Which idler?

[Frizzy]

Thinking about scratching a itch, in the form of a idler drive turntable. Ths is part of a urge to hear my mono vinyl as intended. May also scratch a Decca itch at same time.
Lenco, Thorens or garrard, not much experience of any of the main contenders.
What are the relative merits please, inc vfm.

 

[Tony L]

I’ve owned all of those and they all have their plusses and minuses to my mind:

Lenco: still relatively affordable, beautifully simple and easy to work on, a great base for a DIY poject, but as-is the tonearm is agricultural at best. If you want it to really compete at the modern high-end you do need to modify/DIY to a fair degree.

Garrard 301/401: superb, muscular broadcast-grade decks. Now expensive, and large too once you have plinthed them appropriately and ideally partnered with a 12” arm. Expensive, but hold value well. Not as easy to work on as a Lenco, but stunning build quality and hugely reliable decks.

Thorens TD124: truly beautiful, capable, but (overly) complex design. By far the hardest to work on as the drive mechanism has a whole extra level of complexity due to being both belt and idler drive. There are many potential sources of noise in a TD-124! By saying that it is beautifully made and designed. The most ergonomically perfect deck ever made IMHO. Expensive, my favourite, but mainly down to looks, ergonomics, and a far more compact form-factor.

EMT 930, 927: Arguably the king of the heap. Plug and play broadcast decks. Cost a fortune in their day, cost a fortune today. Spectacular military-grade engineering. Now pretty much impossible to find a really good example for less than the price of a decent car. Which is rather annoying.

All these decks are capable of superb results if they are in perfect condition and appropriately serviced. I’d not even attempt to rank them as they are all different and all lend themselves to different contexts/solutions. No wrong answers, but do be prepared to learn and put some work in getting the best out of any of them.

 

[Frizzy]

Lenco appeal as the level of tweaking is broad, from clean and oil to those skeletal types with no original bodywork. I gather 124 are broadly speaking a lighter touch to music than 301, never even seen a EMT and as you say now car money (new/not s/h).
Maybe lenco appeals at moment as will be a second deck that will play junior to the brinkmann. Also want a arm I can change carts on and try a Decca and a mono or two.
Only idler I’ve heard was a Shindo 301 which was jaw dropping good and beautiful to look at and yes big. Musically mesmerising, you forgot it was a hifi. Yet again car money prices!

 

[david ellwood]

The EMT is the only one of that crowd I’d consider sound wise. But it’s a huge beast.

 

[TonyScarlett]

If you do decide to go the Lenco route be careful, it's addictive.

I've gone from this;

To this;

To this;

In 12 months!

TS

 

[Nic Robinson]

Gone from LP12 to Lenco, PTP Lenco and 301. More out of interest than anything. And all with the same (Ittok) arm so not difficult to hear the sound evolve.

I could live with any of the idlers tbh. I now have a 401 and 12" SME arm just waiting to be plinthed up and serviced. Sadly my Technics does exactly what I want and need straight out of the box so I'm lacking motivation atm!

 

[awkwardbydesign]

IMO the Lenco is ideal for a project, rather than something you can just play. If you don't want that, one of the others would be a (more expensive) better choice.
This was once a standard GL75, which I never intended to use as-is.

 

[chartz]

Top of the range 60’s and 70’s Duals are pretty good too – nah, very good!

 

[Tony L]

I gather 124 are broadly speaking a lighter touch to music than 301…

It’s a hard one to call. There are many variables and both are truly superb decks (or can be if well rebuilt and deployed). To my ears/perspective the 124 with the original heavy green painted iron sub-platter is a much, much better deck than the more MC friendly alloy one. There really is a noticeable benefit in pitch, timing, stability, slam and heft with the former that just translates to a wonderful coherence. It was only after swapping one in that I started to really love the 124. The annoyance is it does rule Deccas out. There are very expensive third-party non-ferrous iron options around, but back when I tried one they did have manufacturing issues (now corrected apparently). I’d avoid other materials (brass, stainless steel etc). Iron is what it should be!

The other thing is I am personally far from convinced by high mass, and much of the time you will see both decks (and Lencos) bolted hard to a really massive heavy solid plinths of plywood (or worse MDF!), slate or whatever. After a fair bit of playing around, and listening to many other non-idler decks too, I have come to the conclusion this isn’t for me. As such I use my TD-124 in a very lightweight Ortofon-style conical plinth that can better be described as ‘a stand’. The 124 just sits in it atop it’s rubber suspension grommets. I seem to prefer Garrards in a Loricraft-style plinth, which again is fairly lightweight as far as the deck is concerned as it is just bolted (loosely) to a floating ply top-plate. To my ears high-mass kills the sound both in turntables and in loudspeaker cabinets. It loses an agility and ‘life’ I value. I seem to like low-mass plinths, BBC-style cabinets etc.

 

[sideshowbob]

Lenco all the way. They're a joy to work on, parts are easily available, the Lenco Heaven forum has all the information you need. But move fast, prices are going up. Here's my recent restoration thread: https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/lenco-gl75-restoration.256529

I've owned a couple of pretty exotic belt drives (fully Orbed Michel Gyro, Amazon Model Two with a Morch DP6 arm) and this blows them into the weeds, frankly.

 

[calorgas]

The only issue I had with Lencos was that they were so cheap and plentiful that at one point I was in danger of filling my house with them! So simple and easy to twiddle with. Bit of a shame that they're rising in value tbh, takes some of the fun out of it. My favourite and best performer was probably a GL72 I converted to heavy platter (with bits from a basket case '78) and put on a diy slate plinth together with a Mission 774 - should have stopped there really but carried on via another '75 or two then onto an older '59. As above, the Lenco forum is very helpful.

 

[chartz]

I once had a 401. I didn’t like the fact that it rumbled ever so slightly. I sold it but I shouldn’t have. Part availability was zero back then. How things have changed since!
The 124 is great but it isn’t silent either.
That’s why I love DD decks so much now.

 

[Tony L]

The only issue I had with Lencos was that they were so cheap and plentiful that at one point I was in danger of filling my house with them!

I’d really like to be sitting on a mint boxed GL75 just the same as my first one back in the late ‘70s. I suspect there will come a time where really museum grade untouched examples are worth very good money as whilst the DIY community undoubtedly turn them into far better turntables the process is irreversible in most cases. Garrards and TD-124s survive far better* as they need nothing beyond servicing and plinthing.

*Don’t be tempted to add idiotic third-party ceramic bearing thrust plates etc to Garrards, they are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the bearing design and cause obvious damage the spindle!

 

[calorgas]

I’d really like to be sitting on a mint boxed GL75 just the same as my first one back in the late ‘70s.

Yeah, I must admit that I have some regrets on that score as I did briefly have what seemed to be a very late GL75 in spankingly perfect condition, picked up locally and fairly cheaply as a 'collection only' ebay auction. Thing is I already had a couple of Lencos on the go at that point and had no real use for it so passed it on to a guy on Lenco Heaven for what I paid for it (£50 iirc). Not boxed unfortunately, but not a mark on it.

 

[wylton]

Thinking about scratching a itch, in the form of a idler drive turntable. Ths is part of a urge to hear my mono vinyl as intended. May also scratch a Decca itch at same time.
Lenco, Thorens or garrard, not much experience of any of the main contenders.
What are the relative merits please, inc vfm.

Lenco all the way. They're a joy to work on, parts are easily available, the Lenco Heaven forum has all the information you need.

Yes, +1 for that. The 88 is my particular favourite & because it's just a motor unit like the 301/402, it's a really flexible turntable to work with. My only complaint is the oversize spindle (it's a bit fat & oddly, the new, replacement bearings still have the same diameter spindle).

Here's mine:



It features an aluminium base of of my own design with a slate plinth and an intervening layer of cork in-between the two. The arm is a Zeta & the cartridge a Dynavector DV20XL

I have a Garrard 401 too, it has a Loricraft Skeletal plinth & a Naim prefix/Aro.




I have recently swapped Aro arm tops to an Aro/Troika.

 

[Helen Bach]

I

...The other thing is I am personally far from convinced by high mass, and much of the time you will see both decks (and Lencos) bolted hard to a really massive heavy solid plinths of plywood (or worse MDF!), slate or whatever. After a fair bit of playing around, and listening to many other non-idler decks too, I have come to the conclusion this isn’t for me. As such I use my TD-124 in a very lightweight Ortofon-style conical plinth that can better be described as ‘a stand’. The 124 just sits in it atop it’s rubber suspension grommets. I seem to prefer Garrards in a Loricraft-style plinth, which again is fairly lightweight as far as the deck is concerned as it is just bolted (loosely) to a floating ply top-plate. To my ears high-mass kills the sound both in turntables and in loudspeaker cabinets. It loses an agility and ‘life’ I value. I seem to like low-mass plinths, BBC-style cabinets etc.

I would agree wholeheartedly on the high mass thing. I've been looking at plinths for Lencos for about 15 years, and can say that high mass is not the way to go. Thin, high damping materials is the way science/technology would consider the best. In that respect a 15mm to 25mm sheet of Panzerholz (or similar), or a mix of isophthalic polyester resin and granular bentonite, or a high tech honeycomb structure with syntactic filling and carbon fibre facings will all work with Lencos.

Although I have heard Garrards (I have a Garrard 202A) and ThorensTD-124, this was sometime ago, and I have no 'sound memory' of them. But I like my Lencos (I have 7 working and one 'museum piece') and love the continuously variable speed control and ease of modification, although I keep my GL59/70 more or less stock.

 

[Tony L]

I would agree wholeheartedly on the high mass thing. I've been looking at plinths for Lencos for about 15 years, and can say that high mass is not the way to go. Thin, high damping materials is the way science/technology would consider the best. In that respect a 15mm to 25mm sheet of Panzerholz (or similar), or a mix of isophthalic polyester resin and granular bentonite, or a high tech honeycomb structure with syntactic filling and carbon fibre facings will all work with Lencos.

Panzerholz is interesting. If I ever returned to a Garrard (unlikely) I’d be very tempted to use a Panzerholz top-plate in a Lorricraft-style squash-ball decoupled plinth. I suspect that would work really well.

I’d be very interested to see a pic of where you ended up with Lenco plinth design.

 

[sideshowbob]

I use my TD-124 in a very lightweight Ortofon-style conical plinth that can better be described as ‘a stand’. The 124 just sits in it atop it’s rubber suspension grommets.

This is exactly what I've done with my Lenco in its ply plinth. It just sits in the plinth on rubber grommets, it's not bolted down. The plinth is there to reduce idler and motor noise to beneath audibility (something it achieves easily, anyone who complains about idler noise or motor noise has a fixable problem), but bolting it into place just doesn't sound right to me.

 

[Frizzy]

Very interesting posts, seems like lenco is the future, never quite sure as the Lenco bug seems a more recent trend than the garrard hobbyists, I assume in part due to rising cost of thorens and Garrard.
Did dual do idlers?
This project will have to fit round funds and health so long term, I will look out for a unmolested one and go from there, I assume the 75 is the one to go for?

 

[Tony L]

Did dual do idlers?

Yes, they have a following in some circles, though seem to be viewed a level or two down. More competition for a stock L75 or Garrard SP25 than a 301 or 124. I think the 1229 is about the best of them. They are complex too as they are fully automatic (i.e. arm return etc).

I assume the 75 is the one to go for?

The heavy platter Lencos (L70, 75, 78, 88, 99) are all the same under the skin, the latter two the most desirable (and valuable) as they are a chassis design like a 301/401 so easier to deal with in a separate arm context. Avoid the light platter designs such as the B52, L69, L72.