The Micro Seiki tonearm is in very good shape, without any cosmetic blemishes. The only visible fault was the 5-pin DIN male connector at the base of the tonearm mounting tube. It had fallen off from its usual resting place inside the mounting tube due to a missing spring loaded ring. Also, one of the 5 tonearm wires had come off from its soldering. The nice thing about this tonearm is that it is really well made. Everything feels very solid. Fit and finish and look and feel are top tier. And the icing on the cake is the vertical tracking angle adjuster, adjustable on the fly. Surely a steal for 50 Euros.
A quick solder, teflon tape wrapped around the DIN connector's body to make it fit tightly inside the arm tube, and later using a thick galvanised iron tightly twisted at the base of the mounting tube solved the problem with the "electrical" aspect of the arm.
Next challenge was to make an arm board for the new arm. This 10 inch arm replaces a Linn Basik 9 inch arm so a new arm board was a necessity. The mounting hole on the original arm board was too large, and the geometry was obviously a mismatch. gangof4 consulted vinylengine and came up with a pivot-spindle distance of 237 mm. The mounting tube of the arm is 16 mm diameter. So we cut a 3/4 inch thick MDF board with a jig saw to the size of the original board (which was also 3/4 inch thick), filed off the rough edges, and drilled a 19 mm mounting hole (3/4 inch). 19 - 16 mm = 3 mm gave us a fair amount of leeway for final adjustment of the mounting distance. The arm board was a simple rectangular affair without any fancy bevelling on any of its edges so it was quite easy to get right. Lots of saw dust in the house after a long time
Testing was done using the Micro Seiki arm with a spare headshell from a Pioneer TT, using a Shure Mx97E. A funny thing happened - when playing the outer grooves, audio was coming only on the left channel. Once the needle reaches about three-fourths into the grooves, both channels played happily. This was on the second day of this little project and it was getting rather late so we decided to resume troubleshooting the next day. Also, there was another SNAFU - we had mounted the arm rest too close to the pivot and it was obstructing the arm from dropping on the outermost groove!
Luckily for us, the problem was minor - we took out the DIN connector from the base of the tonearm and re-fitted at a different angle, avoiding twisting the delicate wires inside. That did the trick.
The arm rest was moved about 2 inches forward.
The final operation was to mount the freshly retipped Shure V15/III and to try and align it to two nulls. As we progressed, we found out that the headshell of the Micro Seiki doesn't allow lateral adjustments but allows lot of overhang movement. So in a way it is better than an SME fixed headshell which doesn't allow any adjustment, but not good enough
. So it may be more advisable for gangof4 to try his spare JVC headshell for better alignment.
About the Heybrook TT2: this is the first time I saw a Heybrook TT2. I believe this is of the same vintage as the venerable LP12. But the twist in the Heybrook story is that though there are 3 springs like other sprung 'tables, there is no springy feel even when pushing down with some force. Another peculiarity about the TT2 is that the arm board is rigidly fixed and not part of the sprung mass (meaning it is easier to set up and not temperamental like the LP12
). This TT2 is the Mark II and has a rigid and hefty aluminium framework below the top plate. This makes it very rigid. The plinth is also very well reinforced with what looks like 1-1/2 inch thick particle boards. Very well made, and it shows up in the sonics.
Some pictures of the underside:
The DIN connector in all its twisty glory
By
jls001 at 2012-08-06
The Reinforced Underside
By
jls001 at 2012-08-06
