The Mike New Technics Bearing

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mike_New

Hi Francois and Marco,
I hear what you are saying, however it is the fact that anything to do with the SL1200 sales wise, is to be operating in a very niche market. I have looked at the online magazine site that you mentioned Marco and I could only find a couple of articles on the SL written about 5 years ago. Sure I will contact them and see what they say, thank you.
I don’t think Mr. Price would be interested in talking to me, as he is a close friend of Cawley. I did offer to supply a bearing to him for free at HFW, for use on his testbed SL but got no reply.

As for putting together an evaluation kit, this is possible, but to ship it to all the “reviewers” would be very costly and they all have their own time frames to work in, so the delay for any positive results would be measured in years. Sure I could send out just bearings to all the candidate magazines, but this would also be very costly, resulting in a large upfront capital outlay, which I am not interested in; for instance I would have to make a batch of 25 just to meet this requirement, even if I could determine the best mags to contact.

I think you are correct in assuming there is a still large potential market for the bearings among the large population of audiophiles who have SLs. However I believe that the very real marketing problem is one of language.
For instance I have only sold 2 bearings in China (how many people live there?) So, yes I need to join a Chinese forum and put Chinese on my website. Only one problem!! This also I believe pertains to Europe, in particular Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and others; where I guess they have their own Audio forums. This of course is where agents/distributors become useful, but the downside is that they require margins for their efforts so the price has to be increased, which is not unreasonable.

I have tried to work with some people in Europe who may have the time to be interested in actively participating on a local forum, and to represent my Bearings for a margin on the price. But nothing ever really happened.

The US should be good for a much larger uptake, but again as you say getting into HiFi mags is important. And most of them do not do reviews for free, you have to advertise with them which again is expensive for such a niche market.

In summary, getting out to a wider audience on the internet which has a proactive interest in the SL, is the better path to follow I think. How to do this effectively is the big question.

---

Hi Mike

I am about to do a Technics feature review and your bearing is included + hopefully a couple of Funk items platter, tonearm (talked with Arthur today again to arrange this but he is off to Munich soon) I had intended on starting next week but alas with Funk not onboard - yet - I am holding off till early June but after that I am going ahead regardless as others are waiting (very patiently I might ad) for their Technics related items to be reviewed.


After my Dad died Nov last year I stopped writing reviews for awhile and everything was shelved but I am nearly back on track now, so champing at the bit to do this article/series of articles.

I am not sure re logistics in including any of your other items in the review (though I am planning on including one of your metal platters, albeit its an early one) as my online mag is a no advertising zone, therefore no incoming revenue so paying shipping costs and vat/import duty is a no go for me, part of the terms and conditions of Adventures in High Fidelity Audio reviews - http://www.adventuresinhifiaudio.com/ which sadly means some reviews have never got off the ground as the logistics go against it happening.





Regards Neil

Apologies for the slight diversion.

Mike, I was wondering if you use a record clamp or weight with your bearing?

Cheers,

Nigel

High Nigel,
Yes I do use a weight about about 1Kg

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mike_New

If you do have a badly centred hole and I have had some, what I suggest as a positive cure it to make the hole larger, then make up a pad to glue to the top of the record which has a nice fitting hole.
Now accurately centre the record by spinning the platter, place the pad over the spindle and push down tightly.
This could be something that Shuggie could make for people.

---

Yes this is true, if there was an option of an under sized spindle I could do that without having to perform surgery on my records. My record collection is worth far more than my turntable, I'd rather change the spindle than drill out the records. I might see if can get the spindle taken down in height a bit, with a few mats on I could set it up so the record just clears the spindle top and have the option to take mats off if I want to centre the record.

A small conical hand reamer is all you need, not a drill. You only need a tiny bit of opening out, and can then draw a dot on the label at the point where the hole should be against the spindle.

It's the record at fault, makes sense to fix the problem at source.

Hi Mike

What is the current situation with the bearing? Are you only going to make the next batch once you have sufficient deposit numbers? In which case I presume this will be quite some time away given what you have said recently about current demand.

Thanks.

High Dave,
My hope was to get enough people to commit to a bearing by placing a deposit before I place an order with my suppliers with full up front payment. Unfortunately the current interest in the SL has slowed somewhat and I do not want to finish up with many bearings in stock for to long.

Thanks Mike. So basically that means we are at least a few months away from any possibility of having them?

Dave,
The sooner people place their deposits the faster you will get your bearing. It worked last time and everyone seemd to be happy with the short time delay.

Hi folks, long time since I last posted here.
I have only got a hand full of deposits so far, so it would seem that the Bearing party is over.
I will miss it!!!