by William Burton
Unusual turntable features for special needs and desires.
--- The granite platter and the granite substructure of Entec's Granite turntable
make this a heavyweight contender in the high-end arena. The gross weight
of the floating substructure is 110 pounds, with a total weight (including
stand) of 180 pounds. The base measures 24 inches square, the turn table
itself 16 x 20 inches. Price is $5,000 without tonearm, dust cover, or any
other accessories.
You have to make many choices when you are shopping for a turntable. You must choose between belt drive and direct drive, a pivoted or linear-tracking arm, and manual, semiautomatic, or automatic operation. And then you must select the turntable that will work best in your system, basing your selection on features, specifications, and performance. Test reports, manufacturers' literature, and directories such as STEREO REVIEW'S Stereo Buyers Guide can provide information, but they can't make any of these choices for you.
You don't have to do much research on turntables to discover that there are more ways to spin a record and hold a cartridge than you might have imagined. The options in turntables include a wide range of sizes, weights, tone-arm types, chassis designs, and unique features.
The size and weight of a turntable, and particularly of the platter that supports the record, are important because greater mass in creases stability. A massive turntable can resist mechanical and acoustic feedback, and the inertia of a heavy platter smooths out speed variations. Thus we have turntables with names that express their solid substance, such as Entec's "Granite" and Elite's "The Rock."
Even when the tone arm comes with the turntable, variations on the basic theme exist. There are turntables with two or more tonearms (so you can shift from one cartridge to another in seconds), and the new Yamaha turntables have twin-tube instead of single-tube arms. The unique floppy tone arm on the NAD 5120 turntable is designed to flex at inaudibly low frequencies for improved isolation.
Records are round, but the bases of most record players are rectangular. As you might expect, round chassis turntables do exist. These include the Walker 061, the Dun lop Systemdek II, and the Canadian Ariston RD40. Denon's DP-80 and DP-75 are also round, with bases whose beveled sides make them resemble flying saucers.
If you are overwhelmed by the range of options available in turntables, don't despair. Just think of the even larger range of options you have when you're choosing the records to play on them.
--- Called a "fine, upstanding turntable," the Technics SL-V5 gives you a new angle on playing records. The vertical design lets the---- unit stand on narrow shelves or ledges where other turntables fear to track. To play a record, you open the hinged front door, put the disc on the platter, close the door, and press PLAY. Except for its orientation, the turntable is not terribly out of the ordinary, with automatic operation, linear-tracking tone arm, and compatibility with P-mount cartridges. The direct-drive motor has a combination rotor/platter designed for stable rotation, and the low-friction, low-mass tone arm has a gimbal suspension. The turntable determines the correct motor speed and where the cartridge should set down automatically. The controls are mounted on the slanted panel at the bottom of the chassis. The turntable measures about 120 inches wide, 14 5/8 inches high, and 7 1/4 inches deep. Price is $220.
Despite
its unassuming appearance, Sansui's direct-drive XP-99 is quite unusual.
Below the regular drive motor and rotating record platter there is an identical
second motor with a flywheel that has the same rotational inertia as the
platter but rotates in the opposite direction. The two motors are synchronized
thus the feature's name, Silent Synchrotor System and the effect is to cancel
vibrations caused by torque variations as the main drive motor's speed is
changed in response to commands from the servo-control system. The tonearm
is dynamically balanced and controls vibrations in the arm itself and in
the cartridge. Price of the XP-99 is $400. The Silent Synchrotor System is
also available in the more elaborate XR-Q7 turntable, priced at $f 00.
---The Sony PS-Q3 turntable measures only 8 1/2 inches wide and 24 inches high
and weighs 8 pounds, 3 ounces, but it plays full-sized LP's. It is also unusual
because it includes a phono preamp section and a volume control for use with
headphones or amps that have only line-level inputs. The fully automatic
belt-drive turntable is available as part of two of Sony's micro-component
systems or separately, with moving-magnet cartridge, for $150.
Works in a drawer--slip a disc onto the platter in the sliding drawer
of this turntable, the Pioneer PL-88FS, touch a button, and the record and
platter disappear into the chassis. The drawer-loading design enables the
turntable to be stacked with other components, so you don’t have to make
space on the top of your rack. Once the disc is loaded, the turntable can
be programmed for playback of tracks in the order you want to hear them,
with index-scan and repeat functions. The turntable also features a quartz
phase-locked-loop Stable Hanging Rotor motor for wow and flutter of 0.025
percent. Rumble is rated at-78 dB (DIN-B weighted).
List price is $400, which includes a moving-coil cartridge.
Nakamichi makes cassette decks that turn the tape over for you, but this
turntable-the Drag on CT-does not play the flip side automatically. Instead,
it compensates for center holes that are not in the center of the record,
eliminating wow caused by eccentric rotation. The turntable does this with
two platters-an aluminum main platter, weighing 1.4 kilograms, and a variable-position
glass platter on top of it that weighs 550 grams.
After you place a record on the glass platter, pressing the Center Search Start switch begins the search for the absolute center of the record. The Center Search Rod varies the position of the Center Search platter relative to the main platter while a sensor arm measures groove eccentricity and deter mines when complete error correction has been achieved, at which point the Absolute Center Search Indicator lights up. The Dragon CT's price is $1,740.
The SOTA Star Sapphire holds an LP to its 11-pound platter with a low-level
adjustable vacuum to reduce the effects of warps, acoustic feedback, and
resonances. Three access holes provide vacuum suction near the spindle to
pull the record to the platter mat. An outer lip on the mat and a small spindle
cap over the center hole create a seal that maintains the difference between
the air pressure above the record and below it. The sub-chassis weighs 22
pounds for maximum isolation. Unlike many other high end turntables, the
Star Sapphire hangs the subchassis from the main chassis from four, not three,
suspension points. With an oak finish, price is $1,450; in koa wood, it's
$1,600.
Kyocera (the name comes from Kyoto Ceramic) makes the platter and base of
its PL-910 turntable from ceramic materials for stability and isolation from
mechanical feedback. The dual-suspension subchassis with the 11-pound platter
rests on four points, and the cutout for the tone arm is on the back right
of the subchassis. The belt-drive manual turntable lists for $2,000.
--- The two tonearms in Sharp's RP-117/C allow you to play both sides of a
record without having to re move it from its sliding drawer and flip it over.
The autoreverse linear-tracking, belt-drive turntable features an Automatic
Programmable Music Selector for up to fourteen cuts on sides A and B or automatic
full play of side A, side B, or both. The turntable changes sides and sets
the cartridges down at the right points automatic ally. Price is $250.
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Also see: Tonearms (Jan. 1985)
Stanton Epoch II HZ9S and LZ9S cartridges (Jan. 1985)
Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)