New (old) Troika!

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New (old) Troika!

Post by vicdiaz »

Hi,

Just got myself a new (old) Troika that's going to be rebuilded by EsCo (Expert Stylus).

The waiting list is at least 2 months so I will need to be VERY patient. :mrgreen:

Can't wait... :shock:
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Please share your results when you get the chance. I know a few people that have that cartridge and like it very much.
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Post by lejonklou »

How did you specify it, Vic? Expert Stylus can either build them "close to original" in specification or with "better parts".

I haven't heard any with "better parts", but have listened to Arkiv's that have been renovated "close to original". Without a direct comparison it's hard to tell, but my impression was that even this "close to original" renovation sounded different from Linn's original Arkiv.
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Lejonklou, does sounding different mean not as good? Also, it is a good idea to have a moving coil cartridge rebuilt with better parts, or just getting a brand new cartridge of the same type?
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Post by lejonklou »

I don't know... as I haven't made any direct comparisons, I can't make a proper judgement.

I haven't heard any carts rebuilt with "better parts" yet. When I spoke to the very knowledgeable owner at Expert Stylus, he recommended the use of these. Clearly ES are very good at what they're doing, I haven't heard of anyone who does these kind of renovations better. Examined in microscope the rebuilt carts look great.

But they do NOT use the Tune Method. Therefore I wouldn't personally count on the rebuilds with "better parts" sounding better than the rebuilds with "original parts". I've heard enough expensive MC's (made with state of the art parts) that have sounded totally unmusical to know that it's NOT the quality of the parts that does the trick.
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Lejonklou, thanks for the information. I have often wondered if it would be better rebuilding a moving coil cartridge, or trading in for a new cartridge. In any case, it will interesting to see how Vicdiaz likes his rebuilt cartridge when it's finished :) .
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Post by vicdiaz »

Hi,

Members from the PFM forum and the Linn forum have favorably recommended Esco for the rebuild. AFAIK they use the tune method to evaluate their systems (be it Linn, Naim, etc.) and some of them have had their Troikas rebuilt by EsCo more times than I can count!

Still haven't specified which parts to use but I'll stick with the aluminum cantilever (no fancy metals or precious stones here) and what they call the 'Paratrace' stylus, which seems to be similar in geometry to the 'Vital' stylus geometry used originally in the Troika.

As soon as I get the Troika back I'll compare it with my Linn Karma cartridge, which unbelievably was rebuilt by Linn in 2002 and I bet it does not have more than 20-40 hours of use (2002-2009 was my digital period), but now it is getting more and more 'music time'. :mrgreen:
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Vic, you have brought back memories of days past, Karma and Troika :) . Both of those cartridges were very well liked by many people. I look forward to hearing about your results with the rebuilt Troika moving coil cartridge :) .
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rebuild

Post by anthony »

from the 3 rebuilds I have heard none sounded anywhere near as good as the original.
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Anthony, that's interesting information. Does it cost as much to rebuild a moving coil cartridge, as it does to trade-in an old cartridge towards a new cartridge?
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rebuild

Post by anthony »

I am sorry I am not sure of the cost of a re build, they weren't my own, but on hearing them I wasn't really interested in cost.
Linn offer a trade in scheme, this ranges from a £100 to £800 allowance according to what is traded against what, the £800 being for an akiva against an akiva. I think it is a case of you get what you pay for, which unfortunately is probably more!
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Post by lejonklou »

Vic: Sure, there are some people at PFM that use the Tune Method, but I doubt they are in majority. I'm not even sure they are in majority at the Linn forum... I think you're making the right choices regarding the parts, I doubt a Troika will benefit from being partly upgraded without knowing how it will affect it as a whole.

Anthony: Thanks for the info! What rebuilt carts did you hear? And to what spec were they rebuilt?

One reason I have been sceptical of what ES recommends is that when speaking to their owner (who has been in the business since the birth of the very first MC and clearly knows a lot), he referred to the Linn carts as "mid level" and didn't understand the fuss about them. If such a person decides to "improve" the carts, I strongly doubt the outcome will be to my liking. HiFi is so much about finding a proper balance.
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re build

Post by anthony »

Hi Fredrik
One was in fact a troika by ES in an ekos, I had heard initially when new from Linn and a couple of times as it was wearing. The final time was after the upgrade, it was no longer tuneful and appeared to be more clinical.
I also had a similar result from what I think was a arkiv 1.
The third I cant remember it was a fair while ago, but if any had impressed me I would have retained much more info regarding the rebuild, the fact I didn't is indicative of my failure to be impressed.
I remember first hearing an arkiv when it first came out, and bought one within a few weeks. I think these are the differences we are talking here.
I am not sure because I have no direct experience, but would imagine someone who was not into the "Linn" sound would be more than happy.
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Post by ThomasOK »

I have no experience with the rebuilds but will have fairly soon. We have a customer who has sent a Troika in to Goldring for a rebuild. Goldring rebuilds the Asaka, Klyde, Karma, Troika and Arkiv. The Troika rebuild is not cheap at $1000 but my understanding is that Goldring built one or more of these cartridges for Linn and that they rebuild them to original specs. This is hearsay but maybe someone else on the forum knows for sure.

It has been a while since I've heard a Troika so it won't be like an A/B comparison, but when it comes back I will be doing a full setup on the LP12 so I'll certainly give it a listen and let you know what I think.
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Post by vicdiaz »

About two weeks ago Goldring quoted me $500 USD for rebuilding a Klyde. $1000 USD for a Troika, wow! that's near the original price for a Troika back in 1987! :shock:
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

I'll be very interested in your findings Thomas, it should provide additional and valuable information 8) .
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Post by ThomasOK »

vicdiaz wrote:About two weeks ago Goldring quoted me $500 USD for rebuilding a Klyde. $1000 USD for a Troika, wow! that's near the original price for a Troika back in 1987! :shock:
Which would mean it is likely substantially less that what Linn would now charge for a new Troika with trade in of the old one if it were still available - as is indicated by the Klyde rebuild pricing (Linn replacement price with trade: $1170)! :wink:

(Note that I am not saying that the Goldring Klyde rebuild is as good as a new Klyde - although I have been told that Goldring actually builds the Klyde for Linn as they do the Adikt - I haven't heard one.)
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Thomas, besides Goldring - didn't Lyra, Scan-Tech and Supex produce phono cartridges for Linn as well?
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Post by ThomasOK »

I believe that Scan-Tech (who also makes the Lyra cartridges) makes the Akiva and made the Arkiv B for Linn. The Linn cartridges are, however, Linn designs and are substantially different in a number of ways from anything available from Lyra.

I wouldn't be surprised if Supex (or whatever company might have supplied their cartridges) made the Asak for Linn as it had some similarities to the Supex SD900 and SD1000. I believe that Linn was also the importer in the UK for Supex cartridges before the Asak was released.
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Post by vicdiaz »

When I went to Linn I was told by the guy rebuilding their MC cartridges that Supex designed and made the Trak, Asak, and Asak-T. The Asak-A, Karma and Troika were designed by Linn but made by Supex. The Troika was an afterthough from Linn to enhance the Karma.

The Basik, K-9, K-18 and K18-II were Audio-Tecnicas (latter 2 to Linn specs)

I don't recall how it was, but Jonathan Carr (Scan-Tech) somehow got involved in the design of the Akiva (he even commented about it in the PFM forum).

The Klyde is still made by Goldring and the physical similarities between the Adikt and a Goldring 2500 are obvious.

When I worked for the local dealer I remember tha we glued the stylus assembly to the body of the Basik cartridge (A/T 95E???) and it really improved its musicality! :mrgreen:
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Thomas, does Linn experiment with various Lyra products, then determine what changes they want made to a particular Lyra cartridge? And does Linn experiment with these cartridges only on their Sondek turntable, using an Ekos SE tonearm?
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Post by ThomasOK »

I am not actually privy to the system Linn uses for cartridge design but I doubt it works that way. If you look at what Lyra has done in their models and what Linn have done with the Akiva and Arkiv you will notice some substantial differences. The most visible differences are in the body. The Linn cartridges use a three point mount system but there is a lot more to the details than just three bolts holding the cartridge to the headshell. First off the Arkiv/Akiva have three raised lands on the top where the bolts go through. When you mount one of them up you find that there is a small space between the rest of the cartridge body and the headshell - this is also true with the Troika. Linn has stated that this gives a much better contact between the cartridge and headshell than two surfaces that appear to be flat. Second, the Arkiv/Akiva have three threaded stainless steel fittings pressed into the aluminum body that the mounting bolts fit into. Linn has stated that these are fitted under very high pressure and make for an extremely tight fitting to the headshell. I can tell you from experience that the Arkiv/Akiva fittings allow a much higher torque to be applied for optimum musical quality. The torque for them is just a bit under 1.0Nm on my torque screwdriver (Linn quote a torque spec of .8 to .9Nm). In comparison, almost all other cartridges I have installed want less than half this amount of torque. A Lyra Argo (threaded aluminum body) sounds best at .4Nm which is actually lower than the .4Nm plus a few notches that a Grado wood body cartridge likes and about the same as the plastic bodied Rega cartridges. The next highest cartridges I've found are a Clearaudio Wood and a Dynavector aluminum body both just a touch over .5Nm. So as you can see the unique Linn mounting system allows for a much tighter connection to the headshell than anything from Lyra, or anyone else that I've seen for that matter.

My best guess is that Linn takes a design idea for a body (or a few ideas) and either machines a prototype body themselves or has it made by ScanTech (or Goldring or whoever they've chosen as a manufacturing partner). They then have the manufacturing partner make several prototypes with different magnets, coil assemblies, cantilevers and diamond shapes and evaluate which individual pieces are the most musical on fully loaded LP12s. After all the time they have been making cartridges they already have a very good idea of what works and what doesn't so they may decide that a certain diamond shape and cantilever material works best which allows them to concentrate on other parts. The cantilever in the original Arkiv was aluminum and was changed to boron in the Arkiv B. (This boron/diamond cantilever assembly appears to be fairly common as a Koetsu I recently sent in for rebuilding came back with a cantilever/stylus assembly that appears to be virtually identical to the one used on the Akiva and many Lyras, showing that most manufacturing nowadays uses common parts from multiple vendors.) The Akiva keeps the boron cantilever and same shape of diamond but the internal body structure is much different with a single machined metal piece replacing three separate pieces in the Arkiv. I believe the magnets were also changed in the Akiva as well and there may have been other changes.

So in summary, I believe Linn design a cartridge with unique parts that Linn create to meet their musical goals combined with a selection of stock parts from their manufacturing partner that they have found best serve their performance goals.

An interesting side on this is that there have been rumors of an updated Akiva floating around for about a year - something like an Akiva SE. We had heard that Linn was indeed looking into updating the Akiva. But in my most recent conversation with our Linn rep he said that the engineering guys told him it wasn't going to happen. A lot of people don't realize just how much R&D goes into something like the Akiva, Keel or Ekos SE but it is quite a bit. It is safe to say that many design ideas are tried that don't offer a performance improvement in order to find the few designs that do create a musical upgrade. There have definitely been times were a lot of time and energy were put into a potential product which never saw the light of day because it just didn't perform well enough to wear the Linn logo or where it didn't better an existing design.
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Post by Robert Lake »

Goldring has a nice website http://www.goldring.co.uk/ where they offer various cartridge services. They promise to give you an answer i 2 days! The fact that they build Linn Klyde sounds good from the perpective of getting a Linn-sounding tune-demed cartridge back rather than an "improved" version. Once my economy stabilises later in the year, I will send them a mail.
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Thanks for the indepth explanation Thomas. I do know that Linn spends a great deal of time researching, testing and listening to their audio products. Ultimately, this attention to detail has a positive impact on the overall Linn sound.
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Post by lejonklou »

I haven't seen the cartridge (or the tonearm) development process at Linn from the inside, but knowing how it works with electronics, my guess is that Thomas' description is quite accurate. There is a lot of trial and error required to create real HiFi, probably more than most people can imagine. The total opposite of the "Oppo-inside-a-Lexicon-enclosure" horror example that I posted in a different thread recently.

The latest rumour I heard about a new and improved Akiva was that the prototypes were overall not better than the current design. Which means they've probably spent a lot of time collecting experience, without producing a new model. Which means that next time they give it a try, they might succeed.
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