Turntables, who needs em!

As an audiophile for over 30 years and the owner of numerous turntables I have seen the vinyl renaissance take place over the last 4 or 5 years to a point where youngsters are hunting the bargain bins at their local weekend markets for used vinyl to play on their Rega’s or Project’s. Quite refreshing to see but frustrating because the turntables will not be set up properly and the vinyl will almost certainly be in need of a good clean.
When properly set up even a modest vinyl spinner will give CD a good run for it’s money, the music sounds fuller and the bass from a cd player IMO can never match that as from a turntable. The best turntable I have ever heard for cavernous bass is my current Garrard 401 fitted with an SME309 tone-arm.

The turntable is only half the story, the extras are the main areas where people fail to adopt the correct approach to reaching musical nirvana. Often the supplied tone-arm is left as is, VTA and azimuth or never really looked at, especially on plug and play decks like the budget project offerings. What the turntable rests on is also crucially important as well as the cartridge. In fact the cables and even the record mat are often afterthoughts when a new TT is acquired.

Luckily for the vinyl novice there are 100’s of resources now available for research into the best way to tweak your beloved vinyl spinner, amongst the most popular are The Vinyl Engine and The Art of Sound, the latter being especially fond of the Technics SL1200 series of turntables which have been tweaked beyond all imagination. To focus on the SL1200 considering it is no longer made, this direct drive DJ’ing deck is now believed to be capable of out-performing turntables above the £2000 mark and beyond. In it’s orginal guise it is nothing more than a deck to spin away old 12″ dance singles full if clicks and pops, properly modified it is an audiophiles delight, sounding truly astonishing given it’s roots, it has to be said however that on average e great deal of money needs to be spent on up-grading the SL1200 to achieve a truly musical performance from vinyl. Let us take a closer look at what can be done to the SL1200 (or 1210 if you are into black!)

To begin with let us look at what the turntable sits on, not the actual equipment stand but the turntables feet, not an area that immediately springs to mind as important to a layman but if the deck is to perform at it’s best, feet are fundamentally crucial. Luckily there are a few options but the author has found using personal trials and existing customer feedbacks that the best feet to fit onto the SL1200/1210 are the Isonoe feet pictured.

These feet whilst considered expensive at nearly £100 for a set of 4 are un-rivalled in performance terms and a perfect match for the Technics. Once the feet are installed they are more or less self levelling and do a very good job at absorbing resonances. Other feet exist for less money but do not sound as good to my ears at least.

There are so many other areas for improvement with the SL1200 that a separate blog may be needed to thoroughly investigate them all, the fundamental changes that can be achieved to sound quality, changes meaning improvements (mostly), start with removing the internal power supply inside the deck and either replacing it entirely (the most popular and noticeable improevmnet) or siting the PSU away from the deck in a separate box which is favoured by some buy not the author. The reason for removing the power supply is centered around the tracking of the cartridge as it moves over the record and is sited on it’s travel directly over the main pcb of the deck and the PSU, the delicate interaction from the low output of the cartridge and the circuitry inside the deck causes distortion which can be eradicated by removing the PSU completely and fitting a new custom made one. The sonic benefits of this can be heard straight away. Replacing the PSU with a new custom built one located well away for the deck can give enormous benefits.

Many external power supplies exist, some costing £300 up to £600, the author commissioned his own to be built by a leading professional specialising in this field, the results are very impressive and the PSU (based on a choke input which is not used much these days because of it’s high cost) is now available for sale on my website. The PSU whilst important does not tell the whole story, other key areas need to be addressed to transform the SL1200/1210 into the super league of turntables. One area of controversy is the platter which is a lightweight affair made from aluminium and not providing enough mass to be effective for audiophile use. The 2 most popular options for the platter are replace it entirely with a custom manufactured version or add an extra component on top of the stock platter to add mass and provide an effective interface between mat and vinyl. Whilst the author has heard option 1 recently the results were not as impressive as expected given the costs of the custom platter and the associated bearing which is required to be up-graded to suit the extra mass of the custom made platter. The author prefers option 2 and a particularly good result is obtained by using an aluminium mat placed directly onto the stock technics platter. The mat in question is made by Oyaide of Japan and is called the Oyaide MJ-12 record mat. Used with the accompanying STB-MS vinyl stabilizer Seen below residing on said turntable.

In the author’s opinion the combination of Oyaide mat and weight provides an exceptional up-grade to the turntable without the need for a new platter, soon to be performed tests will highlight the sonic difference between both options and the results will be printed when the tests take place shortly. Whilst on the subject of Oyaide, who provide some of the finest audiophile components in the industry, often copied but never bettered, particular mention should be made of their excellent tone-arm cable pictured below, manufactured from UP-OCC copper (ultra pure single grain copper), the cable is an excellent performer when fitted to the SL1200, especially with the Jelco SA-750D tone-arm which will be discussed in detail at a later date.

Many more up-grades are available including headshells and various other mats and cables, TBC.