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The Karousel has landed

I once put a geophone on the top plate of my LP12 - and watched its output on a 'scope while it was playing - fascinating - you could clearly follow the music visually on the 'scope - especially with strong bass. Putting the geophone on the rotating platter was out of the question for obvious reasons. The geophone I used had a natural frequency of 7 Hz. I would've thought some checks would be used in balancing but I've no evidence to support this...something has to account for the £££ and machining time would do it. My son used to make expensive gear boxes (£60K+ - and they didn't have synchromesh!) and he claimed >90% of the cost was in machine time. Bit of a ramble here. I'll stop.
 
ncp said:
I once put a geophone on the top plate of my LP12 - and watched its output on a 'scope while it was playing - fascinating - you could clearly follow the music visually on the 'scope - especially with strong bass. Putting the geophone on the rotating platter was out of the question for obvious reasons. The geophone I used had a natural frequency of 7 Hz. I would've thought some checks would be used in balancing but I've no evidence to support this...something has to account for the £££ and machining time would do it. My son used to make expensive gear boxes (£60K+ - and they didn't have synchromesh!) and he claimed >90% of the cost was in machine time. Bit of a ramble here. I'll stop.
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I imagine the platter/armboard which is suspended with 3hz springs would be isolated from the top plate/plinth. The top plate/plinth would have achieved some isolation from either it’s location in the room, support and use of something like the Trampolin base.

I imagine the top plate is getting vibrations from the motor which is bolted to it. Some say the stock top plate has some give and is a suspension of its own.
 
Mr Pig said:
If you flip over platters on a lot of older heavy platter decks you'll see holes or marks machined into the underside. That's how they balance it. Ever seen that on an LP12?
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Even the humble AR XA from 1964 showed evidence that the platter had been balanced.
 
Yank said:
Even the humble AR XA from 1964 showed evidence that the platter had been balanced.
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Even accounting for inflation the price of a whole AR XA turntable was probably less than that of a replacement platter from Linn.
 
Yank said:
Even accounting for inflation the price of a whole AR XA turntable was probably less than that of a replacement platter from Linn.
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I don't think so. The LP12 platter is only £200 today and I don't think you could retail the AR for that.

Linn have never machined the platter to balance it but the point is that they didn't need to. For the most part it was indeed make accurately enough to not need it.
 
david ellwood said:
The AR was $68 in 1961 which is about $700 today
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One also needs to factor economies of scale. When the AR (and its contemporaries) were made vinyl was the major music source and they will have sold many, many thousands of turntables which brings the price way down. The Linn was around £70 or so when introduced in the early 70s, so maybe £10-15 more than an AR, and lacking an arm. That’s the price to work from.
 
Tony L said:
One also needs to factor economies of scale. When the AR (and its contemporaries) were made vinyl was the major music source and they will have sold many, many thousands of turntables which brings the price way down. The Linn was around £70 or so when introduced in the early 70s, so maybe £10-15 more than an AR, and lacking an arm. That’s the price to work from.
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Prior to decimalization, the pound was worth about 3.5x the dollar wasn't it?

The AR was always one of the cheapest manual turntables you could buy, it was considerably less than, say, a Pioneer PL-12. How much was a PL-12 when an LP-12 was 70 pounds?
 
Hi-Fi Yearbook 1974

AR XAU - £41.50 inc vat
Linn LP12 - no arm - chassis £46.30 with plinth and cover £59.40
Pioneer PL12AC - £47.18 plus vat.
 
The AR XA appears to have ceased by around 75. There was a limited run of the AR XB through to around 77. AR stopped making turntables until the early 80's when they introduced a motor unit called the AR Legend (AR ES1 / AR The Turntable).

Prices from Hi-Fi Choice 85
AR Legend £240
LP12 £425-465 depending on plinth
Heybrook TT2 £235
PT - £400 ( a couple of years later was much more expensive than LP12 and remained so into the 90's).
Systemdek IV - £449
Ariston 80SL - £160
GyroDec - £595
 
cre009 said:
AR stopped making turntables until the early 80's when they introduced a motor unit called the AR Legend
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I only ever saw it sold as a complete turntable with either an AR badged arm, make by Sumiko maybe?, or a Linn Basik LVX. The deck never seemed to be developed, they just found cheaper ways to make essentially the same turntable.
 
The AR Legend was a motor unit with a replaceable arm board so could take different arms. They were commonly sold with a Jelco sourced AR badged arm with a Linn fitting. I have a spare sub chassis off one of these which may eventually become a DIY TT project.

Shortly after the AR Legend was introduced they also manufactured a different unit called the AR EB101 which had a fixed mount and came with the AR badged arm as standard. My understanding is that different fitted arms cannot be used with the EB101 because of the fixed mount which is part of the sub chassis. Plenty of EB101s show up on ebay.
 
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