The sound of LP12 plinths?

Hardware and software, modifications and DIY

Moderator: Staff

User avatar
ThomasOK
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 4358
Joined: 2007-02-02 18:41
Location: United States
Contact:

Post by ThomasOK »

I recently received an email from a good customer who purchased one of the custom plinths from me. He gave me permission to post his comments here.

"My turntable is now set-up and back in operation. As you stated, there is an improvement in sound, which is immediately noticeable. In my opinion, the improvements are significant. And they might be “similar” to the improvements achieved from the Radikal and Keel. In any case, replacing the Linn stock plinth with a Movingui plinth should be one of the first improvements made to the Sondek – especially considering the cost. Dollar for dollar, it “might have” gained the most sonic improvement for the money spent.

The quality of workmanship is top notch, and it’s a very good looking product! I do appreciate your recommendation on this plinth and feel very happy making the change."

There is good and bad news in regards to this. The bad news is that Chris has no more Movingui as his recent lumber buying trip found the distributor out of Movingui. It appears that the slow economy has drastically reduced the supply of a number exotic hardwoods. The good news is that several other plinths from Chris have been close to the Movingui musically and all have been a substantial upgrade over any of the stock Linn plinths.

As Chris gets more of his new batch of plinths out I hope to audition at least a couple more woods and will report my findings when I do.
User avatar
lejonklou
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 6523
Joined: 2007-01-30 10:38
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Post by lejonklou »

I'll be following your continued reports closely, Thomas. I'd really like to have one of Chris' plinths.

If you can include information about the sustainability (eco friendliness) of the woods, I'd be very happy. I'm only interested in woods that have a certification of this kind.
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

It would be very interesting if other types of wood sounded as good as the Movingui, or better.
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
ThomasOK
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 4358
Joined: 2007-02-02 18:41
Location: United States
Contact:

Post by ThomasOK »

As promised a while back I have now completed comparisons of another groups of plinths from Chris. The timing coincided with a couple of other ideas for improving the LP12 so I incorporated those to try and make the tests as controlled as possible. First off, the comparisons were made using my LP12 with the Movingui plinth I have reported on, and posted photos of, before. For those who aren’t up on my system the LP12 is 1997 vintage but almost all the parts have been replaced. It has a new inner platter and bearing housing fitted a few years ago, I replaced the suspension bolts with the straightest ones I could find, the outer platter and mat are new from a few months ago and, of course, it has the custom plinth. Installed in my LP12 are a Radikal (standard chassis), Keel, Ekos SE, Akiva and Urika. Connection to the preamp is from factory built Linn Silver interconnects with original style RCAs. It has had all torque adjustments optimized and just before this comparison I redirected the Urika power cable as has been mentioned in that thread and which makes a significant performance improvement. I also optimized the platter by rotating the outer platter in reference to the inner platter to where it produced the most tuneful performance and by using a feeler gauge of .038mm to make sure the outer platter was centered on the inner one. I feel these two adjustments also improve the tune but not to the degree the cabling change does. The mat was oriented with the right side up as well. So basically I’ve done everything I know of to optimize the performance of this turntable.

The other LP12 used in the comparisons belongs to Keith, the owner of the store. It has gone through the same extensive setup and tuning procedure and contains the same components as my LP12 except for the plinth which is a stock Linn Maple and the interconnects which are normally Nordost Valhallas. However, for this test I replaced them with another pair of factory built Linn Silvers although with the newer RCAs. The Akiva is also a fair bit newer production than mine. So, other than the plinths, overall these LP12s were very much the same (yes there is a bit of a musical difference from the RCAs).

The system setup had both LP12s on the decoupled top shelf of a double-wide Quadraspire Sunoko-Vent three shelf stand. On the bottom were the two Radikals and on the middle shelf was a KK/1/D. On a separate Sunoko-Vent amp stand were two Klimax Solos which drove a pair of Sonus faber Cremona Ms through a set of K20 speaker cables with the preamp to amp interconnects also stock Linn Silvers. Radikals and the KK were plugged into one quad outlet and the Solos into another on the same circuit. No power conditioning or filtering was used. The Cremonas were in the optimum positions in one of our listening rooms (likely where cremona first heard the Klimax/Cremona combination) and the equipment shelves were in between the speakers.

The first test was just to compare the stock Maple to the Movingui. While the Movingui was definitely more tuneful and allowed you to hear more of what was going on the Maple was closer than I expected it to be (more about this later). When removed it also had a better tap tone than I have heard from other Linn plinths. Based on what I’ve heard so far I would have to say that this particular Linn Maple plinth is one of the two best I’ve heard and better than the Black Ash, Cherry and Afromosia plinths.

Makore: I then swapped the Linn Maple plinth for a Woodsong Makore. As with all the ChrisH plinths I’ve heard so far, this was a very good sounding plinth and certainly better than the stock Maple. It was not the match of the Movingui as it wasn’t as tuneful and the music didn’t flow as well. There was less texture and nuance to the notes so the intent of the performers was not conveyed as well. It just sounded as if things were smeared a bit compared to the Movingui. Frequency-wise it did have a very good balance with extended frequency extremes and no part of the range sounding emphasized or reduced. Overall quite good and certainly a worthwhile upgrade over stock. It is also very attractive with a mottled appearance that catches the light differently from different angles.

Image

Curly Maple: Next up was the Curly Maple, another wood that does nice tricks with the light depending on the angle you view it from. This plinth is really quite excellent. I still felt that the Movingui was a little better with a little more natural decay to notes, a bit better flow and a bit more tunefulness. Another listener here described it as a more fluid sound. It sounded a touch faster and more detailed than the Movingui but again the differences were small. The seeming additional speed reminded me of the difference between the new and old Linn Silver RCAs – the new ones sound a bit more detailed and Hi-Fi, the original ones sound a bit more tuneful and musical. The differences between these plinths were similar but were greater in degree than that between the cables making me sure that the cables not the major part of the difference I was hearing. The frequency balance also was quite even with an extended, clean bass similar to the Movingui. This is currently the second best plinth I have heard and is close to the best. It is the one that is ending up on Keith’s LP12.

Image

Amazique: The last plinth we listened to was the Amazique (although we put the Curly Maple back on and listened again afterwards). (Like many woods Amazique has several names often being called Amazoque and commonly Shedua.) Amazique has a more linear, striped grain with darker stripes on a kind of brassy background, especially viewed in direct light. I was disappointed to find this my least favorite of the three as another dealer was quite impressed by the sound of one he installed. Although this could be in part because he has experienced different plinths than I have it is also quite possible that his Amazique sounded different than mine. As Chris has mentioned earlier in this thread wood, being a natural material, varies greatly from board to board not only in appearance but also in the sound the wood makes when tapped – which does seem to bear some relation to how good a plinth sounds. Anyway, the sound of the Amazique was similar to me to the Mayan Rosewood I tested previously in that it seemed to push forward the mids and upper midrange. This gave it the kind of “detailed” sound you hear in some cables that emphasize some frequencies over others. It was not as tuneful nor did it have as much of the true inner detail that makes the instruments sound more real and lets you hear the true quality of musicianship on your records. The phrasing was also not as good as the Curly Maple or the Movingui. I would describe the sound as “splashy” in that there was some smearing and harshness to the forward sound. In comparison to what I remember of the Mayan Rosewood I would say that it was maybe a touch less forward but not as smooth. The two would be ranked pretty close. The frequency balance obviously emphasized the mids and upper mids but the bass also seemed a bit less deep and not as powerful as the others. To put this in perspective this was still a more musical plinth than the Linn Maple allowing you to hear more of what is going on musically, although slightly less balanced frequency-wise, and a fair bit better than most other stock plinths I have heard. It is just a bit outclassed by some of the other plinths.

Image

This set of comparisons has had some interesting outcomes that have led me to develop a couple of theories. First off I noticed that the differences I was hearing between the plinths was not as big as I was expecting – they all sounded closer together than plinths had in the past. When I first heard the Movingui plinth compared to the stock Black Ash and Cherry the improvement was big enough that my jaw about hit the floor! This feeling was shared by everyone here who heard the comparisons - the better plinth was a lot better. Think Trampolin 2 level or better improvements. When I compared the Movingui to the stock Maple the difference was nowhere near as big - part, but not all, of which I credit to it being a good Maple plinth. When I started comparing the other custom plinths the differences were again smaller than I remember from when I did the first set of comparisons. At first this seemed counter-intuitive, as the setup on these tables was even more precise, with things like platter orientation taken into account, which should have made it easier to hear the differences. As should the dramatically increased musical performance brought by the Radikal and Urika.

Then I had my own eureka moment! I believe that the Radikal diminishes the musical contribution of the plinth. My theory is this: The AC motor is connected very rigidly to the stainless steel top plate with steel dome washers and bolts that are fastened pretty tightly so that motor vibration gets sunk into the top plate and from there into the plinth it is bolted to. But the DC motor from the Radikal is actually isolated from the top plate. It is fitted into a dense Poron plastic foam sleeve with a bottom pad of the same Poron and that is fitted into an inert machined Acetal plastic outer housing. According to the technology paper from Linn on the Radikal and Urika “The motor is housed within a mounting enclosure specially designed and manufactured by Linn to minimise vibration and dampen acoustic noise. The enclosure de-couples and dampens any mechanical vibrations from the DC motor and prevents them transferring to the top plate. The motor mounting is a composite construction, making use of specially selected non-resonant materials to ensure the highest quality of audio reproduction.” This is pretty much the opposite of the AC motor. So my thought is that the Radikal motor feeds much less energy into the top plate and hence the plinth than the AC motor and therefore the changes to the resonant quality of the plinth have less effect on the musical quality of the LP12. Note that they still have an effect - it is just not as big.

This finding also means that it is hard to compare what I heard in these comparisons with what I heard in the first ones, as the degree of difference is less. I will still provide what my overall ranking is but remember that I don’t consider this definitive (not that with the natural differences in woods I could ever come up with a definitive ranking).

These tests have also lead to a hypothesis although I am a little more tentative on this as I don’t have a huge sample size to base it on. My finding is that the best sounding woods seem to be those with a grain that would be described as mottled, wavy or curvy. These are terms that have a fairly loose definition, even among woodworkers, but they all refer to woods that don’t have the kind of linear grain patterns typical of most Walnut, Afromosia, Cherry, Oak, Maple and many other woods. They instead have patterns that fluctuate more giving a look in the light that can make thus surface seem to undulate. You can see in the photos above what is normally classified as mottled (Makore) and as curly (Curly Maple). The Amazique is representative of the more linear type of grain. If you look at the photos I posted earlier in the thread you will see that the Movingui is probably best described as curly and the Bubinga is somewhat mottled. So far in my listening tests the curly and mottled plinths have come out the best (Movingui, Curly Maple, Makore, Wenge) and the more linear ones have not been quite as good (Black Limba, Amazique, Mayan Rosewood). In addition the Linn Maple plinth that had been on the owner’s table was less linear in grain than most I have seen while not actually being curly.

I think it may be that the mottled or uneven type of grains may break up the resonances more while still having a harmonic sound to them. At least that seems to be the case so far. I have also noted that I have heard enough of the “tap tones” of the different plinths that I can get a reasonable idea of how a plinth will perform from it. The best plinths do have a harmonic tone that has a reasonable spread of frequencies but without an extended ring to it. When tapping the Curly Maple it had a musical sound that had a lowish pitch and good harmonics but not too much ring, the Amazique had a much higher pitch with a touch more ringing but still pretty harmonic, the Makore was pitched closer to the Curly Maple but had a fairly dead ring with little in the way of harmonics. On the plinths tested before the Mayan Rosewood had a very harmonic tone but also a very long ring, the Wenge had a well pitched, musical tone but with not much in the way of harmonics and the Black Limba had a light, high-pitched tone with little low frequency energy. Many, nut not all, of the Linn plinths have had a fairly dead and sometimes hashy tone. So there does seem to be a similarity between the tones and how the plinth sounds once you get an idea of how the two relate.

As to my overall rankings (again with the reservations I have noted above):

Movingui: simply the most musical plinths I have yet heard.
Curly Maple: second only to Movingui and quite good. The only way you’d likely hear the difference is with a tightly controlled direct comparison.

These next four aren’t quite in the league with the top two, all of them being a shade less tuneful than the best, but are still quite good overall. Each has at least one notable, but different, weakness.

Wenge: a step below those two but still quite good, does have a bit of a high-frequency rolloff.
Mayan Rosewood: a bit forward in the mids giving it a bit of artificial detail but still a musical plinth.
Makore: very balanced plinth just hampered by a bit of smearing of the fine nuances of the music.
Amazique: a bit forward mid and upper midrange giving it a touch of a “shouty” quality
I have to say that the relative ranking of the Mayan Rosewood, Makore, and Amazique could change if I heard all three of them in the same exact setups. I would put the Wenge at the top regardless but the other three are all quite close yet different.

Black Limba: still more musical in many ways than most Linn plinths but it has a light, delicate sound with little in the way of bass power. If you had one of the better Linn plinths like the Maple I pulled off the owner’s LP12 or the Rosewood a customer replaced with Movingui the Black Limba would at best be a sideways move.

A question that Fredrik has brought up has to do with how ecological these woods are and it is one I hadn’t thought to ask before he brought it up. I did talk to Chris about it and also did a little reading on the web and found that things certainly aren’t completely clear-cut (pardon the pun). As an example some claim that Santos Rosewood is farm grown and ecologically sound and others claim this isn’t so. There are a couple of things I can tell you with certainty. One is that Chris does not use certified green woods because he doesn’t believe in the honesty of the system and he is not happy with some of the wood that gets into the system as “green” wood when it is comes from forests being cleared out to make room for farming plants to make ethanol (something which many feel to not be a really green fuel). Chris also feels that making a plinth of Mayan Rosewood is a far cry from flooring an entire mansion with the stuff. I have no interest in getting into the politics of all this I just wanted to let you know what I can on it.

Many of the woods that Woodsong plinths are made from are what some would call “rainforest” woods. This likely includes Movingui, Makore, Wenge, Black Limba, any of the Rosewoods, Coconolo, etc. From one of the forestry web sites I looked at it appears that there are very few woods that are considered ecologically safe and those that Linn use are a good percentage of them: American Cherry, Maple, Walnut and Ash. In addition I believe Birch and Beech are normally considered safe. There are a few others but not a whole lot. I am happy that the Curly Maple plinth sounded so good as it is Canadian Maple and would give at least one eco-friendly choice. Chris is also going to make some plinths from American Hard Maple at some time so those could also be good. He does also make plinths from Walnut, Cherry and others as he finds good pieces of wood, I know he is currently working on a Myrtle and a Beech and I may get to hear one or both of them.

So there are the latest findings, it is a good thing it has been a slow day here as I’ve been writing this almost all day! I don’t know how much opportunity I will have in the future to do this kind of testing as it requires that Keith and I donate a few days of our turntable’s lives to it, but I’ll see what I can do.
Charlie1
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 4831
Joined: 2007-12-11 00:30
Location: UK

Post by Charlie1 »

Wow Thomas - a post and a half. Not surprised it took all that time, but super thorough and a real benchmark in terms of trying to keep testing as fair as possible.

I only want to pick up on the one point about the plinths all sounding closer this time around. Do you think an additional cause to that suggested in your post might be that elements higher up the turntable hierachy (i.e. motor/controller) offer far superior performance over last time?

My reasoning is based on a recent experience where aktiv Ninkas can sound nearly as smooth and refined as 109s with an excellent clean recording, yet with a poor recording the Ninkas make a real meal of any distortion - i.e. the performance gap is not fixed but varies according to source quality. So my thinking is that the superier Radikal has done a similar trick and reduced the differences heard between downstream components (i.e. plinths), not widen the gap as might be intitively thought.

Just an idea. Yours sounds more likely though :D
SaltyDog
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 359
Joined: 2008-09-11 18:34
Location: Chicago suburbs

Post by SaltyDog »

Great work on the plinths Tom.

I wonder if the fluted plinths would serve to breakup the vibrations in a plinth. Disrupting the straight grain pattern somewhat.

I also wonder if a plinth worked with the varying shape, size and depth Ala the keel would serve a purpose. Just wondering, not expecting results from testing, but wonder what others think would be useful attempts at improving the tune based on your theories.

I've read somewhere that some attempts at aluminum plinths have been tried without a clear improvement. Would you expect a casting to sound better than what was probably an extrusion to sound better?

I wonder how a composite with an aggregate such as some of the speaker bases would be an improvement.

I think I'd still prefer the look of wood.

Anyway just thinking.
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

Hello Thomas, it's research efforts like yours that contribute to legitimate audio findings :!: Of course there is no way to predict results or outcomes in advance. Only extensive and time consuming comparisons can reveal what is, and what isn't worth buying.

Your opinion of the Radikal having an impact on sound characteristics of wood plinths certainly seems reasonable, as does different batches of the same wood.

Your time and effort in this project are very much appreciated :!:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:
Image

Image

Image
By the way, very nice pictures... :!:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
ThomasOK
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 4358
Joined: 2007-02-02 18:41
Location: United States
Contact:

Post by ThomasOK »

SaltyDog wrote:Great work on the plinths Tom.

I wonder if the fluted plinths would serve to breakup the vibrations in a plinth. Disrupting the straight grain pattern somewhat.

I also wonder if a plinth worked with the varying shape, size and depth Ala the keel would serve a purpose. Just wondering, not expecting results from testing, but wonder what others think would be useful attempts at improving the tune based on your theories.

I've read somewhere that some attempts at aluminum plinths have been tried without a clear improvement. Would you expect a casting to sound better than what was probably an extrusion to sound better?

I wonder how a composite with an aggregate such as some of the speaker bases would be an improvement.

I think I'd still prefer the look of wood.

Anyway just thinking.
Now we are getting into theoretical questions on plinth construction so all I can really do is guess - I have no personal experience with the construction itself. I doubt that fluting the plinth would break up resonances. It might raise the pitch of the plinth due to making it lighter but that is the only effect I think is likely.

My understanding is that Linn did not cast or extrude the aluminum plinths they researched. I heard that the plinth(s) were machined from a solid billet as with the Keel. I was told that Linn felt any small improvement from this plinth was not worth the costs involved. Considering the size of the billet they would need to start with and the amount of machining involved to make the complex shape needed you can see it would have been very expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up somewhere near twice the Keel price!

As to various composites, I would be really surprised if Linn hadn't tried them. They have been working with those types of materials like Ku-Stone and the polymer bases for Espeks and Ninkas for some time so I can't imagine them not trying them for a plinth. My best guess is that they are not well suited to the LP12. It has become very apparent that the LP12 design is not about damping energy but controlling it.

Somehow the plinth has an effect on the way energy from the top plate/motor/suspension and from the speakers/room is handled which has a musical consequence. It would be great if Linn found some magic material that would perform this better than anything tried so far. We'll just have to wait and see if that happens. When Linn came out with the Radikal and Urika they were asked if they had any other new upgrades coming. The answer was that they didn't have anything currently on the horizon but they had some ideas. In the last slightly over seven years they have come out with the following:

New top line cartridge
New arm cable
New subchassis, armboard, collar combination
New top line tonearm
New Trampolin
New outer platter (although not mentioned by Linn as such)
New felt mat
New motor and control system
New phono stage (and a variant)
New solid base (aluminum with ground like Trampolin2)
New suspension bolts (although there has been no comment so far of them being superior)

In the Q&A Linn engineers said they were happy with the top plate and the belt with no plans to change either. That doesn't leave a whole lot left to improve. The bearing could be changed but it has evolved over time so I'm not sure what else they would come up with there. The change to the outer platter was slight (it weighs a little less so the material may have changed a bit) and the musical change is slight also. Linn are not promoting it as an upgrade. The same kind of change could be made to the inner platter but again would likely make little improvement. Springs? Grommets? Could be, but they have also gone through several generations. Since the Keel was made to use the existing springs and grommets it seems unlikely they would change. The Akiva has been mentioned as a likely candidate for upgrade as it is now seven years old but the latest info I have is that it is not in the wings at least for the time being.

So that pretty much leaves the plinth. Maybe Linn will surprise us with something interesting here. In the meantime I just keep trying the different woods I have access to to see which sound the best and to try to see if there is any way to tell what is likely to sound good. It may be that there would be some way of combining different woods, as is typical on guitars, to get the best sound. It would certainly be an interesting avenue for investigation but would also be horribly time consuming. In a way, the plinths from Chris already do that in that he generally uses Wenge for the internal strips and blocks that hold the top plate to the plinth. This came about mostly due to conversations he had with me about the importance of the torque of the bolts that hold the top plate to the plinth. As Wenge is a dense and stable wood Chris felt it would be a better choice for those pieces than the wood normally used there by Linn and he also finishes those parts so they are less susceptible to humidity changes. Does it make a difference? I can't really say. I would have to have two plinths with the same wood (and the same tap tone) each with different strips and blocks so I could listen to them and see if there is a difference. Right now I don't think that experiment is at the top of either of our lists. But he does make some really fine sounding plinths and they are quite stunning as well. Until Linn come up with something better (if they do) I am quite happy with the appearance and especially the musical performance of these plinths.
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:But he (Chris) does make some really fine sounding plinths and they are quite stunning as well. Until Linn come up with something better (if they do) I am quite happy with the appearance and especially the musical performance of these plinths.
I like my Movingui plinth, it looks really nice and sounds great :!:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:In a way, the plinths from Chris already do that, he generally uses Wenge for the internal strips and blocks that hold the top plate to the plinth. As Wenge is a dense and stable wood Chris felt it would be a better choice for those pieces than the wood normally used there by Linn and he also finishes those parts so they are less susceptible to humidity changes.
Thomas, recently I was asked if all of the plinths made by Chris have the same type of finish :?:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
lejonklou
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 6523
Joined: 2007-01-30 10:38
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Post by lejonklou »

I wonder about that too.

How are the plinths finished? Is it with laquer, wax or what?
User avatar
ThomasOK
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 4358
Joined: 2007-02-02 18:41
Location: United States
Contact:

Post by ThomasOK »

With any luck Chris may reply with more detail.

My understanding is that Chris generally finishes his plinths the same way with multiple coats of hand-rubbed oil. It seems to me he once said that he generally puts five to seven coats of oil on the plinths. But there are occasional exceptions. He has just shipped me a Cocobolo plinth that he said had the smoothest surface of any he has made. He said it was so smooth the way it was that he decided to wax it instead of using the normal oil finish. I haven't seen it yet but look forward to it as he says it is one of the most stunning he has made. He also has made some plinths with a black piano lacquer but most people want one of the beautiful woods he works with.
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:With any luck Chris may reply with more detail.

My understanding is that Chris generally finishes his plinths the same way with multiple coats of hand-rubbed oil. It seems to me he once said that he generally puts five to seven coats of oil on the plinths. But there are occasional exceptions. He has just shipped me a Cocobolo plinth that he said had the smoothest surface of any he has made. He said it was so smooth the way it was that he decided to wax it instead of using the normal oil finish. I haven't seen it yet but look forward to it as he says it is one of the most stunning he has made. He also has made some plinths with a black piano lacquer but most people want one of the beautiful woods he works with.
Hmmm, the Cocobolo plinth sounds like it will be very attractive :!: It would be interesting to see the black piano lacquer plinth as well 8) .
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:My understanding is that Chris generally finishes his plinths the same way with multiple coats of hand-rubbed oil. It seems to me he once said that he generally puts five to seven coats of oil on the plinths.
Actually, all of the plinths made by Chris that I have seen - have been very beautiful :!:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:He has just shipped me a Cocobolo plinth that he said had the smoothest surface of any he has made. He said it was so smooth the way it was that he decided to wax it instead of using the normal oil finish.
Thomas, do you know how Chris was able to make the Cocobolo plinth smoother than previous plinths :?:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
ThomasOK
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 4358
Joined: 2007-02-02 18:41
Location: United States
Contact:

Post by ThomasOK »

Tony Tune-age wrote:
ThomasOK wrote:He has just shipped me a Cocobolo plinth that he said had the smoothest surface of any he has made. He said it was so smooth the way it was that he decided to wax it instead of using the normal oil finish.
Thomas, do you know how Chris was able to make the Cocobolo plinth smoother than previous plinths :?:
If I understand it correctly it wasn't anything Chris did, it was just the characteristics of this particular piece of wood. In talking to him again he said that he put one coat of oil on and then several coats of wax. He also said that the Cocobolo plinths are increasing in price to $750 do to increasing rarity and cost of the wood and others may follow. Although he has tried to keep the price of all plinths the same the differing cost and scarcity of different woods combined with differences in how hard they are to work with has led him to realize he will end up with plinths at various price levels.
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:
Tony Tune-age wrote:
ThomasOK wrote:He has just shipped me a Cocobolo plinth that he said had the smoothest surface of any he has made. He said it was so smooth the way it was that he decided to wax it instead of using the normal oil finish.
Thomas, do you know how Chris was able to make the Cocobolo plinth smoother than previous plinths :?:
If I understand it correctly it wasn't anything Chris did, it was just the characteristics of this particular piece of wood. In talking to him again he said that he put one coat of oil on and then several coats of wax. He also said that the Cocobolo plinths are increasing in price to $750 do to increasing rarity and cost of the wood and others may follow. Although he has tried to keep the price of all plinths the same the differing cost and scarcity of different woods combined with differences in how hard they are to work with has led him to realize he will end up with plinths at various price levels.

Thanks for the informaion Thomas, it does make sense :!:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:
If I understand it correctly it wasn't anything Chris did, it was just the characteristics of this particular piece of wood.
It's interesting how all the wood plinths that Chris uses differ in their ability to be finished, and in sound :!:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

By the way Thomas, when dusting the plinths (which are made by Chris) is it advisable to use wood polish :?:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
ThomasOK
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 4358
Joined: 2007-02-02 18:41
Location: United States
Contact:

Post by ThomasOK »

Well, after saying I might not be able to do more in the way of plinth comparisons I was able to do one more and reconfirm another.

Let me preface these comments with a thought caused by the comparison results: common knowledge isn't always correct. For some time I have heard that the common knowledge is that the Linn Rosewood plinths are not some of the better sounding ones and that the Cocobolo are also OK but not great. In doing these comparisons I have found that many of these conceptions are not true.

I believe that the reports in the past have been mainly anecdotal. Several people have found a particular plinth to sound good in varying setups with various partnering equipment so over time that plinth becomes known as good sounding (Black Ash would be an example). On the other hand, a number of people, again under varying circumstances have found they don't like a certain plinth (like Rosewood) and it becomes considered less good. One of my first indications that the common knowledge could be wrong was a comment by the owner of my store who said that a Linn Rosewood LP12 that a previous employee had owned was one of the best LP12s he had heard. This feeling was recently confirmed when I sold a Movingui plinth to a customer who owned a Linn Rosewood plinth. While he definitely preferred the musicality of the Movingui plinth when we compared it to his Linn Rosewood, I was surprised to find that the difference between the Movingui and the Rosewood was nowhere near as big as it was between my Movingui and my original Black Ash. A clear indication that at least this Rosewood was better than my Black Ash despite popular opinion. My most recent comparisons lead me to a similar conclusion.

I feel that the reason for this dichotomy is that the common knowledge is based on feelings generated by listening to a number of different turntables with different arms and cartridges, in different states of tune and on different systems - not a good basis for valid conclusions. As far as I am aware none were based on doing true, controlled A/B comparisons using the Tune method. It should also be noted that the tone of wood can vary from one piece to the next so there could be good Rosewood plinths and bad Rosewood plinths (although I have not heard a less than really good Movingui plinth despite small differences in tap tone - for that matter I have not heard a bad Chris Harban plinth, period).

Considering the results of my research into fine tuning the setup of an LP12 have shown that small torque adjustments can have substantial influence on the musical quality of the turntable, and the confirmation of that research by Fredrik, Paolo and others, I feel that really scientific evaluation of things such as plinths is very difficult until you can assure that you have eliminated (as much as possible) variables caused by differences in setup. And of course all the other pieces should be as identical as possible. This is the reason for my listing of the rigorous steps involved in minimizing differences between the turntables shown in the above post of plinth comparisons. One thing I forgot to mention there is that all the AC cables used were stock Linn cables with Ta Hsing cables on the two Radikals and Baohing on the KK and Solos, all burned in in the Vidar. This comparison used the same setup (which I have also photographed) but with one further improvement which is that I put a set of Linn Silver interconnects with the old style RCAs on the second table to eliminate that small difference. I also compared the Curly Maple again with these cables to see how it affected the evaluation. I found that the Curly Maple sounded much as I described it. With the old style RCAs is was a touch less "Hi-Fi" and a touch more tuneful (as I would expect from that change) but the difference was small compared to the difference caused by the plinth. The better cables did not change the relative ranking or the overall musicality of the Curly Maple plinth but it did move it a hair closer to the Movingui.

So, with that relatively lengthy preamble, here is the result of my latest comparison (and the last one for at least a while). This comparison is of the truly stunning Cocobolo plinth I just received from Chris. As you will see from the photos it is quite a gorgeous plinth and pretty much literally glows. But the big news is the musical quality of this plinth. Despite the bad rap that Cocobolo has, I felt it was going to be good just from the sound it made when I tapped it so I prevailed on Keith to leave his LP12 here for a few extra days and brought mine back in so I could do the comparison.

It turns out that my thinking it would be good was a significant misjudgment. This plinth is far more than good being the first plinth we have heard to seriously challenge the Movingui in musicality. I had to go back and forth several times with a couple of different pieces of music to be fully comfortable with my ranking of them. I had one of the other guys join me in some of the comparisons and we both had the same conclusion: they are both so good that having heard both compared we would have no problem living with either one. There just wasn't enough difference to make you feel bad for owning the lesser.

The Cocobolo plinth was very close to the Movingui with both having exceptional ability to reveal the nuances of playing and singing that can make a music system sound very real. It was easy to follow the tune on both and they both handled the entire frequency range in a balanced manner. There were some small differences that generally favored the Movingui but they were small. I still heard a slightly more natural decay of the notes, especially those with a long, slow decay on the Movingui giving piano and other instruments a touch more natural quality and making the musicians sound a bit better. The Cocobolo also had a slight (and I do mean slight) emphasis on some of the brighter sounds (the highest piano notes, cymbals, etc.) that favored the initial detail of a note over the natural resonance and harmonics of the instruments. And, finally, the bass was different although I have a hard time saying which is truly better here. The Movingui had just a bit more power in the bass, the Cocobolo was a touch leaner. Both had very good pitch differentiation in the bass range with excellent reproduction of the harmonics of bass instruments. I liked the Movingui ever so slightly more here as it sounded a bit more balanced and the bass playing on upright bass sounded a little more masterful. But the Cocobolo was also quite excellent here and I was listening on a different set of speakers, with less bass extension and less revealing bass than what I am used to at home so I have a hard time saying which has the definitive best bass reproduction. Since I will not be able to do this comparison at home I will not be able to be any more definitive than that. My feeling is that the Movingui would give a touch better bass reproduction in a system with clean and well controlled bass but that the Cocobolo might be welcomed in a system with bass that is a little overblown or less defined. (I'm really not big on trying to balance deficiencies so I am not advocating that here - I am really saying that I would want to hear these two plinths on several different speakers that I know have exceptional bass performance before I definitively said that one had better bass reproduction compared to the other. That said I still slightly favor the Movingui which has exquisite bass performance with my equally capable speakers.)

So there you have it. The ranking is still as I have listed it above with this change:

Movingui: simply the most musical plinths I have yet heard.
Cocobolo: a very close second to the Movingui and thoroughly musical and enjoyable. It is closer to the Movingui than to the Curly Maple.
Curly Maple: now relegated to third place by the Cocobolo but still an excellent plinth.

The only way you’d really hear hear the differences in these top three is with a tightly controlled direct comparison. They are all truly musical plinths and I could certainly see choosing among the three based on looks.

And speaking of looks, here are the photos of the test setup and the Cocobolo plinth:

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
User avatar
ThomasOK
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 4358
Joined: 2007-02-02 18:41
Location: United States
Contact:

Post by ThomasOK »

Tony Tune-age wrote:By the way Thomas, when dusting the plinths (which are made by Chris) is it advisable to use wood polish :?:
I'll have to check with Chris to find out his recommendations on this.
User avatar
Tony Tune-age
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 1579
Joined: 2009-12-19 19:07
Location: United States

Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:
Tony Tune-age wrote:By the way Thomas, when dusting the plinths (which are made by Chris) is it advisable to use wood polish :?:
I'll have to check with Chris to find out his recommendations on this.
Thanks Thomas... :!:
Tony Tune-age
User avatar
lejonklou
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 6523
Joined: 2007-01-30 10:38
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Post by lejonklou »

Thank you for another great report, Thomas!

That Cocobolo plinth looks absolutely stunning! Although it's just a photo, I can sense a fantastic richness in the red tones.

But as I suspect it's a piece of chopped down rain forest, I don't want it. :( Linn dropped the Rosewood plinths due to their eco-unfriendliness decades ago. That was a wise decision back then and even more important now.

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but the best looking plinth I've seen in real life was made of yew tree. It was back in the 90's, when you could order custom plinths from Linn. It was very "alive" and special looking.
User avatar
ThomasOK
Very active member
Very active member
Posts: 4358
Joined: 2007-02-02 18:41
Location: United States
Contact:

Post by ThomasOK »

lejonklou wrote:Thank you for another great report, Thomas!

That Cocobolo plinth looks absolutely stunning! Although it's just a photo, I can sense a fantastic richness in the red tones.

But as I suspect it's a piece of chopped down rain forest, I don't want it. :( Linn dropped the Rosewood plinths due to their eco-unfriendliness decades ago. That was a wise decision back then and even more important now.

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but the best looking plinth I've seen in real life was made of yew tree. It was back in the 90's, when you could order custom plinths from Linn. It was very "alive" and special looking.
This is one of those hot political issues that I've so far avoided as it is not at all clear what is safe and what isn't. Cocobolo is a Central American hardwood so it is quite likely you are right - I really don't know if any of it is farm grown or not. I know that some of the fancier woods such as the Santos Rosewood used for veneers on Vienna and ATC speakers is claimed to be farm grown so not all of these are unsafe.

It is true that Linn no longer uses rainforest hardwoods in their plinths. All the current plinths use sustainable woods: Maple, American Cherry, Walnut and Ash. But I don't believe that is why they stopped making Rosewood plinths. It used to be that Rosewood was fairly popular in plinths, speaker cabinets and Danish furniture. The majority of this was Brazilian Rosewood as it had the most striking grain and coloration (Cocobolo is quite close to it overall). My understanding is a couple of decades ago Brazil put a ban on exports of raw Rosewood feeling that it would bolster their furniture industry to only allow Brazilian Rosewwod to leave the country as finished goods. When this happened Rosewood became unavailable as a finish on speakers from Linn, Spendor and others and as a plinth material in a relatively short period of time. It also became more rare and expensive in Danish furniture although it didn't disappear altogether as they had stockpiled a fair amount of it. For many years after the Rosewood plinth was not offered Linn still supplied Afromosia which is also a rainforest wood. It was once they stopped making Afromosia and settled on the current five finishes that they truly got out of the rainforest wood business.

As I have reported, the Curly Maple is also close to the best and one of the top three group musically. It is a North American farmed wood so I am glad to have found a wood that is clearly safe and also sounds great. It is one of the reasons I got that plinth in to evaluate. I hope to hear others over time to see how they fare.
Post Reply