I was very fortunate to grab this from a nice seller on AC at a fantastic price. It came with Clearaudio Maestro Wood cartridge already mounted. The TT and the cartridge are relatively new products from Clearaudio and get away from the traditional German hifi sound of lean and detailed that Clearaudio was famous for in the past. I think it is their attempt to grab more of the middle priced US hifi market.
It is the older version made in 2009 which came with adjustable height pointy metal feet, instead of the latest version with soft rubber feet for WAF. The seller included a Clearaudio Maestro Wood cartridge. I didn't even ask how many hours, but it plays good and sounds awesome. The price was too good to pass up. He got swamped with offers on AGon when he lowered the price, but mine was first and he honored it.
He drove it down to the audio fest so I didn't have to make a special trip. He threw in a custom acrylic dust lid, and a bag full of accessories like stylus force gage, bubble level, stylus cleaner, D4 brush system, Disc Doctor cleaning fluids.
A huge sound quality upgrade from my Technics. Huge. Dynamics, sound staging, tone accuracy and refinement. Bass extension is much deeper and the treble is more natural. The wood cart has a lovely thickness that is warm but not obscuring anything. The noise on the records is still there but the music is so much more compelling it is very easy to ignore the groove noise.
(http://www.audionervosa.com/MGalleryItem.php?id=900)
When I first powered it up, it didn't. I pulled out the wall wart's power plug from the inlet on the back of the table and the center positive pin from the jack came right out of the turntable, stuck in the barrel plug's hole! :wtf:
I opened up the jack which was screwed to the plinth with a couple screws. The whole thing disintegrated into half dozen tiny little spring loaded parts. It is so obvious that a wise ass German engineer is responsible for this. A tiny plastic part clips it all together somehow. There was a burnt mark on it, were the sleeve contact clips onto it. It just overheated, probably on platter startup when current is highest. The pin is not soldered in there, nothing inside the jack is soldered, it is all spring loaded contacts in addition to those between the plug and the jack contacts. The frame that holds it all together was also cracked around a screwhole. So it was junk. Strangely out of place compared to the look and feel of the rest of the table.
(http://www.audionervosa.com/MGalleryItem.php?id=904)
So I replaced the jack with a nice Switchcraft part rated for 5A, with nickel plated copper contacts. I should be able to get it to fit into the plinth to look like stock.
(http://www.audionervosa.com/MGalleryItem.php?id=902)
The Concept's stock power supply is a switch mode wall wart. It takes mains from 100-240VAC 50-60Hz and spits out 12VDC nominal at 450mA. It might weigh 4 ounces, but that would be pushing it. It feels like an empty plastic box. I can imagine a small IC chip in there with a few resistors to set the output voltage. Very uncharacteristic of the Clearaudio reputation and the quality feel of the rest of the product. But I'm sure it's adequate in the mind of the German engineer who spec'd it.
I was planning to upgrade the table gradually as ideas came my way. But with the broken plug I moved quicker on the power supply upgrade, because the stock wart plug doesn't fit into my Switchcraft jack. Rather than cut off the stock wart's plug I remembered a frame power supply that I have used in the past as 5VDC supply for Squeezebox, where it made a HUGE improvement over SB3's miniscule switcher wart. This is an all linear, regulated supply with a huge transformer, 0.01% line regulation and at 400mA almost same 12V current rating as the 450mA stock wart. Made by Power-One. With the lower resistance power plug and greatly overbuilt construction, T-03 metal can transistors and huge aluminum frame heat sink I figured it can handle the load, even if there are peaks on spin up.
I had a feeling that the heavy, dense plastic platter draws a lot more than half amp on spin up, and the high current is what melted the jack. The new supply handles it just fine, the transistors are not even warm after a couple hours spinning. I give it a spin on first startup to prevent the current spike in the motor windings anyway.
Michael Fremer's review of the turntable in June 2011 Stereophile was very positive. But he said that the table spun slightly fast at 33.6RPM or something like that. I found that the stock PS was actually making 12.45VDC, instead of the rated 12VDC. So I adjusted the pot of my regulator to exactly 12VDC output, maybe that will make the correct speed, I won't know until I get a setup test disk. There is no reason to think input voltage affects platter speed, but hey, why not make it perfect if you can? Maybe I will be able to dial in the platter speed with the adjustment pot when I get a speed setup tool.
An old friend gave me this supply 20 years ago I had no idea what I would do with it, or really what it even was. He is a great electronic designer, especially good with logic stuff, custom controllers, etc. He wanted me to stop painting houses and digging ditches and learn electronics. He gave me lessons on his bench about the basics, with a 555 timer. His cousin sent him the supply from Israel when my friend was just starting his schooling/career in electronics. So this thing had a storied history before I ever got it! Then I carried it around for a decade before I finally pulled it out to try on the Squeezebox. SHAZAMM! All the power supply hype on the slimdevices forum was true, and I was a real audiophile! I could hear the difference and I could DIY! woohoo! My tweaking consciousness was awakened! Back then I was afraid to touch this thing, I had to wire the 5V output into a plug that would fit the SB, which I remember being somewhat of a chore, studying the PS manual, etc. This time I had no need for the manual. I just fired it up, stuck in my probes to find the 12V+, rewired my SB plug with existing leads wired back in Israel, and adjusted the output voltage while it was running. I would have been scared to death to do that 3 years ago. Sol has helped me understand a lot more about electronics, and take away a lot of the mystery and fear. Thanks Sol! But also, just doing projects and reading DIY forums you pick it up along the way.
So I was able to fix and upgrade the TT in an hour instead of hiring repair tech or sending it off. That feels good! I had to scavenge a jack from a model airplane! I sold hundred of those power jacks to model sailplaners in my previous hobby business. The Switch-Jack lives!
The coolest thing is that I plan to use this as a power supply for my new DAC also, so it will serve double duty as 12V supply for TT and 5V pre-regulator for the Belleson SuperPower regulators going into my Buffalo2 DAC. I don't think it can handle both voltages full power running at the same time, but I think neither will draw full power and it is fused anyway. I built a little wooden box for it back in the SB days, but it doesn't really fit in there with current wires. I'll have to make it prettier.
(http://www.audionervosa.com/MGalleryItem.php?id=903)
That is some seriously good ingenuity and ambition at work. Go get 'em, tiger! ;)
Sounds like you have a real system coming together... Nice speakers, DAC, TT, amp... what's next, preamp? :shock:
-C
Thanks Carl! I appreciate the encouragement and motivation. The new TT does sound awesome. Big, smooth, grown up sound.
Preamp? why, Yes! But only after acoustic treatments are done. Balanced Pass B1 with LDR volume, Aikido 9 pin and octal boards, and Gary Pimm's 26 preamp are on the menu.