Acoustic Research turntable - high-end sound ?
johnny p. -- Tue, 12/27/2011 - 01:18
This system is said to be the first high-end turntable. Yet it (apparently) sounded no better than other commercial decks of its time. Source components were thought to be "passive" until the Linn in the 1970s.
If the AR itself was "passive", how could it have been a high-end audio product ? Aren't these components based on sound ?
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jonnyp:
The AR turntable was the beginning of suspended tables and good quality AC synchronous motors. The Dunlap (Scotland)followed shortly after, which was blatently copied by Linn. Linn just marketed better than Dunlap. Thorens followed suit (actually perhaps the 2nd adopter of the AR recipe, after AR itself). Once folks understood that the AR tables needed to be modified (not unlike the Linn), these decks took off. They were even quite modern interpretaions: the EB101, the "the turntable", etc, that lasted into the late 1980s . George Merrill had made a career of updating and improving these. His mods are still available for all AR tables. So what's not high end about these decks. If you can put an improved arm on one (the AR XA and XB tables), and make a new plinth, and follow along with either commercial or DIY Merrill mods, you'll end up with a table that will still see off many new tables.
Take a trip over to VinylNirvana or do a search for George Merrill mods. Then comment further....
Thank you, stewp.
I find interesting that the Dunlap was never mentioned (by American audio writers) as one of the greatest turntables ever. It's all AR and Linn. Not that you're wrong - it just shows the cherry-picking nature of the press.
And I find it fascinating that all those improvements (offered in the AR) did *not* make it sound better than other decks in its day. I guess a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
johnnyp,
If you dig deeper, you will find that the Merrill modified decks were compared favourably to virtually every turntable they could be (and still are) compared to. Similarly there were updates to many of the Thorens tables as offered via the Chadwick mods, and Oracles were tweaked by Brooks Beridan (and still may be, as his shop is still in business). I agree completely that the Dunlop/Systemdek tables should be included in any discussion of "greatest turntables ever. Again, we might argue the pluses and minuses of the Jelco sourced (IIRC) Profile arms. Thankfully the same deck lives on as the AudioNote (UK) TT1 and TT2 (2 motor version). I owned a Heybrook TT2 (single motor) with an Alphason Xenon tonearm that I should have never sold. I'd probably still be loving it today. I recall that in the mid to late 80's Canada's UHF magazine did a relatively "unscientific" scientific measure of the effectiveness of the suspensions on a group of turntables. They calibrated an accelerometer, and played each table using a yest record (can't recall which test record, maybe HiFi News?). The Dunlap Systemdek IIX was the best of the bunch. The group consisted of the following turntables(IIRC):
The lowly Systemdek had the best results :)
Hamish Robertson was responsible for the design of Ariston, the Linn and the Systemdek too!
I'd have to do further investigation, but I think he must have also been reponsible for the Heybrook TT2, which bears a striking resemblance to the LP12.