Garrard 401/301 Tips and Tricks - World-Designs-Forum

IslandPink · #1 24th January 2006, 09:59 AM

Hi All,

Was tempted just to add comments onto Greg's 401 Plinth thread, but decided ( marginally ) this could be a more general discussion about Garrard issues, covering plinths, arm-mounting variations, motor and suspension experiments, etc .

Last night I made a small alteration to one area I've found to be critical .
On the heavy plinths, bolting the arm direct to the wood ( or whatever ) can sound bad, due ( I think ) to the energy from the cartridge travelling down the arm and pillar , then reflecting back up , out of phase, destroying mid and treble subtlety .

I had a big improvement with my Origin Live 'Illustrious' arm , by spacing the mounting collar ( aluminium ) away from the plinth top with three small fibre washers , and also putting rubber grommets under the heads of the mounting screws for this collar ( underneath ) to cushion any vibration . This seemed to work very well ,and improved the top end a lot, giving much more tonality and space .

It's still not top-notch in these aspects, so I bought some big polythene washers while at B&Q at the weekend . Last night I fitted one of these under the arm mounting collar , instead of the fibre washers. The same grommets were used underneath under the screw heads .
The result seems subtly different . I think there may be overall a slight improvement - bass tonality a little better, and perhaps less vocal sibilance . On the other hand , there may be a slightly more 'closed-in' tonality . I'm not sure yet, so I'll report back later. It wasn't a decisive change, so I could recommend either approach .

Clive has tried some other options, I believe .

Mark

david counter · #2 24th January 2006, 12:11 PM

i've had some good results with my SME M2 on the 401 just using two spacers, one in mahogany and the other in plastic,
these do seem to offer some level of decoupling, whether fitting gromits under the arm would improve things still further is something I'm going to have to experiment with,
the old 3009 had them so they must have thought they worked

IslandPink · #3 25th January 2006, 10:02 AM

Hello,
As James D said 'Another round of fun starts' .

Hmmmm.

I got the Imbabi regenerated supply hooked up last night and running .
Although it seems to be doing what it's supposed to do on the bench ( kitchen table ) , I found it quite problematic when driving the deck .

The speed ( frequency ) controller and the voltage control do not seem to be independant - you get changes in speed with the voltage controller that need to be re-compensated by frequency adjustments , or vice-versa . The speed is not any more stable over time than it was with the direct mains adjutment - needs tweaking from time to time .
Each time the frequency control is adjusted , the strobe neon blinks or goes off, and the speed goes unstable or unsteady until it re-establishes itself .

The main problem, though , when checking voltages , seems to be that the output voltage is not enough , when actually loaded by the motor . Whereas I was seeing nice variations between 180 and 270 while testing on the bench, I am now seeing nothing more than 150 to 180 available on the output terminals . This may however be inaccurate because I'm using a voltmeter measuring RMS , and I don't know for sure how the wavelength looks . I can't seem to get a stable combination of the freq and the voltage settings that will give me more than about 180 - very odd .

On other disturbing feature is that if the frequency is set too far off the correct level while setting-up, the output voltage goes very high ( > 300 V ) and the output trannie rattles alarmingly .

On the plus side, at times last night I was hearing significantly better on some tracks , so it's definitely having a beneficial effect , but this may be due to running a pretty low voltage , rather than the cleaning-up of the waveform .

On the strobe markings on the platter edge , they look different . The 33rpm markings are smaller ( thinner ) than normal, which suggests the neon is not lit for as long on each cycle - this would be consistent with the voltage beinb down . Also, I notice some regular structure on the 45rpm marking while using 33 . This suggests there's some extra ( overtones or undertones ) present on the waveform .

As you can see, I'm cheesed-off .
There may be some drastic action later today ....

More soon ,

Mark

IslandPink · #4 25th January 2006, 10:08 AM

Oh, and another thing ...

I was having excellent results with John Martyn 'Bless the Weather' and enjoying side 2 immensely , but then it started to mistrack rather badly on the last two tracks . I checked the arm / cart set-up in case I'd bumped something or loosened something , but all seemed OK . Whether this was due to the polythene spacer I put under the arm on Monday ( see above ) or whether it was in some weird way due to the supply not being right , I'm not sure . One to lodge in the data file for a while I think ...

Mark

Paul Barker · #5 25th January 2006, 10:58 AM

Should have got a Lenco.

James D · #6 25th January 2006, 11:04 AM

Paul,

That's easy for you to say :-)

When Mark has his fully tricked out 401 working to his satisfaction it would be good to run it off against your 99... I have never heard a really tweaked 401 against a Lenco. I've heard the Loricraft 401 against a good 75 and preferred the 75 but the 401 had fantastic drive and thunderous bass, it wasn't as natural as the 75 though, which also had good drive and bass.

ciao

James

James D · #7 25th January 2006, 11:04 AM

Paul,

That's easy for you to say :-)

When Mark has his fully tricked out 401 working to his satisfaction it would be good to run it off against your 99... I have never heard a really tweaked 401 against a Lenco. I've heard the Loricraft 401 against a good 75 and preferred the 75 but the 401 had fantastic drive and thunderous bass, it wasn't as natural as the 75 though, which also had good drive and bass.

ciao

James