't generate a very clean sine wave, and probably also lose energy which must result in heat.

I wasn't thinking about driving motors, but did look into this some while ago while considering good inverters for use with DC output from PV panels.

Garrards have AC motors, and yes I’d agree on those requirements.Nicks power supply is basically a small mains regenerator and provides all those requirements.

[Bigbird]

I'm not quite sure what the requirements are here. Are we talking DC to AC or AC to AC?

Of course some AC -> AC circuits may go via DC.

I suspect it's AC and a good clean sine wave with accurate frequency control may be the requirement. I do actually have a Garrard, recently rescued from my loft, but I haven't looked at the motor to check it out.

Some DC->AC converters don't generate a very clean sine wave, and probably also lose energy which must result in heat.

I wasn't thinking about driving motors, but did look into this some while ago while considering good inverters for use with DC output from PV panels.

Im assuming AC to AC. The monarchy power supply converts its from AC to Dc then back to AC from what i can gather.


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[Bigbird]

I can mail him for you if you like?

Thanks Ali i have his email now from another fellow member.


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[Bigbird]

Sorry but that is simply not true: the 'steps' are filtered by a low pass filter and the output is an analogue sinewave. Any 'noise' (actually harmonics) would be the result of poor filter design.

If you are able to diy, there is a design available on lenco heaven that works well with my 301. Search for Nigel's Speed Controller.
PS. it's analogue too.

See this is why i come on here to ask/check on all the things i see and here because im about as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to electronics. So as you can probably gather from this, a DIY build is not something i would be confident undertaking . Although reading up the NSC seems very popular and doable for about £300 which is fantastic. Most of the supplies i see are in the £8-900 region.


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[da2222]

Does anybody know if its cheaper to buy direct from Nick rather than through MCRU etc ?

It's about the same, MCRU may have an ex demo reduced price if you're very lucky.

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It's about the same, MCRU may have an ex demo reduced price if you're very lucky.

[graham67]

I use a power regenerator for several components in addition to the lda quartz psu. I would love not to have to run 2 regenerators but when I plugged the 401 into the power inspired some.of the magic was lost. So the lda psu stays put ! With other dedicates PSUs improvement was not enough to.notice compared to using the power inspired but the lda is a noticeable improvement.

[dave2010]

Im assuming AC to AC. The monarchy power supply converts its from AC to Dc then back to AC from what i can gather.


Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkI'm slightly annoyed with myself here. A while back I looked into DC to AC inverters, and found that a very simple design based on switching and phase reversal could give a moderately good approximation to a sine wave. The maths showed that this should work, and I think some cheaper inverters use techniques like this. In some inverters this approach is called MSW for modified sine wave - see https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-inverters-work.html

However, this approach only really works to drive some devices, and perhaps not even then. Some devices, such as electric heaters, and perhaps some motors might work with such an imperfect inverter, but many devices don't work well or at all.

An approach which could be taken would be to take an MSW inverter, and then filter off the unwanted frequencies, to give a purer sine wave, but that would reduce the power output further, and give more heat. Such devices would have an efficiency of maybe 90% or less. In theory also, using "perfect" switching would not lose any energy, as either the effective voltage would be 0, or the effective current would be 0 (think about square waves), so energy wasted due to switching would be zero. In practice this is not going to be the case, and there will be some loss of energy due to switching. Also, the switching transients must surely generate considerable noise.

Much better designs (about which I know less) are more efficient, and can convert significantly more than 90% of the DC energy into AC. These will still use high speed switching, but in different ways (I said I didn't know much about them ...) - but depending on how well they are designed and made there might still be a deviation from a perfect sine wave - a noise component. This could be reduced by filtering, but again that would lose energy to heat.

An added complication in the real world is that connecting a load to such a power source will interact with it, so that will also interact with the shape of the approximated sine wave. Low power circuits, such as are used in computers, will probably not affect the power supply too much, but in much larger scale power engineering (think high speed electric locomotives) the interaction between the power source and the driven device could be very much greater. I feel sure that some electrical/electronic engineers will have worked out designs which are good enough for many purposes, and take into account more factors than simple harmonic analysis would require. If the designed power output is considerably greater than the required load output then results should be rather good with well designed circuits, but if the power drawn gets close to the maximum, then I would expect performance (i.e. quality of results vs desired) to drop off. In audio it is well known that trying to run an amplifier too hard gives rise to clipping (undesirable). For driving motors or devices such as heaters, there would be a reduction in power if the power supply could not deliver the maximum power under all conditions, and for motors this might not be too noticeable if there is high rotational inertia, but it might manifest itself as a slight speed variation - which presumably in the example of a record turntable might translate into an audible and unwanted effect.

Whether it is worth spending large amounts of money to try to overcome the deficiencies of the motor and its associated power source I can't say.

Sorry if this is rambling a bit - but in any case I think it qualifies me for membership of the Insomniacs Club!

[JohnG]

A NSC can have the parts required purchased for £300+
this sum is not the real cost of the NSC.
If a individual can assemble it without any other support,
on completion, if all has been carried out carefully it will fire up and offer a function, this version will be a £300+ NSC, that I feel confident in saying will have its own unique performance as a result of the build method
and also have a unique effect on a TT's SQ.
The NSC can be built in another method it will require a understanding of EE'ing and the devices used to control the adherence to the designs operational parameters, this version will be built on a test bench.

I will feel I can safely claim this version of a NSC built will for the average individual require a outside support that will incur a additional cost, so I would say £500+ is more likely to be the cost.
I have listened to NSC's over the past years, and the ones that are most memorable are the ones that have been on a test bench.
I have reported on the Mains vs NSC vs LDA MKII in other threads.
I have now come to the conclusion that
Speed Controllers/Mains Conditioners have a effect on the SQ presented and each device has its own signature.
Your queries at present seem more relating to available designs, but what is not being aired is that each design has a impact on the end performance.
From my experiences the effect on the SQ by a device is the deal clincher or breaker.
If the plan is to only improve on the Mains then all the devices I have auditioned are quite capable of that.
To make a decision and not have to spend twice, it is advisable to have a home trial of commercial units and beg, borrow, a audition with a DIY version, ultimately trying one that is a built on a test bench version.

[Patrick Dixon]

A NSC can have the parts required purchased for £300+
this sum is not the real cost of the NSC.
If a individual can assemble it without any other support,
on completion, if all has been carried out carefully it will fire up and offer a function, this version will be a £300+ NSC, that I feel confident in saying will have its own unique performance as a result of the build method
and also have a unique effect on a TT's SQ.
The NSC can be built in another method it will require a understanding of EE'ing and the devices used to control the adherence to the designs operational parameters, this version will be built on a test bench.

As an EE I can't disagree. However there is only really one thing to setup and it's fairly simple if you have access to an oscilloscope.

But I fully understand if people want to buy a finished product and the £500 difference has got to be worth it if you don't enjoy building stuff.

[dave2010]

Reverting back to my msg 18, it seems to me that the requirements are for a sufficiently powerful PSU, with variable frequency, variable output voltage, and very good noise suppression and accurage sine wave output.

I'm not quite sure what NSC stands for - though I'm guessing that the SC bit stands for Speed Control.

I don't know yet whether it really would make a difference if the design was all analogue, or all digital, or a hybrid. One or two of the posts here do suggest that getting all the parameters "right" does make a sonic difference. Whether I would want to take up these ideas for the 401 I found in my loft I'm not sure. I think it'll need some TLC before even getting to thinking about fancy PSUs.

In the first instance I'd expect the main bearing and the idler wheel to need attention as the highest priorities.

I'll think about that one - though I have a three other turntables to mess with - if I can be bothered. A TD 125 and a Garrard Zero 100, and one other - which I think is a direct drive. I'll need to check. I always meant to get these working again - when I had the time - but that hasn't happened yet.

[killie99]

NSC - Nigel’s Speed Controller : PCB made buy a guy called Nigel.

[dave2010]

NSC - Nigel’s Speed Controller : PCB made by a guy called Nigel.Is Nigel an AoS member? Has the design been published, or does he make them to order? Is he an electrical/electronic engineer? What are the specs?

[killie99]

He's on the Lenco Heaven forum. Don't quote me on this but I think his design is an adaptation of another design which was doing the rounds. Nigel has had several rounds of Group Buys to get boards manufactured but you have to build the unit yourself, Nigel only sells the bare PCB's. I'm sure I read he has supplied a few thousand PCB's over the years - I have a bare PCB and some of the components but have never got round to building it yet, maybe I'll make it my winter project for this year!

https://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=13981.0

[ianlenco]

The original design was made by a Lenco Heaven member for himself and me! He didn't want to go into production so was happy for Nigel to take the design and modify it as he sought fit which he did. Excellent product built successfully by many people. There's a long thread on LH showing build examples.

https://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=14824.0