Indulged in yet another turntable

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Hari Iyer

Hari Iyer

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Location
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I was looking for a good quality turntable after the Technics SL-23 and was considering various options of vintage and new. In the new, i had shortlisted TEAC TN-350, Rega P3, Audio Technica ATLP-120. Project was not considered as there were many negative reviews about motor Hum and Rumble issues which kept me guessing.

Vintage tables were Technics (various genre of 1200MKII, Dual, Thorens, Pioneer and so. I was searching for almost one month and finally gave hope and almost decided to settle for a new table. The one short listed were the Rega P3 and Teac TN-350. My search led me to a mint condition Thorens turntable and at a excellent price that too in Mumbai. After speaking with the seller i took a half day leave from office and went there directly to have a look. The table was in mint condition and everything worked perfectly. I was not prepared to pick them up right away, but if i did not then i would have repent as it would be gone by the next day.

I picked them and had the shipping screws secured, the tone arm, platter, belt and other moving parts spearately packed and bought them home. Needless to say, i installed them meticulously and the music start to flow from them from 11PM. This table is dead quite and has revealed micro details. I have installed my Technics EPC270ED cartridge on this arm. The TP16 tonearm is quite light weight (7.5 grams) and the cartride is 5.5grams. I am using a tracking force of 1.6gm measured with my micro guage.

I have now printed the protractor for this arm using the condrad arc generator and will check in the evening if the cartridge is perfectly aligned. The only issue with this table is i am not able to figure out how the dust cover fits the hinges. Also the ground wire is not grounding and will need to be soldered from the inside. All in all a very good purchase i would say.
 
Congrats Hari. Thorens are very good turntables. They are known to have tight tolerance main bearing.
Regards.
 
mpw said:
if you fiddle with it or tweak it - its certainly audiophile.. :D

njoi !
Click to expand...
Thanks again. The suspension was very tight, I loosened it a bit to have 3 to 4 bounce before resting. Earlier it was just half bounce. There was a motor wobble that was driving me nuts though tracking and speed was not affected. I searched and found a good solution to fix this issue which is very common in Thorens tables at the vinylengine site. Now there is no wobble at all. I have removed all oxide deposit on the Aluminiumand polished the platter rim - now looks new.

Btw, I am planning a sub-plinth with spikes for this table. Also stock rubber feet is too small to support weight of the table. The table is now resting on 4 wooden carrom coins and is more balanced.:)

Using the Technics EPC270C cartridge. Also am custom making the belt to specs with a belt making guy at Mumbai.
 
Last edited:
@sanjivnayak
I have been informed that Thorens Turntables will be officially available in India in a month or a two. These will be all new models with proper invoice and warranty.

I do not want the used or the new markets for Thorens impact by making the price paid public but will PM you the price for your information.
 
Hari Iyer said:
I was looking for a good quality turntable after the Technics SL-23 and was considering various options of vintage and new. In the new, i had shortlisted TEAC TN-350, Rega P3, Audio Technica ATLP-120. Project was not considered as there were many negative reviews about motor Hum and Rumble issues which kept me guessing.

Vintage tables were Technics (various genre of 1200MKII, Dual, Thorens, Pioneer and so. I was searching for almost one month and finally gave hope and almost decided to settle for a new table. The one short listed were the Rega P3 and Teac TN-350. My search led me to a mint condition Thorens turntable and at a excellent price that too in Mumbai. After speaking with the seller i took a half day leave from office and went there directly to have a look. The table was in mint condition and everything worked perfectly. I was not prepared to pick them up right away, but if i did not then i would have repent as it would be gone by the next day.

I picked them and had the shipping screws secured, the tone arm, platter, belt and other moving parts spearately packed and bought them home. Needless to say, i installed them meticulously and the music start to flow from them from 11PM. This table is dead quite and has revealed micro details. I have installed my Technics EPC270ED cartridge on this arm. The TP16 tonearm is quite light weight (7.5 grams) and the cartride is 5.5grams. I am using a tracking force of 1.6gm measured with my micro guage.

I have now printed the protractor for this arm using the condrad arc generator and will check in the evening if the cartridge is perfectly aligned. The only issue with this table is i am not able to figure out how the dust cover fits the hinges. Also the ground wire is not grounding and will need to be soldered from the inside. All in all a very good purchase i would say.
Click to expand...
Gr8, congrats. How about your cassette deck? Is it alive
 
mpw said:
Couldn't take the modifications ?

It was a wonderful turntable.

Sad.
Click to expand...
Yes, but the tonearm had one wire disconnected from inside. It broke from inside making it useless. I had to replace the wire, which caused a diy tonearm, though working perfect. I picked the Thorens as it was available for a fantastic price and working perfect.
 
Over the weekend i did some cartridge rollon to check what works well with the Thorens tone arm. I used the following 2 cartridges for comparing -

1. Ortofon cartridge with OM30 tonar aftermarket stylus
2. Technics cartridge with EPS270ED Pinnacle aftermarket stylus

I was discussing with FM Jousha about various tonearm parameters like compliance, resonance, effective mass and how these parameters are important for selecting a proper cartridge for your arm. I was told by Jousha that the correct method for measuring the effective mass of the tonearm was to measure the resonace freq of the arm by playing a standard test record. Since this was not available, i relied on the published parameters for the effective mass for the TP16 Thorens tonearm. Also i took the published data for the effective mass for both the cartridges. Below is the data

Tonearm effective mass - 7.5gms
Ortofon cartrdge mass - 5gms , Compliance - 25 cu
Technics cartridge mass - 5.5gms . compliance - 9.75 cu
Mouting screw mass (2nos) - 0.8gs (as measured by my microgauge)

Total mass of the arm with Ortofon cartridge - 13.3gms
Total mass of the arm with Techincs cartridge - 13.8gms

I used this link for calculating the resonance of my arm for the given mass and compliance of the cartridge

http://www.resfreq.com/resonancecalculator.html

For the Ortofon cartridge resonance is - 8.728 Hz
For the Technics cartridge resonace is - 13.72 Hz

As you can see the Ortofon cartridge is technically perfect as its within the limits of 8Hz to 12Hz resonance
The Technics cartridge resonance is a bit high over 12Hz.

so much for the objective measurements, but subjectively the Technics cartridge sounds far superior compared to the Ortofon cartride by miles and lightyears with an apples to apples comparison. I tried to find out the reason why this is so and could only find the below reason -

For a very high compliance tonearm line the Thorens (i have catagorized high compliance where tonearm effective mass is less than 8gms and low complaince as anything more than 12gms, inbetween is medium ompliance) the cartridge compliance should be low (like the Technics where the compliance is just 9.75 cu). Vice versa for low compliance tonearm (tonearm mass above 12gms) the high compliance cartridge like the Ortofon OM30 should sound good.

This has a anology similar to speaker designs - high compliance suspension of the cone means low compliance for the box and vice versa.

It will be interesting to note how other FMs are able to relate the cartridge performance vis-a-vis the tonearm.

Its not that the Ortofon is a bad cartridge but just it does not match my TP16 tonearm. The same cartridge was not sounding that bad in my Technics SL-23 arm.

Thanks for lookinig.
 
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