Category: Tonearm

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Record cleaning!

Hi!

Many people have asked either personally or electronically what record cleaning fluid and machine I use to clean my LP collection since they sound pretty good even on not-so well cared used copies I’ve collected 2nd hand.

For more than 25 years my record cleaning machine or RCM has been VPI’s 16.5. Currently I’m on my second one since the first one I bought used (from a good old friend who passed away several months ago) gave up the ghost about 15 years ago.

For record cleaning fluid I use my own concoction of distilled water, 91% Isopropyl Alcohol, and a small squirt of Kodak’s Photo-Flo 200 fluid to ensure that the water film gets penetrates well into the LP grooves.

My formula for my record cleaning concoction is as follows:

FluidVolume
Distilled water183.4 ml
91% Isopropyl Alcohol51.6 ml
Kodak Photo-Flo 2001.2 ml
Record cleaning fluid ratios for a 235ml plastic bottle

It is perfectly fine to deviate from the above based upon the type of Isopropyl Alcohol available. The higher the Isopropyl Alcohol percentage, the less amount you need to use. It’s just a matter of remembering your High-School Chemistry class and do some math to adjust the volumes based on the capacity of your plastic bottle and Isopropyl Alcohol concentration.

If you need any help on the above don’t hesitate to contact me.

Enjoy!

Vic

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Pandemic and other stuff

Wow, it’s been 4 months since I’ve posted something! My fault, sorry about that but February was a very hectic month for me since I was resigning to a 12 year stint on what was left of an international bank after it was acquired by a local financial institution.

Go back to late summer 2019, I received a message from an ex-peer from way back when I worked for a U.S. technology company between the late 80’s and early 2000’s, asking me if I wanted to return to the company since they were looking for IT professionals with my expertise (old school Mainframe administrators with programming, networking, data management, and Information Security backgrounds). I told him I was interested and in February 2020 I received the offer and proceeded to resign to my position as Information Security Officer and Business Continuity Coordinator. Started working in March and its been three amazing months doing what professionally I like the most.

This pandemic has created a lot of uncertainty and havoc all over the world resulting in strict recommendations to stay home unless absolutely necessary. Many corporations and people have finally realized that working from home is a real option (more than 20 years for them to figure this out but Micro-Managers are an incredibly resilient pest which need to have total control and up-to-the-minute oversight of what their direct reports are doing, and that is the worst environment to work at. Believe me, I did for the last 4 years. Thankfully my new job requires me to work from home so I don’t someone looking over my shoulder every 10 minutes or some other ‘peer’ watching over from my back and telling my boss.

Now returning to turntables, people have realized that now they have more spare time since, working from home lets them more efficiently manage their daily schedule, and has allowed them to clean their houses more thoroughly, and find stuff that has been stored in their garages or closets for many years, many of these being turntables!!! ‘Wow, a turntable!!!! I forgot I had this one in storage!!!’, only to connect it and find out it does not work. That’s when I come in.

Since March I’ve received more than 20 turntables to check over and repair, most of them Technics vintage models, Project, Music Hall, AR, Clearaudio, Chinese SL1200 MkII clones (BID?), Linn, Sanyo, you name the brand. I was able to repair all but one of them (the Sanyo’s power supply motherboard was burned beyond repair). Also, many customers have decided to upgrade their turntables (new cartridge, new bearings, etc.) since they spend more time listening to their cherished vinyl LP collection.

Keep on listening to your vinyl LP collection, for sure it has taken you many years to get it where it is, and for sure there are still some treasures still to find and enjoy.

Happy listening!

Vic

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Let’s do this!!!

Well it’s been a while since I’ve last posted anything, lots of work at my job as Information Security Officer in a bank, almost no spare time due to changes at work, but as I say ‘Planets are aligning’ and a new job opportunity just crossed my way and took it!!!

Anyway let’s get back onto turntables. A few months ago I got a call from Mike Nunez from Audio Degenerate regarding a customer’s turntable, a Marantz TT-15, which tonearm somehow got smacked by who knows what and the cartridge suffered serious damage as you can see in the picture:

The cartridge metal body somehow got separated from the upper plastic body and the stylus was totally wrecked. The cartridge is a Clearaudio Concept moving magnet so I proceeded to remove it from the tonearm and re-glue the metal engine to the upper body. Regarding the stylus, Clearaudio’s position is that it cannot be repaired/replaced, but on the contrary, it can be replaced with careful hands and a little surgery using an Audio Technica AT95 family replacement stylus.

Here’s the completed job:

Tested it, adjusted tonearm height and cueing device and it was back up and running as before the incident.

Enjoy!

Vic

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Rewire

I know, it’s been more than two months since I’ve posted anything. Main job has been hectic and summer is been hot, so not much done on Audiomaniak’s garage besides cleaning it up and and small repairs. Anyways, let’s talk about tonearms. Tonearms are an integral part of a turntable, it is the mechanical structure that joins the phono cartridge and the sub-chassis which sustains the rotating platter. The tonearm must not add or subtract any information (vibrations) extracted by the phono cartridge. As such it must be rigid and light enough to ensure this information is never lost. If information is lost there is no way to recreate it no matter what is done down the audio chain.

There are some ideas around improving tonearms by rewiring its internal cabling with exotic materials like silver litz or 99.99999% oxygen free copper wires. Whatever wiring is chosen it must be light and flexible enough to ensure the tonearm tracks the grooves as mandated by the phono cartridge.

A few weeks ago I was contacted to see if I was interested in repairing a tonearm. The tonearm was damaged by its owner while trying to solder some exotic cartridge tags. At the end the diagnostic was a full tonearm rewire was required.

Rega tonearms are one of the most favored rewiring candidates due to their simplicity. Even though I have never before tried performing a tonearm rewire, I had read so much information on how to do it that I was sure it could be accomplished.

Below is a picture of the dismantled Rega RB110 tonearm:

As you can see the entire bearing assembly had to be disassembled to be able to properly pass the wiring look thru the very small hole between the arm collar and tonearm.

Once wires were properly passed thru all holes it was just a matter of cutting excess wire to ensure it did not interfere with the gymbal bearing movement.

Took a few hours of trial and error but in the end the tonearm performed better than before. Below is the final product.

Enjoy!

Vic

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Alva

Hello!

Last Thursday night Audiovisionaires LL C hosted the official release event of the new Cambridge Audio Alva turntable. Bob Scranton, Cambridge Audio Regional Sales Director, received all of us with beer, wine, and other goodies!!!

The Alva is a direct drive turntable equipped with a famous British-sourced single piece tonearm (you may guess by the pictures!) tweaked to Cambridge Audio parameters, a high output moving coil phono cartridge with elliptical stylus, integrated phono preamplifier, 33.3 rpm and 45 rpm speeds, and lo and behold, a 24bit/48Khz aptX HD standard Bluetooth transmitter, which makes it the world’s first turntable manufacture to do so.

The turntable is elegantly designed, with an appealing metal grey color. It is built and assembled in England at Cambridge Audio facilities.

Bob demoed the Bluetooth interface without us knowing, and to the surprise of ALL attendees it sounded really good!!! Yes, there is a difference but not as significant and most of us were expecting. The Bluetooth transmitter is ideal to connect Bluetooth headphones allowing you to listen your favorite LP in a wireless fashion, and in the middle of the night without disturbing you significant other.

The Alva is an excellent ‘all-in-one’ solution for those people looking for something simple to use, no-hassle setup and wireless connectivity. For USD $1,700.00 it is something that other turntable manufacturers in that price range should be worried about.

Enjoy!

Vic

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Day off

Hi,

When one takes a day off from their main job is usually to take care of personal matters, go shopping, or rest and do nothing, but not me!!!

Today I spent the morning giving the finishing touches to my 2nd Linn LP12 turntable which is going to another home after someone convinced me to sell it to him. This one I got about a year ago and did not have a tonearm, I was finally able to source a mint condition Linn Basik Plus tonearm with a Linn Adikt moving magnet cartridge. Looks gorgeous and I’m sad to let it go.

On the other hand I also found a Linn K18 moving magnet cartridge which I had in storage for many years and totally forgot about it!!! It was given to me because it supposedly sounded distorted, but when I checked it today it was just dirty as hell and the stylus had a grime ball!!! Cleaned it very carefully with my secret recipe and installed it on my Technics SL1200 MkII direct drive turntable (another story), and lo and behold it sounds perfect and without any distortion at all, specially in the inner grooves were it will be immediately noticeable!!

Now both my Linn LP12 and the Technics SL1200 MkII sit right beside each other and can use either one depending on my mood and the type of music I decide to play.

Enjoy!

Vic

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Phono cartridges pt. 2

Well, after 5 weeks the two Linn Arkiv moving coil cartridges sent to the UK for a full rebuild (new coils, new suspension, new aluminum cantilever with stylus) are back!!! I installed mine yesterday and the only thing I can say is WOW!!! It’s been years since I’ve heard my Linn LP12 sound so good!!! This is a job well worth it’s price, and a lot better than a simple cantilever replacement (glued) or a stylus retip. Why? suspension parts are made with rubber and after 20-30 years these are prone to dry out and affect cartridge compliance thus changing its sound and the way it tracks the grooves in the LP.

Here’s my ‘new’ Linn Arkiv after the rebuild:

Here is the Linn Arkiv after being installed on my LP12:

It is sounding spectacular and musical in all terms!

Enjoy!

Vic

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Jelco

It is my pleasure to announce that we have been appointed as the official Jelco tonearms representative for Puerto Rico and the Caribbean!

Since 1920 Jelco-Ichikawa has been manufacturing precision micro-mechanisms such as diamond stylus for phono cartridges, jewel bearings for watches, and has been the official OEM manufacturer for several well regarded tonearm brands.

Below is a link to all Jelco-Ichikawa products we represent:

https://www.jelco-ichikawa.co.jp/

Enjoy!

Vic

 

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Tonearms

Tonearms are one of the most distinctive items of a turntable. Designs vary from S-shaped, J-shaped, straight, knife-edged bearings, race-ball bearings, gymbal, unipivot, linear tracking, and so on. Its most important function is to ensure that the phono cartridge properly tracks the record grooves and allow it to convert this mechanical energy into a very low electrical signal without adding or subtracting any energy captured by the phono cartridge. To ensure this bearing play should be nil or none and the cartridge compliance specs should be properly matched to the tonearm’s total mass.

Below is a nice example of a Naim Aro unipivot tonearm I recently removed from a Linn turntable as requested by its owner.

This tonearm was designed and built more than 30 years ago and it is still in excellent shape. A very rare example since not so many were built and the first one I’ve personally worked with.

Vic