Curiosity got the best of me. It was now time to break out the jig and attack more of the less disruptive torque settings. I had been given some specific torque settings so first went for the arm collar on the GS subchassis. I was unable to loosen the arm collar with the SR torque tool set to the recommended setting given to me which led me to believe that I had it set to a higher torque. I had to use an Allen wrench and some force to loosen up each Allen bolt before resetting it with the SR tool. I was thinking while adjusting these three nuts how having all these nuts set to the same torque might improve things as well as having them set to closer to ideal torques.
Next was the hinge plates which I found were quite a bit loose. I can't remember the last time in any attention was paid to them. I found the motor nuts were looser than the torque setting provided as well. I also applied a .4 Nm (-1) torque to the three cartridge bolts on the Troika. I was reticent to do anything at the moment with the top plate as I didn't want to change too many variables at once so thought I would give these changes a listen before doing anything else.
I spent the rest of the night spinning tunes and all was sounding more tuneful and more like real music. I was hearing rhythms and emotion from the music that were missing before the changes. All good!
LP12 Optimum Torque Settings
Moderator: Staff
Tuesday rolls along more listening and thinking about those Cirkus bearing screws and that new Premotec motor obtained from Thomas. What better time than now to install the motor and pull the inner platter and reset the bearing torque all at the same time. Set the torque tool to 3.8 +1 and attempted to loosen the bearing nuts, success! Guess they weren't as tight as I thought they would have been.
Installed the new motor which was a bit of work as the old one was soldered to the lingo board due to a previous mishap with the terminal block. One less torque setting to not worry about. Motor went in just fine, speed set using the tilt screws, spot on! Back on the stand for more listening and sounding very good.
Ran out to an automotive shop and picked up a feeler gauge to center the platter as Thomas showed me. The .051mm was too big, had to use .038, this again made a more subtle improvement. I'm was done for today.
Installed the new motor which was a bit of work as the old one was soldered to the lingo board due to a previous mishap with the terminal block. One less torque setting to not worry about. Motor went in just fine, speed set using the tilt screws, spot on! Back on the stand for more listening and sounding very good.
Ran out to an automotive shop and picked up a feeler gauge to center the platter as Thomas showed me. The .051mm was too big, had to use .038, this again made a more subtle improvement. I'm was done for today.
Wednesday rolls along, what's left? How about the six 8mm nuts holding the Khan top plate in place. Thomas warned me about the nylock nuts and the torque required to move them was greater than the torque used to set the top plate torques.
The work around this was to work the nuts enough up and down to the point where they loosened up in their amount of torque. I did this to the motor and main block nuts and just lightly nipped the other three by hand. I was surprised at how little torque was used on the main block as I would have never set it this light by hand. Certainly no old school Linn dealer would have had these main block bolts setup this loose, evidenced by the dimples found around the top plates of so many LP12's!
I also took this time to secure the front ground wire in the manner suggested by Thomas to avoid applying unwanted torque to the front main block bolt.
This change in torque to the top plate made a significant improvement in my LP12, perhaps the biggest change. More tuneful, detailed, easier to follow bass lines, better overall balance and flow to the music. Very pleased!
Much thanks to Thomas and others who did the work to sort out the torque settings. I'm good for now and will just enjoy for awhile, perhaps down the road I will fine tune some of the torque settings while the deck is in the jig, but for now I recon I'm pretty close. Now onto revisiting 3,500 or so records, my LP12 has never sounded better!
The work around this was to work the nuts enough up and down to the point where they loosened up in their amount of torque. I did this to the motor and main block nuts and just lightly nipped the other three by hand. I was surprised at how little torque was used on the main block as I would have never set it this light by hand. Certainly no old school Linn dealer would have had these main block bolts setup this loose, evidenced by the dimples found around the top plates of so many LP12's!
I also took this time to secure the front ground wire in the manner suggested by Thomas to avoid applying unwanted torque to the front main block bolt.
This change in torque to the top plate made a significant improvement in my LP12, perhaps the biggest change. More tuneful, detailed, easier to follow bass lines, better overall balance and flow to the music. Very pleased!
Much thanks to Thomas and others who did the work to sort out the torque settings. I'm good for now and will just enjoy for awhile, perhaps down the road I will fine tune some of the torque settings while the deck is in the jig, but for now I recon I'm pretty close. Now onto revisiting 3,500 or so records, my LP12 has never sounded better!