Maplenoll air bearing turntable

[Wardsweb]

I picked this up yesterday from a nice old gentleman who didn't want to deal with a 85 pound turntable during his upcoming move. It uses an air compressor to feed 60psi to the bearings in the tone arm and platter. It came fitted with a Sumiko Blue Point Special EVO III cartridge.

 

[Wardsweb]

 

[Wardsweb]

 

[Flint]

How do you adjust the weight on the tone arm?

 

[Wardsweb]

How do you adjust the weight on the tone arm?

You can just see in the picture, on the left side of the arm, an L bracket with a post sticking out the back. That is where the weight is adjusted.

 

[Botch]

Curious to know if the rumble reduced makes up for any hissing and the compressor's noise added.

 

[Wardsweb]

Curious to know if the rumble reduced makes up for any hissing and the compressor's noise added.

No audible noise from the table. The air compressor is the quietest of any I've heard but still is not silent, so it goes in the garage. There is a switch at the table that activates a relay that turns on the compressor and very long tubing to the table.

 

[Deleted member 133]

Pretty interesting - although this takes the 80/20 rule to 99.9/0.1

I guess apartment dwellers (ie. no garage available) could make due with a SCUBA bottle and regulator. I imagine it doesn't use a huge volume of air (otherwise it would be pretty noisy at the turntable) - or does it?

Jeff

 

[Wardsweb]

Pretty interesting - although this takes the 80/20 rule to 99.9/0.1

I guess apartment dwellers (ie. no garage available) could make due with a SCUBA bottle and regulator. I imagine it doesn't use a huge volume of air (otherwise it would be pretty noisy at the turntable) - or does it?

Jeff

Not much air at all. The fitting, going into the quick disconnect, at the table, is not much bigger than a pencil lead found in a trusty old #2.

 

[Deleted member 133]

And in case anyone thinks I was making funny about the bottled air, it would be far from the first time that a bottled gas was used in a hi-fi system.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/hill-plasmatronics-type-1-loudspeaker#HUmYJJMGVU3xMD02.97

 

[Botch]

^^^ beat me to it, I remember the He/plasma tweeter.
Helium was under a severe shortage worldwide recently, although they just discovered some huge deposits in Africa somewhere.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

I hear that Nitrogen sounds better than plain air....

At the least, I'd expect that a pure gas would be better than possibly polluted air, given the undoubtedly very tight clearances and tolerances involved in an air suspension.

 

[Wardsweb]

I hear that Nitrogen sounds better than plain air....

At the least, I'd expect that a pure gas would be better than possibly polluted air, given the undoubtedly very tight clearances and tolerances involved in an air suspension.

It does require clean dry air. This one uses a filter, separator and drier.