Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Vinyl Asylum ] [ Return to Search Results ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

A gaggle of turntables!!!

Posted by audio39 (A) on February 12, 2013 at 14:32:01

This is not a review but just a story of some hours spent listening to great music on equally great gear…it’s long so if you can’t speed read you may tire out before reaching the end.

And so September arrived, AAA hockey season for my youngest son goes into full gear, and my listening time is greatly reduced. I decide it’s time to attempt to get the vacuum system on my PD-300 working the way it was designed to, meaning that the vacuum would hold for one full side of an album at a time.

Rather then work on things in place I remove almost all of the components related to the vacuum system. There’s a lot of silicon on many components, remnants of attempted repairs of yester-year…previous owner(s). I cleaned all sealing surfaces and treated all rubber sealing surfaces to “Rubber Renue”. I also replaced every hose in the system, and ensured that each hose was fully on its nipple (a common oversight on this type of system).

I was into this far enough that it warranted an electrical once over, so it goes off to a friend who winds up replacing a few components and reports that everything is now just fine. Finally I haul out the spindle and bearing, the previous owner was from the “thicker” is “better” camp…it must have been 20W50 oil in the well. So a full inspection including measuring and checking clearances, a quick fill of the well with sewing machine oil, a careful reassembly and…voila!!! The Lux is ready to rock n’roll.

Album one, Alan Parson’s “Turn of a Friendly Card”…the vacuum holds for side one. Better yet, the vacuum holds for side 2. But best of all is that the PD-300 is sounding better than I could ever remember a table sounding. The Audiomods IV arm is surely part of the equation, and the mounted Denon DL-S1 is as good as I think it gets…but the tunes are just really really REALLY good.

So you’d think I would be happy and just enjoy, but instead my mind wanders into that realm of ‘how good can it get’? I start picturing VPI’s and Sota’s on my shelf. Maybe an Avid, even though a previous experience with their top deck had been disappointing. Yep, the upgrade bug was chewing me a new one.

I made 2 calls. Call 1 was to an old friend who is an absolute VPI nut, even bigger than I am a Luxman nut, and that’s just freaking nutty. I asked if I could borrow his Aries 1 with SME V arm to compare against my Lux. He’s all for the idea and offers up his VPI Classic as well…this being the first version, although he also owns the Classic 3, but that’s his new baby. An added bonus was that each VPI I was going to be trying out would have a new (estimated 100 hours) Shelter 901 cartridge.

Call number 2 didn’t work out the way I had hoped, but worked out quite nicely indeed. An old audio acquaintance that has benefitted many times from my willingness to loan gear, and who each time he has borrowed gear has said “I owe you one” was more then reluctant to loan me his Sota Nova – this because I did not like the Avid Acutus he had previously owned, and his claim is that my opinion caused his own opinion to sour!!! BUT…he was in possession of a Nottingham 294 with 12” arm that I could run for a week or 2.

So the stage was set…..

I’m acutely aware of the fact that many believe the only way to truly compare 2 or more audio components is to A/B them…but I don’t share that opinion and so simply spent a great deal of time listening to each table and then moving onto another.

I placed the VPI Aries on the left side of my Audio rack; the VPI Classic was on the right. Because I use a Luxman 8020 silver wire SUT with my DL-S1 run directly into my pre I had to purchase a Cambridge Audio 640p phono preamp. Very likely some will deduce that this is a disadvantage for the VPI tables that were supplied with Shelter carts, but I happen to think the 640p is a very capable little box. (For future reference, I used my DL-S1 on the Nottingham).

The Aries 1 has always been one of my favourite tables, it looks so substantial, and it’s just so masculine. The opening 5 hours were spent lost in bass definition that has to be heard; for sure this VPI was built on the premise of getting the basement built right. And everything else followed very nicely…I totally forgot to pay attention to the gear; I was just enjoying the music. I did a little tweaking here and there, but mostly just listened. When I was called up for supper I was certain that I was going to find and buy an Aries table.

After supper I had only 2 hours of listening time before my Wife would want to get at the big screen for a movie…this screen happens to be mounted on the wall in what is otherwise my “MAN CAVE”. I decided to simply get the Classic dialled in and wait for the following day to go for a test drive.

That next morning brought with it a big surprise. Mainly due to the look of the Classic, but also because I had heard one of these quite a few times previously, my expectations were that I would fall in love with this table. I liked the Classic, it was precise, it was well mannered…but it wasn’t the Aries! I found vocals rendered very nicely, but the bass didn’t dig as deeply, and the high frequencies didn’t go on forever like music played on the Aries. Remembering that the Aries has an SME V arm, I attributed most of the difference to that, but the very big difference in bass depth and detail, no…I think that’s the character of the Aries.

The Classic came out after 3 hours of listening and never made it back into the game, and my PD-300 went into service.

Only 2 hours of music was played on the Lux that day, but I was most impressed with my handy work. The table is …silent….! Bass is deep and tuneful. It’s not depth charge deep like the Aries, but it doesn’t sell the farm in comparison either. The top end is crisp and clean, but never crossing the line to edgy or etched. It’s the midrange that my table gets right. It’s perhaps the combination of Lux / Audiomods / Denon that is the reason, but vocals are just scary real, and the plucking of a guitar string – YIKES!!

I left the Lux running for the next few days, mostly due to the need to remove the Denon DL-S1 and mount it on the Nottingham. But in earnest, I was not in any rush to shut down my Lux, things were sounding mighty fine.

And so it is that I finally came to removing the DL-S1 from the Audiomods arm and mounting it on the Nottingham. The Nottingham is the coolest looking rig I’ve ever had my paws on, this one has some added mass to the platter in the way of a graphite slab and this only adds to the big bulky look this table imposes.

It took me 3 hours to mount the DL-S1 and get things set up in a way that was acceptable to me. The Nottingham is a fun table to work with; it was like dialing in a six pack on a Mopar 340 back in the seventies.

Okay, some Billy Joel…and…wow, that’s nice! This is an awesome table!! From placing the album on the massive platter, to setting the arm in place, to sitting back and listening, everything about the Nottingham experience is luxurious. I’m a Mechanical Engineer, and I often think I can do things better when it comes to turntables, but I don’t think I can better the 294.

The bass is at least the equal of the Aries, and everything else is absolutely the way it should be. I was so taken with the Nottingham, the depth of the image it produced, and the voices coming from the 8 inch mid in my Harbeths…I was just so taken with this deck. It seemed that I had found my next table….

At this stage it seemed important to spend some time with the Aries while it was still in the house, so the Aries sat next to the Nottingham…it was a showdown!

With the Aries back in service I noted many similarities between the VPI and the 294. Both of these tables render the low frequencies with authority, and they both have great timing…in my system I found these tables to impose the need to tap your toes and play air guitar often. The only thing that really stood out as “different” between the 2 tables was the all important midrange.

Having promised that I wouldn’t yank the Shelter 901 off of either VPI table…well, I lied - cuz it was time to put my DL-S1 on the Aries and see what was up? As soon as the deed was done and the Denon was sitting pretty on the Nottingham’s arm I knew what had been missing in that midrange…it was the DL-S1 that was missing. Now the Aries was laying out vocals like I would expect from a table of this calibre, from a table with an arm as capable as the SME V mounted and dancing along. Now I was beginning to lean toward the VPI, my beloved Led Zeppelin records were sounding pretty damn fine. Bonham and Jones were particularly happy with the resolving power of this table, bass lines were being separated and laid bare, and drum beats were slammin’. Ah, and here was the reference point, this was the best way to measure between these tables…Led Zeppelin!!

The following morning I was up at 5 AM, with coffee in hand it was time to move the DL-S1 back to the Nottingham. 8:30 AM…need some toast, can’t keep going like this…fatigue setting in…nah, just my lard ass hungry again.

Whilst devouring my breakfast and sucking back another coffee I noticed I was smiling a lot, mostly due to my Wife commenting about the “shit eating grin on my face”.

10 AM…back in the MAN CAVE.

Ya, you have to love this Nottingham. Led Zeppelin was awesome, Plant was in rare form, and Bonham and Jones were still very happy…but Page now seemed to have taken a step forward and was reminding me of just how “out there” he could play. No doubt about it, with all things being equal, the Nottingham pushed the mids just a bit further toward the listener. With the big Harbeths this can be a big plus.

I spent the entire day just listening….just listening….just…happy. The 294 is one heck of table. It possesses excellent drive, music the likes of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath benefit nicely from this attribute. Yep, the table doesn’t really have many weaknesses…if only Jeff Spall made a 12” version of the Audiomods arm….

A couple of days later and all the tables but my own were gone. I kept thinking about the Aries and the 294, fine engineering, fine manufacturing!

I put the DL-S1 back on my Lux and set things back the way they were before I went for the turntable test drive. A couple more days went by before I had the chance to listen to some tunes again. When I first sat down I started listening to CD’s, some Ronnie James Dio to be specific. Always loved Dio’s voice, and when he hooked up with Vivian Campbell…Wow!

It wasn’t long before I was peering at my table, thinking about what I would play. Hmmm, I think I should put the same Led Zeppelin records on that lit my fire with those other decks. And so I did, and here we go again!! This Luxman table is very musical, and with the vacuum now working very likely better then when new – well for sure the bass is deeper and more pronounced when the vacuum is in use – this table kicks ass.

When it was all said and done, it is very likely that I would give up my Luxman PD-300 in favour of the Aries or the Nottingham. I didn’t find the Classic to be the equal of my Lux, but I have been assured that the Classic 3 would rock my world. But when you consider that the Lux is more than 30 years old now…well that’s just amazing.

But since this in house show down I have had a long listen to my buds Sota and……

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Signature Sound

[ Signature Sound Lounge ]

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---