some thoughts on tonearm plugs...

zanash

zanash

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the standard 240 5pin din plug will fit the base of the tonearm suitably equipped. If and this is a big if you remove the body of the standard plug ......

I propose to take a standard plug [female 5pin 240] strip it down so I'm left with the connector block [for want of a better word] wire the pins up then epoxy putty it into a 10 mm plastic pipe.. total cost just shy of £4 [assuming you have the other bits to hand]

Most tonearm plugs have a small peg or pin to locate the plug in the socket ...its not essential if you have reasonable access to the pillar base ...

results so far using this method have been very promising

using simple silver in ptfe, may be a tad too forward in the mid for my taste but for an outlay of less than £30 this will kick most standard tonearm cables well into the long grass. Replacing the standard nema cable it was clear how little of the music the stock cable was allowing through ....for Uncle ants it was quite a revaluation...[but with the nod towards the previous mentioned forwardness] Quite what is causing this is difficult to say with out further cable experimentation
 
If you've altered the mechanical connection at the arm base, you've also altered the mecahnical impedances presented to any vibration coupled into/out of this point. Just a thought; if it is one source of the effect I'd roughly expect the least effect on solid-plinth decks, and more on suspended types.
 
if it a din plug in the arm pillar, the impedances will not have changed ...thats what din means ...they all conform to a rigid standard as laid down in the DIN spec.

cheer I'll take a look !
 
I rewired the Project 9c Carbon Fibre Arm on my Project Classic Turntable with 30 awg 99.999% Pure Silver Cable in a teflon dielectric which was quite easy.

A as my Graham Slee Era V sits just behind the turntable the cable feeds directly into the Era V via Eichmann Silver Bullet Plugs straight from the cartridge tags (cardas).

A massive improvement over the Project internal wiring!
 
If I were to rewire an arm ..thats exactly the way I go but this is just to replace the plug in lead out from the arm base....

Not incidentally for myself ......

The 5 din pin socket is a 5 pin din socket it mechanical contact will be [should be] identical to any other Din socket connector otherwise it's not going to comply with the original rigid german standard. The socket should only change the sound if the insulation is different ....pvc or ptfe or fet etc. or if the connecting pins are made from something obnoxious like steel ....
 
there's vibrations at work Pete and mechanical damping of arm resonance. any chnacge in tension or mass of any part connected to the underside of the arm will have an effect, unless the arm is bolted to something truly 'solid'.
 
In this case its the earth ......

ie its a NAS deck

I've fiddled with arm cable, arms and such in the past with interesting results .....sufficient to say that some of the current wisdom is at best conjecture...

But yes of course altering mass and makeing a bad contact will of course impact on the sound... its another factor that needs to be taken into account in the final sound.

Its clear thought that the benifits of prototype arm cable far out weigh any minor impedance [electrical/mechanical]mismatch as compared to the standard cable.
 
sq225917 said:
there's vibrations at work Pete and mechanical damping of arm resonance. any chnacge in tension or mass of any part connected to the underside of the arm will have an effect, unless the arm is bolted to something truly 'solid'.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Its a Spacedeck so fairly solid. This could well be true, but looking at the stock item I doubt it was selected for its optimal resonance damping properties ;)

I often get to guinea pig some of Pete's creations which can be fun, He kindly asked me to test out his prototype. This made a noticable difference. Initial impression was a bit of a wow, but as you guys know, one needs to be wary of initial impressions. A solid couple of days listening and I think I can fairly say that bass would seem to be noticably extended, detail improved and soundstaging wider and deeper, however on the negative side as Pete says its a bit forward for my tastes long term.

I've now spent a couple of days back with the stock cable ... and hey its not so bad one can't live with it, but very much looking forward to trying iteration no. 2.

The kit involved is a Spacedeck with a Nima and Ortofon Rondo Red with the new lead going into a Heed Questar MC. Amps are the passive pre side of a Densen B100, WAD Kat88 Power into NS1000Ms.
 
Okay, Pete dropped off the second iteration today and we spent a couple of hours with it. Silver/Gold this time. First impressions are that it does all that the straight silver version was doing right (soundstaging, better bass extension, detail and texture) but much less forward - everything has moved back by some way and peaks a lot less in your face, smoother - I like it so far. It was less of an immediate impression. The plug is still a bit of a Heath Robinson affair and it took a bit of faffing to get contact at first, but so far so good.
 
The plugs have arrived ..... so I'll rebuild jackotrades first and then Uncle Ants ...and see if that cures the problems .....
 
Ok, some thoughts on Zanash's silver tonearm cable, as promised.

It is definitely an improvement (and a large one at that!) from the Morch stock cable I had before. The original was always said to be a bit unevolving but you don't know how much until you try something else much better, which is the case here.

Impressions of the cable in my system (spacedeck+morch arm+koetsu rosewood signature cart, fed to a NuVista M3 integrated and playing through a pair of Sonus Faber Signums) are that the highs are more extended, the lows more powerful and better defined and the mids/soundstage is much more precise. So, better in pretty much every respect.

There is slight "lift" in the higher frequencies, or so it seems to me. The highs and high mids seem a bit louder than they used to be, but not extremely so, certainly not to the point that I find it uncomfortable. It is brighter than the old cable, but in a good way, as things are more resolved and sound more transparent.

I think it is a really good cable, and not being perfect it is much better than the one I have now. I wonder what difference the AuAg will make...

The niggly bits (as always): surface noise has increased slightly and hum as well. The hum is because this being a prototype it has no shielding whatsoever, and I am certain that when the shielding is done this will disappear.

So I think it is a thoroughly well put together cable that in prototype guise has already elevated the sound from my TT to a new level. Thank you Zanash, and I look forward to the AuAg to test!!! :)

Cheers,
Jack
 
the surface noise and hum were being masked by the old cable ..possibly!

the new plugs are very good ....but a final version would have the proper full plug ..

contact uncle ants with your details and he will post the other cable on to you .
 

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