zach.drummond Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see the point behind the hate for this concept. Pro-ject makes great products, right? The way I see it if anyone is going to do an upright wall-mountable turntable, and do it right-it's them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allenh Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see the point behind the hate for this concept. Pro-ject makes great products, right? The way I see it if anyone is going to do an upright wall-mountable turntable, and do it right-it's them. Gravity makes it a flawed concept regardless of who does it. And to be honest it's a pointless gimmick, I like the do it because it can be done engineering but it doesn't make it any less pointless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Vool Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 Gravity makes it a flawed concept regardless of who does it. If there's someone who can turn the law of gravity upside down, it's Mr.Pro-ject Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slinch Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 I'm just gonna repost what I posted in that kickstarter thread a while ago. I didn't even want to jump in here because the fact that this thing is winning the popularity race is making me sad. I fear that saying "remember the good old days when the worst think people bought was a crosley" isn't that distant of a future... Though on the other side, a guy from my neck of the woods made this a few years ago: The decision to go vertical was purely functional. A result of years of trying to eliminate some universal tonearm drawbacks, and the only way physics would allow it was going vertical. One of the best tables I've heard, regardless of cost. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allenh Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 I can't remember if I asked in the Kickstarter thread but how much of that is down to it being a tangential tracking arm? All the gimmick ones use a normal pivot arm with all it's engineering compromises and then add some more because of the gravitational effects. In your example I can see that gravity would add friction to the horizontal movement of the arm but as the mass I assume is low the effect would be less than on the pointy end of a pivot arm. The one in your picture looks to have quite some effort put into it's construction and design unlike the examples that were made like this back in the 80's, Mitsubishi, Technics, Amstrad and Sharp from memory but all of them were pretty cheap in construction (especially the Amstrad and the Sharp) and the Technics had it's arm at the bottom so the wrong way up and so none of them pushed the design very much and all were potentially record wrecking gimmicks in one way or another Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slinch Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 The arm is actually the main reason for the vertical design. The idea was to make a tangential arm without the air bearing, so that the bearing is fully mechanical (the biggest issue with the air bearing being that it completely decouples the arm from the rest of the table, thus the vibrations, produced by the stylus, cannot be transferred out of the tonearm, meaning they have to dissipate in the arm itself), but with the standard design the counterweight makes the entire arm too heavy. With the vertical design, the counterweight is only there to compensate for the cart weight/setting the tracking force, making the entire arm weigh only about 70 grams (with the counterweight and cart, the arm alone is around 36g). Some fun facts about the design: The arm including the wiring is easily interchangable, so that you can have more than one already preset with the cart and just change them in a matter of seconds. VTA is changed by moving the platter to or away from the base and can be done on the fly during playback. The platter is about 16" to increase torque, which is crucial for MC carts. The entire design is actually really simple, but very effective. It's also interesting that it seems to be almost completely immune to vibrations, you can see that everything is rigid, no dampening material or cone feet or anything, yet it produces zero feedback even at loud volumes. It's one of those things that the designer wasn't expecting, but was very delighted to find out. All this was in 2012, I haven't really followed the production since then. The idea was to make 10-15 pieces (it's basically a DIY project, though by a guy who's been making turntables for at least three decades, but only custom built ones). Not sure where the the project went from there. Also, the cost of one was if I remember correctly around €3k. But yeah, this has absolutely nothing in common with the current fad of vertical turntables. I just posted it to share that you can make a high-end vertical table, but only when the form follows the engineering, not the other way around. Eliminator Jr. and kidamnesiac 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.