GyroDec blog

Very good. I've never tried to change bearings but may try to on my well used RB301 sometime.

I've just bought a VDH right angled Tone Arm Connector to see if the excellent Cusat50 cable could be used with it. TAC's are small and Cusat50 isn't but it may be possible. The VDH cable would allow the cable to drop vertically from my Gorbe so allowing a relatively shallow bend radius.

Despite a head cold I have been enjoying some records. Various old classical LP's and Grafitti Bridge had a spin and it sounded great. I also played the first Lenny Kravitz LP and it sounded much better than I remembered.

I finished installing the mods on Monday and did the turntable setup on Tuesday, albeit ignoring the horizontal tensioning wires for my first listening session. The wires are now in place and I like the guitar tuner approach used to set their tension. I have gone for a slightly lower chassis height than 6.5mm in order to have headroom over the Orbe clamp when on thicker LP's.

So how does it sound?

Very good. No bass colouration and overhang, just tight deep drum hits and clear sound. I think the midrange and treble sound is also clearer. It passes my upgrade test of hearing more of the music. I have also found that the floating chassis is less susceptible to physical jolts like dropping the lid.

As noted above I fitted the full TT kit and the armboard kit at the same time. Both were straight forward in stages, obviously much quicker on the armboard as it is a swap out and same height afterwards, and the instructions with images were clearly laid out. The Orbe platter hides the covered sand cavities that fill in the three holes in the chassis so only the new tower hardware and the tension wires hardware are visible. It looks fine to me and sounds even better.