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EMT 927

P

Patrick Dixon

Imagineer
Just got my new turntable home - I'll post a pic when the light returns tomorrow.

I don't know a lot about these, but it's massive! It has a 16" platter and makes the Garrard look like a toy. The motor and bearing shaft are massive too - if you think a Garrard is over-engineered ...

It's complete with a 12" Ortofon arm which is wired for mono. So one of the first tasks will be to figure out what (affordable) stereo cartridges will work, and what I need to convert the headshell connector to stereo. I will just disconnect the in-built pre - complete with equalisation I guess.

I'm looking forward to getting it running, and I guess I will need at least one 16" record to show it off ...

Here's a library photo to wet your appetites - remember folks, that platter is 16" in diameter!

EMT%20927st-2.jpg
 
Patrick Dixon said:
Just got my new turntable home - I'll post a pic when the light returns tomorrow.

I don't know a lot about these, but it's massive! It has a 16" platter and makes the Garrard look like a toy. The motor and bearing shaft are massive too - if you think a Garrard is over-engineered ...

It's complete with a 12" Ortofon arm which is wired for mono. So one of the first tasks will be to figure out what (affordable) stereo cartridges will work, and what I need to convert the headshell connector to stereo. I will just disconnect the in-built pre - complete with equalisation I guess.

I'm looking forward to getting it running, and I guess I will need at least one 16" record to show it off ...

Here's a library photo to wet your appetites - remember folks, that platter is 16" in diameter!
Click to expand...

I love the way that the 16" platter makes the 12" arm look like a 9" one. Total overkill, but in a good way. I thought that 16" records were fairly common as transcriptions for broadcast but I've never actually seen one.
 
Yes, it also has a f**king great studio stand which it sits in and which once housed a mono amplifier. I decided that I wouldn't need one with an amplifier, but I'm not sure the studio stand will quite fit into the living room either ...

BTW the thing on the front left is an indicator that tracks the position of the stylus across the disk. Cueing should be a doddle ....
 
Congratulations Patrick and welcome to the (non-existant) EMT idler owners club.

Chances are the only cartridges that fit properly are the EMT ones - which is no huge hardship if you can fork out £775 for a new one as they're very good cartridges.

The EMT phono amps are good too. The valve ones are more valuable. Is your phono amp a mono only one or is it stereo?

Van Vliet in Holland makes EMT 139st phono amp clones - at a price of about £3000.

Converting the Ortofon to stereo should be easy enough - just a rewire and fitting the EMT diamond pattern cartidge connector. Or chopping some length off and fitting a SME type square patter connector.

The 927 is a very valuable item - selling for £10000 to £15000 on ebay.
 
Congrats Patrick! I'm sure you'll love it!

Any idea of the history of the unit? In my case, I know that a late model 930 is an RTE broadcast unit (even came with a TSD headshell with custom RTE label), whereas the provenance of a very early 930 is still unknown.

My only suggestion would be to get it fully serviced/refurbed by a pro if it hasnt been already. Worth the cash and piece of mind imho, given the hours that you and generations to come are gonna put on it!
 
I'm not entirely sure how to approach it - particularly since my budget to do it is approaching zero and £800 on a cart is somewhat more than I'd like to spend ... to say nothing of £3K on a tonearm.

It really is brutal engineering at it's best:

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(The Planar 2 gives you some idea of scale ...)

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(I'm not sure if this is the 16" arm with an effective length of 12")

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It came originally (along with two others) from Granada TV. It's EMT 927A Nr 3240 and has a mono phono pre EMT139 Nr 2928. The frame holds the pre with psu underneath, and eq is applied to the pre via the knobs on the right under the armtube. The arm has a 2-pin headshell connector, and there are two pickups labelled N & O - both of which look completely knackered and which I guess are of no real practical use.

I guess what I'll do is get the arm connector replaced with a 4 pin one, rewire the arm for stereo, and service the motor, idler mech and bearings. I'd quite like to fit a DL103 I think, but I'll need to figure out a suitable headshell arrangement. I don't really want to shorten the armtube for an SME connector, because it's a bit non-reversable, and it's always nice for someone to revert to original at some point in the future.
 
Why would it need to be shortened if you fitted an SME connector? It'd be much more universal in terms of what you could fit with a standard SME and if anyone wanted to fit a mono cart it wouldn't be an issue - they could just use one set of connectors.
 
ah. of course. In which case it either stays as it is and the choice of carts is limited to EMT or Ortofon SPUs with the A type headshell (rather limiting) or a bullet needs biting.

Or you get someone to make a new arm tube ... I know there's a chap over on Lenco Heaven who makes new arm tubes for SME 3009s - to convert a 9" to a 12" for example. If the arm tube can in any way be removed I would imagine this is a possibility. Certainly would be cheaper than an EMT cart or an A type SPU, would open up the options to pretty much any other cart (compliance withstanding) and would be reversible.

PS. just looked at the pictures ... that thing's a bloody MONSTER.
 
Googling around it seems that there is an Ortofon Synergy-A and an EMT TSD15 which can still be bought in the A type headshell. Unfortunately they both cost more than I want to spend at the moment.

So I'm wondering if anyone knows if you can buy empty A type headshells, and then whether I could squeeze say a naked 103 into one? It would be nice to get this running and play some music on it.
 
Patrick Dixon said:
So I'm wondering if anyone knows if you can buy empty A type headshells, and then whether I could squeeze say a naked 103 into one? It would be nice to get this running and play some music on it.
Click to expand...

It's doubtful, looking at this:

IMG_5037.jpg


Look where the mounting holes are in each. Looks to me like the back end of the 103 would be somewhere out near the middle of the connector and the pins even further.
 
Yep Jeremy is the man - He can do a 12" arm with 296.5mm spindle to pivot it perhaps a custom longer one but that might need new jigs to be made. He can also do the banana style if that is your bent:)

The wife likes my new 12"er too!
 
Cool, Patrick.

Looks like the table came with some Mana... and a washing machine motor.

Joe
 
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