Vinyl Asylum: My Connoisseur and the Benz MC Gold (long) by Bushman

Hello

Itâ€™s Friday again, what a pleasure. So I decided to fit my Benz MC Gold to the Connoisseur I have been talking about previously. Let me first give you some information on the Connoisseur. The friendly supplier from the UK, Technical and General has sent me some articles on the designer as well as some reviews and brochures. It is absolutely astonishing the similarities found in the Connoisseur and modern turntables. For example:

The Plinth:

Listen to what Mr. George Merrill said. â€œThe sub-chassis is the support system for the tonearm and platter. The overall design must start with one major objective in mind, absorption of release energy from the tonearm.â€ Then he refers to rigidly coupling the tonearm mounting, so that it forms a non-removable part of the sub-chassis. All these attributes are found in modern tables today and more. The Connoisseur has a top plate, which is suspended, from the plinth box by a three-spring suspension. The top plate is manufactured from metal sheet and has a degree of tension build into the design, I assume to better â€œmanageâ€ released energy from the arm. The arm base forms one part with the top plate being rigidly coupled to the top plate. Also fitted to the top plate is the platter bearing. Also interesting is that with the top plate floating on the suspension there is an opening between the top plate and the plinth box. There is also no bottom cover on the plinth box.

The motor is not fitted directly onto the top plate. It is separately suspended and is hanging on a rubber suspension. So the motor is isolated from the top plate and the plinth box. In addition it is a low torque motor, which results in low hum. Also the rotor is specially balanced and fitted onto PTFE bearings. This results in low vibration from the motor.

The cover is not fitted to the plinth. Its loose and are removed completely when played.

Platter:

The platter is non-ferrous aluminium casting, which is lathe turned to fine limits. Itâ€™s only 260mm in diameter and weights 1.25Kg. The drive belt is round and fits into a special semi-circular groove machined into the bottom part of the platter. From the platter itâ€™s fitted to the motor. You will notice that the platter diameter is smaller than most modern tables. Reason was to reduce weight and motor torque needed to turn the platter. Interesting is how stable and good the pitch stability is. Must be the result of a high quality motor.

It has a phosphor bronze bearing machined to very small tolerances, incorporating a steel thrust bearing to further reduce friction. From normal running speed it takes more than 3 minutes to standstill with the belt removed.

The tonearm:

The BD2 is fitted with the SAU 2 arm, also design by Mr. Sudgen, designer of the Connoisseur turntable. Interesting is the Gimbal bearing design of the arm. The Gimbals are mounted at 45 degree to the horizontal and vertical axis and this allows for a very unique anti-skating device. The anti-skating device forms part of the inner Gimbal and adds no friction at all as it is not magnetic, spring or friction types. One weakness with the bearing design is that the azimuth change throughout play in small increments.

The one thing that I found not up to modern design standards is the headshell. It does not form part of the arm and slides onto the arm and does not form a tight fit.

The arm in general does not look like a killer and first reaction was to remove it and fit something better. For now I decided to keep it as original.

So what does the Connoisseur sound like? Every time I connect it to the pre-amp I am totally stunned. At first I had a small Ortofon fitted to the arm and it played very well. Tonight I fitted the MC Gold, thinking by myself, this arm will never manage the Benz. What a surprise, no sibilance, no resonance problems, it just plays. Obviously I can still do much more fine tuning, but the Connoisseur and its standard arm has transformed the Benz into what can be defined as â€œpace and rhythmâ€. I can use all the popular terms musical, air, extension and more but to put it simple it makes music like I have not heard before. There are problem areas like bass is a bit light, busy passages gets little bit muddled and more. I am sure with some fine-tuning and tweaking most of this can be solved. But the energy it plays with is just fantastic.

I will follow up with a picture and some more descriptions later. What I can say, if you can get your hands on one of these babies, don't think just buy it as it can be transformed into a giant killer.

Best Regards

Siegfried