Schitt Sol Turntable

[Wombat]

Frank, do you have any references to longevity of cartridge cantilever suspension elastomers?

 

[watchnerd]

Well I am not familiar with the Jelco but if the damping is at the pivot end it won't be doing anything for arm ringing being picked up by the cartridge body.

There is a little reservoir at the top of the bearing housing.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Frank, do you have any references to longevity of cartridge cantilever suspension elastomers?

No.
I have never seen data and there are so many different materials that could be used.

Rant:
One thing is sure, they are unlikely to be consistent. The Supex fitted to an arm showing huge resonances with a damaged arm bearing must have had a very much hardened elastomer to transmit so much vibration into the arm.
The "correct" place for damping in a record player for accurate transduction is between cartridge body and groove, which is impractical if one wants a universal system of individual arm, deck and cartridge manufacturers. It guarantees that record players will have imperfect performance.
Maybe a Decca cartridge with a Townshend Rock arm is the nearest to working properly.
Rant over (for now)

 

[Frank Dernie]

There is a little reservoir at the top of the bearing housing.

That will be good for lf damping, so will influence the degree of error in the transduction below 2x natural frequency. It will be decoupled from the cartridge end above 2x the arm's 1st mode, though the distributed mass dynamics of a pickup arm has multiple resonances and any with an antinode near the cartridge body will result in spurious output.

 

[DSJR]

How could you tell whether an arm played the cartridge as it really was (as it actually measured) when you have to put it in some arm to measure it?

Because as measured, the Rega, top line SME's and a tiny handful of others don't add much in the way of resonances of their own (as measured with an accelerometer - look at vintage HiFi Choice books (Martin Colloms tested) and later, HiFi World (Noel Keyward tested) which gives similar measured results to long lived tonearm examples tested decades apart. Audiophile types tended to regard these arms as 'grey' sounding and when one looks at the cartridges they used to use, I'm not surprised.. Currrent Rega designs (which are too expensive still for amateur bodgers who all buy used over here) are improved further in the way the pipe behaves and the three-point fixing allows some greater freedom I suspect in the way the arm transmits energy to the mounting board.

Back then, I thought it was sometimes possible to see tonearm resonances putting response ripples in the cartridge frequency response in some UK tests. Old HiFi Choice cartridge tests used a 'lively measuring' Linn Basik LVX detachable shell arm to quickly swap them about when measuring. Current German Lowbeats cartridge reviews use the rather more inert Rega 9 deck and tonearm for their measurements - and they usually put soundbites to hear as well. You're welcome to disagree, but to summarise, I always liked the solid Rega RB300 and SME V tonearms as I honestly felt one was hearing the cartridge more as it really was. I still feel this way although inflation and price rises have placed them beyond the reach of most (SME don't make their top arms available now on their own I gather).

Vinyl is still a highly subjective area, where compromises are rife and the end user has to decide which balance of compromise suits him best (rarely if ever a 'her' - ladies have more sense probably ). The fact a inexpensive Topping or Schiit dac will enable closer 'sound' to the master source file is utterly irrelevant to them and also th efact that many popular LP's since the 80's have been through digital delay processing in the cutting stage just goes right over their heads...

 

[DSJR]

No.
I have never seen data and there are so many different materials that could be used.

Rant:
One thing is sure, they are unlikely to be consistent. The Supex fitted to an arm showing huge resonances with a damaged arm bearing must have had a very much hardened elastomer to transmit so much vibration into the arm.
The "correct" place for damping in a record player for accurate transduction is between cartridge body and groove, which is impractical if one wants a universal system of individual arm, deck and cartridge manufacturers. It guarantees that record players will have imperfect performance.
Maybe a Decca cartridge with a Townshend Rock arm is the nearest to working properly.
Rant over (for now)

Supex went through a short period where the compliance dropped like a stone in production, tracing ability was awful in these and if used in the rather delicate Grace 707 with extremely fragile needle bearings easily damaged, I'm not surprised, although I believe some of these bearings were damaged by too-rough handling myself... Even with the tough-as-old-boots Ittok, Linn recommended removing the arm from the deck to replace a cartridge. I have two Supex 900E's here. One of which wouldn't track at all (and I think my subsequent accidental handling lost the cantilever anyway). The other was traded in with totally clogged stylus, cleaned up well and tracks adequately still at 1.8g or so (still very poor by todays standards). I don't have an adequate MC input here now, so haven't used my MC's in ages.

 

[teched58]

The fact that this thread has diverged to the point where no one has talked about the actual Schiit Sol turntable since page 25 (and we are now on page 30) proves my point that the excitement surrounding this TT has completely dissipated to the point where it's a non factor in the TT world.

 

[watchnerd]

The fact that this thread has diverged to the point where no one has talked about the actual Schiit Sol turntable since page 25 (and we are now on page 30) proves my point that the excitement surrounding this TT has completely dissipated to the point where it's a non factor in the TT world.

If it was $200, I might buy one just to mess around with it.

 

[anmpr1]

... excitement surrounding this TT has completely dissipated to the point where it's a non factor in the TT world.

Well... the improved (i.e. fixed) player is pretty new, and until someone who owns one can comment about it there's not much more anyone can say about it.

The only way to really be certain is to wait until Fremer reviews it. He's the turntable guru, the man who knows more about these things than anyone else, and the man who even knows some stuff that is yet to be known. I'm predicting that he'll discover it has better than average slam and pace, some veiling of the mids and a slight muddying of the lows, and while it lacks the ultimate detail of higher priced tables, it represent acceptable value for the dollars. As long as you use the upgraded cables.

 

[watchnerd]

That will be good for lf damping, so will influence the degree of error in the transduction below 2x natural frequency. It will be decoupled from the cartridge end above 2x the arm's 1st mode, though the distributed mass dynamics of a pickup arm has multiple resonances and any with an antinode near the cartridge body will result in spurious output.

That fits with my subjective experience that the biggest difference in amount of fluid / damping was heard in the lower regions.

It was also optically visible in variances in cartridge vibration intensity when running <20 Hz cartridge resonance test tracks.

That being said, I'm not currently using the Jelco. My Michell Gyro SE is capable of having 2 arms mounted, but I don't want to ruin the looks.

 

[hollis]

I appreciate you folks. And I appreciate my Rega P5 more now, then when I started researching.

 

[watchnerd]

Oh, look, Fremer reviewed the Sol:

https://www.analogplanet.com/content/schiit-sol-turntable

 

[anmpr1]

Oh, look...

So, an $800.00 record player is pretty good as long as the user springs for an additional $500.00 worth of third party accessories (to correct the slow speed and to add resonance damping here and there)? Oh well, if you only listen to mono RCA Toscanini records, the slower speed might make his conducting seem about normal.

 

[mhardy6647]

OK, ok... I should know better, because we all know that Schitt is flammable...
but y'all probably know that Schitt is developing a new and improved motor pulley so that their tt will run at the correct speed. They're sending the pulleys to Sol owners free of charge, which is being hailed as an example of their superb customer support.

One cannot help but wonder why they didn't get the speed right before they started shipping these things to paying customers -- and/or why they thought that said customers wouldn't mind an off-speed tt. Perhaps Schitt didn't know that perfect pitch is surprisingly common in the populace (I don't have it, for better or worse... probably thankfully!).

And, I have one final bit of snark to spew The counter argument to my comments above is that Schiit was caught off-guard by their belt suppliers. Well... a good mechanic never blames his/her/their tools -- as my father used to say.

 

[mhardy6647]

Oh, and I also feel compelled to add that, when it comes to rotational dynamics or the physics of rotating systems or whatever, my level of enlightenment & comprehension is, sadly, about on par with Calvin's

 

[Hiten]

Frank, do you have any references to longevity of cartridge cantilever suspension elastomers?

It is always unpredictable. But Online Shure brochure for cartridges says
"Viscoelastic suspension block- The "heart" of the bearing. Cyclic temperature variations ranging from -51°C. to 74°C. (-·60°F. to 165°F.) will not deteriorate cartridge performance in normal playback env(ronment - nor will humidity adverselY affect the performance. "
V15 model was their top of the line. A gentleman measured it here. and we can see +/-2dB difference in high frequencies. Where as shure brochure has published flat fq. response. May be this is due to elastomer hardening (?). So it is always a gamble unless measured; as we dont know in which environment the cartridge was. But I suppose elastomer is tiny and major part of it is covered in casing. One end is almost sealed. Only small front part is exposed so good enough life can be extracted from a well made cartridge of yesteryears.
I mostly listen to CDs but fun part like this is what makes vinyls interesting. I do have small collection of well recorded or not on cds Indian music which gets occassional spin.
Regards.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Because as measured, the Rega, top line SME's and a tiny handful of others don't add much in the way of resonances of their own (as measured with an accelerometer - look at vintage HiFi Choice books (Martin Colloms tested) and later, HiFi World (Noel Keyward tested) which gives similar measured results to long lived tonearm examples tested decades apart. Audiophile types tended to regard these arms as 'grey' sounding and when one looks at the cartridges they used to use, I'm not surprised.. Currrent Rega designs (which are too expensive still for amateur bodgers who all buy used over here) are improved further in the way the pipe behaves and the three-point fixing allows some greater freedom I suspect in the way the arm transmits energy to the mounting board.

Back then, I thought it was sometimes possible to see tonearm resonances putting response ripples in the cartridge frequency response in some UK tests. Old HiFi Choice cartridge tests used a 'lively measuring' Linn Basik LVX detachable shell arm to quickly swap them about when measuring. Current German Lowbeats cartridge reviews use the rather more inert Rega 9 deck and tonearm for their measurements - and they usually put soundbites to hear as well. You're welcome to disagree, but to summarise, I always liked the solid Rega RB300 and SME V tonearms as I honestly felt one was hearing the cartridge more as it really was. I still feel this way although inflation and price rises have placed them beyond the reach of most (SME don't make their top arms available now on their own I gather).

Vinyl is still a highly subjective area, where compromises are rife and the end user has to decide which balance of compromise suits him best (rarely if ever a 'her' - ladies have more sense probably ). The fact a inexpensive Topping or Schiit dac will enable closer 'sound' to the master source file is utterly irrelevant to them and also th efact that many popular LP's since the 80's have been through digital delay processing in the cutting stage just goes right over their heads...

(Sorry about the long delay.) Yes, I remember seeing some of those accelerometer results, and the first I remember was by Colloms comparing the Ittok with a few others. Is there a site somewhere where we can compare a wide selection of arms?

 

[AudioSceptic]

So, an $800.00 record player is pretty good as long as the user springs for an additional $500.00 worth of third party accessories (to correct the slow speed and to add resonance damping here and there)? Oh well, if you only listen to mono RCA Toscanini records, the slower speed might make his conducting seem about normal.

I'm not impressed by the faffing-about required to get it working and the poor instructions, and why has it taken this long to get the speed right?

 

[sergeauckland]

It is always unpredictable. But Online Shure brochure for cartridges says
"Viscoelastic suspension block- The "heart" of the bearing. Cyclic temperature variations ranging from -51°C. to 74°C. (-·60°F. to 165°F.) will not deteriorate cartridge performance in normal playback env(ronment - nor will humidity adverselY affect the performance. "
V15 model was their top of the line. A gentleman measured it here. and we can see +/-2dB difference in high frequencies. Where as shure brochure has published flat fq. response. May be this is due to elastomer hardening (?). So it is always a gamble unless measured; as we dont know in which environment the cartridge was. But I suppose elastomer is tiny and major part of it is covered in casing. One end is almost sealed. Only small front part is exposed so good enough life can be extracted from a well made cartridge of yesteryears.
I mostly listen to CDs but fun part like this is what makes vinyls interesting. I do have small collection of well recorded or not on cds Indian music which gets occassional spin.
Regards.

The Gentleman mentioned above is Jim Lesurf, retired academic and former design engineer at Armstrong, and who worked, if I've got it right, on the Armstrong 600 series of electronics. His audiomisc.co.uk website is a cornucopia of interesting stuff.

S.

 

[watchnerd]

which is being hailed as an example of their superb customer support.

One cannot help but wonder why they didn't get the speed right before they started shipping these things to paying customers -- and/or why they thought that said customers wouldn't mind an off-speed tt.

Either they didn't know it was off speed or didn't think any would would notice.

I'm not sure which is worse.