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Acos Lustre

Bourneendboy

pfm Member
I've just picked up a Conniosseur turntable with an Acos Lustre arm. The turntable is in a home made plinth, which is a bit crap to say the least, but the turntable itself is in excellent condition. Not tried it out yet though.
The Acos Lustre arm appears to be absolutely mint, I think it is a GST-1. It has a spare head shell in it's original bag and is fitted with an Ortofon FF15 MK11 cartridge and has original instructions and fitting template. It looks like a really well made arm.
Can anyone advise on the sound quality of this arm and possibly its value.
Cheers,
Bill
 
It's an interesting arm which now fetches high prices on E-Bay. It was, basically, the Rega R200 from that time. Rega bought in the arm without all the fancy dials and gizmos and it may well sound better for the omissions.

The Lustre is a pleasant sounding arm and quite flexible so you should be able to have some fun swopping and trying various cartridges both MC and MM, though nothing too highly compliant.
 
I wonder whether the GST has the same point of failure in the bias mech as the Rega R200, these seem to have something perishable in them as many apparently no longer work. The more upmarket Lustre 801 looks like a very interesting arm indeed, possibly in the SAEC, Micro, Stax etc class. I'd say the GST was worth a listen too as the R200 was a nice sounding arm and if it's a better version of that it could well be half decent.

Which Conniosseur deck is it? The earlier idler drive ones can I understand be rather good.

Tony.
 
I wonder whether the GST has the same point of failure in the bias mech as the Rega R200, these seem to have something perishable in them as many apparently no longer work. The more upmarket Lustre 801 looks like a very interesting arm indeed, possibly in the SAEC, Micro, Stax etc class. I'd say the GST was worth a listen too as the R200 was a nice sounding arm and if it's a better version of that it could well be half decent.

Which Conniosseur deck is it? The earlier idler drive ones can I understand be rather good.

Tony.

Tony,
Is the bias mech the anti skate mech?
Just removed the platter on the deck and there is a label that reads - Type BD.1, A.R Sugden and co ltd, Brighouse, Yorkshire.
 
Bias is the same as anti-skate and on the Acos arms was applied by a toothed rubber belt which perishes and snaps. Some survive but it's not the end of the world if it has broken.

BD1 is a belt drive not the ultra rare idler drive which was an entirely different machine.
 
In the 70's I put together a Connoisseur Sugden BD1+Acos Lustre arm. The BD1 cost £10 new then. There were very cheap, but pretty good.

As standard the BD1 has a small base plate (black) I made a new bigger one so it would take the arm as well. I finished it as brushed aluminum. It looked great with the Acos Lustre arm. It worked really well too.

Later, the Acos Lustre became just Lustre and apparently the quality control was improved.

My one is still giving good service with a friend, he loves it.

The BD1 motor mounting needs to be correct. Originally elastic bands were used and this worked well till they rotted. There was a purpose made rubber mount made, this lasts longer, but does not give quite the isolation of the rubber bands.

Drive belts are round section, last quite a long time, but can stretch to the point where they are not serviceable.

Oh, generally, the idler drive decks from the same company seemed a bit noisy (but usable), I had one of those, so did my uncle.
 
Just wondering if any of the current or former users of Acos Lustre can report on a compatibility with SPU? Can it's regular counter weight carry a 32g cartridge? Can't find any technical data on it...
 
Bias is the same as anti-skate and on the Acos arms was applied by a toothed rubber belt which perishes and snaps. Some survive but it's not the end of the world if it has broken.



I can vouch that some belts survive. I just completed a rewire of my R200 with Cardas and was pleasantly surprised to see the belt in one piece :) so I carefully worked around it.
 
Just wondering if any of the current or former users of Acos Lustre can report on a compatibility with SPU? Can it's regular counter weight carry a 32g cartridge? Can't find any technical data on it...

I occasionally use an S15TE on my acos which is a similar weight and compliance to an SPUGTE and it sounds great. You will however need the additional counterweight that screws onto the end of the stub to balance either of those cartridges. SPU,s without the transformers should be OK with the standard weight. The Denon DL-102 in an Acos headshell is about as heavy a cartridge as can be used with the standard weight at its furthest position.

All in all, the Lustre is a very underrated tonearm.
 


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