Thanks Yeti,
Have you noticed any sonic changes after the factory mod?
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Can’t say for sure but nothing drastic.
good so you did not detect anything negative.
After NAUK’s bandaid remedy which sounded a lot worse, I really do not trust them.
So at this point I am on my own to figuring out.
I plugged the Korf mounted on the Artemis back into the superline this morning. Bearing, motor and arm are all mounted to a solid bamboo plinth, so insulated from each other. I have a ground from the bearing and a ground from the arm, the motor is DC without a ground. In the past I experimented with where to ground the bearing and settled on the phonostage as it gave a slightly more coherent result, this was when I was using the Schröder arm and I haven’t revisited it with the Aro or Korf, just used the same connection point.
I didn’t manage to trigger motorboating but there was a low level fluttering noise when the arm’s ground wire was connected which went when it was left hanging, it reduces if the TV and cable decoder are unplugged, they’re on the same spur but a socket 5m away. I have nothing digital in my system at the moment so ground it from the pre amp post to earth, moving that earth point to the superline kills the fluttering but I’m not convinced the sound overall doesn’t suffer, it certainly doesn’t improve on a disconnected tonearm ground. I still prefer the SUT/Stageline N with the SPU Century.
I’m not intending to open the superline to see what’s been done but curiosity may get the better of me.
“Thanks Yeti,
Have you noticed any sonic changes after the factory mod?“
It’s possibly a bit more agressive but whereas I used to use it mainly on the Artemis I’ve been using it with the PTP of late and that has a bit more drive in itself, not that the Artemis is lacking in that area. Prior to the modification I’d compared the SPU Century to the Royal N on the superline using Korf’s headshell for the latter but not his horrible silver litz wires, the ones that came with the Royal N were much better, until I broke one of the tags (this seems to be a habit of late, probably from too much cartridge swapping and slightly different diameter pins). The Royal N had a bit more impact, the Century was more fluid and captured finer microdynamics but the SUT which I’ve been using exclusively over the summer while the superline was away gives an even more fluid result so comparing back to the superline I’m not sure if it’s a real increase in aggression or just a change in my perception.
I was listening to a fair few symphonies with the PTP/Aro/Proteus/superline and it was doing scale and macrodynamics well and the timpani sounded convincing at the back, I’ve heard better string tone but it wasn’t far off. Switching to Metallica Ride the Lightning and all seems well but move to a Schubert quartet and the Century/SUT wins hands down for interplay and tone. I can acclimatise to either fairly quickly with all genres if I don’t compare.
The PTP does induce a bit of hum in the Proteus at end of side so I was trying a 17D3 and then a Denon, at which point I broke a tag on the Aro, which is post lead solder, the matching solder to repair it arrives tomorrow.
You were complaining of a loss of sound quality following the mod, can you describe what you heard?strong text
it’s basically a general lack of mojos. Lost dynamic swings and the music sounds somewhat muted. It’s basically the same effect when you load the Superline too much with capacitance.
So in your case it’s more of a hum? since the problem is related to the grounding issues?
Sounds like a bad ground loop induced hum?
Grounding seems to be involved in the motorboating but only with the Korf arm. It occurred with two different cables. an Ortofon and a Lyra but seems to be gone following Naim’s modification, from which I don’t hear a dulling of the sound as from too much capacitance loading.
Yeti,
I am going to record the sound and post it here later on.