ThomasOK's System

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Post by ThomasOK »

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Post by Per A »

Beautiful. So few cables.

I would like to hear some big ATCs sometime but they are only sold for studios where I live so no shops keep them.
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Post by ThomasOK »

In case there was anyone who wasn't sure I'm a bit of a Geek I thought I'd remove all doubt by showing the latest addition to my system:

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Yes, this is a "Magic Wand". It is actually a motion-activated remote control that can be programmed for most systems. It can understand 13 different gestures and have them programmed with the codes from most standard remotes.

I was given this for Christmas but since I asked for it I can't use that as an excuse. :) Since I am a Harry Potter fan I had a hard time resisting this device. Since the name of it is the "Kymera" wand it also obviously fits in with my Linn system.

It is actually a pretty sophisticated device designed in the UK (another thing in its favor) that recognizes motions and translates them into remote commands while giving you physical feedback through small vibrations. I have mine programmed with 11 commands such as up movement for volume up, down for volume down, right for source up, left for source down. A tap on the top initiates play, on the side pause and double-taps skip forward and back. A large swishing motion puts the system into standby or takes it out.

And, since it is a magic wand, it makes the Hi-Fi sound better as well! :wink:
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Post by Efraim roots »

hehe. that was very funny! :lol:
the players of instruments shall be there..
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Post by Efraim roots »

Hi Thomas, hope that wand is working fine for you :)

I see in your pictures that you have a early Naim FM radio and I also know that you have/had a Linn Pekin, wich do you prefer? The Naim is very hyped, can it live up to this?
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Post by anthony »

I have owned a Naim tuner but it would take a Kremlin to beat it, which I have now.
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Post by ThomasOK »

I wondered when someone was going to come up with that question. That is not a Naim Tuner. It is, as far as I'm aware, the world's only Naim Clock.

When I worked for the Linn and Naim importer back in the mid-1980s we received a NAC42XO and a pair of NAP110s that were damaged beyond repair. Apparently a distraught girlfriend who had caught her man cheating had used a screwdriver to pry down the front panels and jab at anything she could reach. (Obviously she knew how to get him where it hurt!) She managed to take out both transformers and all the circuit boards except the phono boards. Since there was so much damage to the components and their cases, we gave the customer a credit for the few parts we could salvage and tossed the rest out. The service technician and I each kept one of the cases for our own projects.

I ended up turning mine into a digital clock by bending things back and cleaning them up as best as I could and putting the innards of a cheap digital clock with big blue numbers (which I have always preferred to green) into the chassis and mounting the controls on the back panel. By attaching a new faceplate and trimming it carefully around the hole I had cut in in the front panel I was able to make a relatively clean job of it. And there you have it - a Naim Clock. :)

I have never actually owned a Naim Tuner but I would be tempted by a NAT101 mainly for the cool tuning mechanism. It used a rotating drum to display the stations - I believe as an homage to the Harmon Kardon Citation 14 tuner, which Julian admired. I did own a Citation 14 for quite a number of years and heard it fend off several more expensive "super-tuners". However it went away when I bought the Pekin some years back as the Pekin was obviously more tuneful.
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Post by Efraim roots »

Ok, well I was thinking 'hmm, were is the knobs..' 'but what else could it be..'
Didn't see that coming :)
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Thomas, who makes your turntable stand?
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Post by ThomasOK »

"Wouldn't you like to know?" (For full effect you should imagine this being said with a creaky voice by a stooped-over 90 year old man rubbing his hands together, a look of glee in his eye.) :mrgreen:

Actually, this is an Archidee stand which is unfortunately no longer made. Since its discontinuation many years ago it has become unobtanium (a term we have used for many years before Avatar was heard of - I guess we should have trademarked it). They are just about impossible to find. My understanding is that it was made (or at least designed) by the Italian Naim distributor after the Linn/Naim split and was designed as an improvement on the AudioTech stand which was made by the Italian Linn distributor. The AudioTechs are only extremely difficult to find (although I noticed one of their 4 shelf racks is on eBay UK right now).

The Archidee is the best LP12 stand I have heard, besting the second place AudioTech by a worthwhile amount. Both of these are in turn better than the original Sound Organisation stand that I used to own. They also outperform any other stand that I have been able to put together using Quadraspire components whether Q4, Q4 Evo, Reference, Reference Acrylic or Sunoko-Vent.

What Archidee did was to remove 4 crossbars: 2 on the bottom front and back and 2 on the top on the sides. So you have the minimum number of bars required to keep the structure from collapsing. It has spikes top and bottom that are unfortunately poorly threaded causing them to want to seize and make the fittings spin instead of the spike. However, after finding a stash of spare spikes so I could pick out the best cut ones, recutting the threads on the fittings and fixing the fittings in place with super glue I have gotten the hardware to be solid and reliable. The shelf the LP12 sits on appears to be MDF with a thin laminate on it. This shelf itself sounds better than the shelves from Sound Organisation or Target stands or wall shelves.

There are likely ways to further improve the shelf itself and I am investigating this idea currently. A friend lent me one of the same MDF shelves with the center cut out like the Quadraspire Reference shelves and also a particle board shelf with the same cutout. On a quick A/B the cutout MDF shelf does appear a bit better than the stock one with the particle board one not quite as good but I have to give them a more in depth listen. I also plan to try other materials.

The structure itself is still the best I've seen for a turntable and seems like it would be hard to beat but I have not heard what the Mimer shelves that Fredrik and Music lover have spoken so glowingly about.
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Thanks for the information Thomas. Apparently the performance of turntable stands can be as challenging as any other audio arrangement. Are there good sounding or worthwhile turntable stands available in the United States?
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Post by ThomasOK »

The best I've been able to find so far is using Quadraspire components to build a turntable stand. This can be close to an AudioTech and is not too badly priced. You get two Quadraspire shelves, either the Q4 Evo or the Sunoko-Vent (which are really bigger than I would like and much more expensive), two sets of spikes and a 12" set of columns. Thread the 12" columns through a shelf into one set of spikes for the base. Attach the other set of spikes to the other shelf and set those spikes into the tops of the columns. This gives you a fairly low mass top shelf decoupled from the rest of the stand by the spikes. Make sure everything is level and solid and you're set. You can use the bottom shelf for a Lingo or Radikal although the LP12 will sound better with nothing on it. With the Q4 Evo shelves this sells for about $425US.

With the resurgence in vinyl and turntables there appear to be a number of companies working on turntable stand designs and some may prove to be good. There is an interesting one being made in Japan but it is very expensive (thousands of $). There was some distribution of AudioTech tables in the US so you do see them used every once in a while. I managed to get one for a customer a couple of years ago at a reasonable price and I have one as well as my Archidea, but I haven't stumbled across another one for a while.
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:With the resurgence in vinyl and turntables there appear to be a number of companies working on turntable stand designs and some may prove to be good. There is an interesting one being made in Japan but it is very expensive (thousands of $).
While the Quadraspire project does sound very interesting, it might be worthwhile to wait for the newer turntable stand designs. Although I may not want to spend "thousands of dollars" on a turntable stand... :wink:
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Post by Per A »

Hello,

I have been shuffling my ATC SCM20SL on Target stands across my wooden floor (getting scratchier) hunting for their ideal position!
After reading some ATC manual I tried their recommended starting point: 1 m from side and 2 m from rear wall. The room is 4.9 x 4.8 metres which means the speakers are almost in the middle of the room.
I did this early this spring and I have since then debated and argued with my wife since the room is also our living room. Yesterday I experimentally moved them back agains the wall 1.5 m, 1.2 m and 0.5 m and listened. The weight of bass increased as expected and initially it impressed me. Then back to middle of the room again and voilà, the bass guitar became a string instrument again. And the Beatles became a band standing in front of me, even though in mono. And I was singing along. I have always that Linn excel in bass reproduction. I hear the bass melodies like with nothing else. My ATCs needs lots of space behind them which is why I quote Thomas OK fine pics. I have also found that symmetric placing centred with equal distances to side walls help creating a projected sound image.

Conclusion
Do experiments!

And if anyone knows how to hide black 23 kg speakers on stands you are welcome :D
ThomasOK wrote:Now that I have the hang of the photo posting thing I thought it was about time I posted some photos of my system. As my digital camera is an older model there is some grain in a photo or two - especially the whole system photo. But it gives you a good idea of my system and setup. Of course, the LP12 now has the plinth shown in the photo above.

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Post by SaltyDog »

A chair rail with the area below painted black might work. TT wall shelf painted the color of the wall is good for WAF.
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Post by ThomasOK »

You can see how well my compact speakers hide in the room. :wink: So I guess I'm not the one to ask. Although I think the wall hanging helps Debbie feels it is a little too hippie style. :) Then again, she hasn't come up with any better ideas so far!
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:Image

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Nice looking system Thomas... 8) But is that the same Klimax Kontrol preamplifier that you have currently?
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Tony Tune-age wrote:Nice looking system Thomas... 8) But is that the same Klimax Kontrol preamplifier that you have currently?
Never mind Thomas, I was able to look at the picture in greater detail :wink: . I forgot that you were able to obtain a rare black Klimax Kontrol preamplifier :!:
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Post by Lefreak »

OH MY GOD !!! The Klimax Series is SO BEAUTIFUl in black. I thought of getting a KK and a KDS (not so soon) second hand, as I can't imagine getting them new, but now that I've seen the KK in black, it will be hard to spend several thousands of € on a silver one :( Are the black units really a limited edition?
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Lefreak wrote:OH MY GOD !!! The Klimax Series is SO BEAUTIFUl in black. I thought of getting a KK and a KDS (not so soon) second hand, as I can't imagine getting them new, but now that I've seen the KK in black, it will be hard to spend several thousands of € on a silver one :( Are the black units really a limited edition?
I think the Klimax Kontrol looks much better in black as well 8) . UltimateIy, I decided to wait until it was available in black, before pulling the trigger. And hopefully by that time, the Klimax Kontrol will be finished with it's series of significant (but costly) upgrades.
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Post by Moomintroll »

Lefreak wrote:Are the black units really a limited edition?
There was an initial, small, batch of KK and KDS that came with Ivor T's signature on the front - that was a limited edition run. As far as I'm aware now, the Klimax electronics range is available in black.

Thomas O'K will be able to confirm.

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Moomintroll wrote:
Lefreak wrote:Are the black units really a limited edition?
There was an initial, small, batch of KK and KDS that came with Ivor T's signature on the front - that was a limited edition run. As far as I'm aware now, the Klimax electronics range is available in black.

Thomas O'K will be able to confirm.

'troll
I wish this were the case but I'm afraid it is not. 'troll is correct that there was initially a very limited, 10th anniversary edition of black Klimax products that were sold at a price premium over the stock silver units. This was a series limited to 30 numbered sets that were also signed by Ivor and, I believe, also had his initials in the lower front right corner. The deal was that you had to buy both the KK and KDS (which would both have the same number like "17 out of 30"). Having bought those two you were also entitled to order matching Klimax Solos or Twins with the same number. I don't know if you could also get matching Klimax Aktiv crossovers.

This limited edition was sold out before any of us in the US even knew they existed! Because of the popularity of this series, and demand from the dealers for more, Linn decided to make a limited number of black Klimax units available last summer. These were not a "limited edition" and they were not numbered and signed but Linn was quite clear that there were only a limited number made and once gone that would be it. The good news was that they were sold at the same price as the silver versions and you could buy any Klimax unit singly. The KK, KDS, Solo, and Twin were made available but Linn said "stock is extremely limited so product will be supplied on a first-come, first-served basis while stock lasts". Somehow this announcement was overshadowed by the fact that the Radikal and Urika were announced at the same time!

What the status of these products is right now I can't say for sure. Linn sent dealers a notice early in 2010 stating that the stock of black Klimax products was "extremely limited" and warning us to get in any orders soon or risk not being able to get them. Despite this I was able to get a KK/1/D in black for a customer about two months ago so there was still at least some stock then. I don't know how many were made but there were at least two batches of KKs made. I know this because my black KK/1 was ordered the day the black units were announced which was unfortunately about a week before the Dynamik was announced! Linn did come through for me with a free Dynamik once it was available but my unit has the "Powered by Dynamik" sticker on the bottom. The one I just sold to my customer had "Powered by Dynamik" screened onto the bottom of the unit like the rest of the printing so they must have made at least two batches.

My hope, and I'm sure that of other dealers and customers, was that they would sell well enough that Linn would decide to make black a standard finish for the Klimax range. Considering the state of the economy at the time I'm not sure the timing didn't hurt the potential sales of black Klimax products - only Linn know for sure. Maybe if enough potential customers bug them about it they will reconsider making it a standard finish but as it stands now when they're gone, they're gone. :( Of course, this could end up making my KK a collectors item but that won't do me much good if I can't buy another one as I don't intend to let this one go! I have to agree with Lefreak, the Klimax in black, particularly the KK with the contrasting chrome buttons, truly is stunning.
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

ThomasOK wrote:I wish this were the case but I'm afraid it is not. 'troll is correct that there was initially a very limited, 10th anniversary edition of black Klimax products that were sold at a price premium over the stock silver units. This was a series limited to 30 numbered sets that were also signed by Ivor and, I believe, also had his initials in the lower front right corner. The deal was that you had to buy both the KK and KDS (which would both have the same number like "17 out of 30"). Having bought those two you were also entitled to order matching Klimax Solos or Twins with the same number.

My hope, and I'm sure that of other dealers and customers, was that they would sell well enough that Linn would decide to make black a standard finish for the Klimax range. Considering the state of the economy at the time I'm not sure the timing didn't hurt the potential sales of black Klimax products - only Linn know for sure. Maybe if enough potential customers bug them about it they will reconsider making it a standard finish but as it stands now when they're gone, they're gone.
It's interesting that Linn would keep the silver Klimax components over the black, considering many other Linn products are available in black. And it seems like most customers want black components instead of the silver.
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Tony Tune-age wrote:
It's interesting that Linn would keep the silver Klimax components over the black, considering many other Linn products are available in black. And it seems like most customers want black components instead of the silver.
It appears that doing a high-quality black anodizing on aluminum is substantially more difficult than a clear anodizing showing the natural aluminum color. There are a couple of indications this is true. First, Linn originally announced a black Klimax option in the early days of the Klimax series. It was actually on the price list for a while and we tried to order a black KK many years ago based on that. We received word back that the order for the black KK would not be filled as Linn were not actually going to make black Klimax gear. They claimed that they had tried several times to get a quality black anodized finish and were unable to get acceptable results. Shortly thereafter the black Klimax option was removed from the price list. This cost us a sale as the customer was not willing to go for silver!

In a similar vein I recently ordered a Mimer/Tor rack from Harmonihyllan with the metalwork in a black anodized finish. I got the impression from Anders that they had not manufactured any black before but another customer of his ordered some at the same time so he had a batch made. The first black metalwork he received he deemed to be unacceptable so he had to go to a different company for the black anodizing and have the shelves remade. This added several weeks to the delivery time. I received the rack about two weeks ago and found that the black anodizing of the shelves was good - not up to the level of the black Klimax or the Keel, but certainly good. The posts were not as good as there was a bit of mottling on one side of the posts. It is hard to see when everything is put together so I am not concerned about it but my hope is that the anodizing of the posts will be up to the level of the shelves in the future. If this ends up being either too difficult or too costly it may just be that silver will be the only option for the metal parts just like on the Klimax gear.

So how is it that Linn were finally able to offer a gorgeous black Klimax finish after ten years? I can't say for sure but I have a theory. It has been widely rumored that Linn have the Keel manufactured to spec by SME! On the Linn forum they have not denied this but have said that they use various companies as parts suppliers. I find this rumor to be quite likely as it is known within the industry (and the automotive industry as well) that nobody can do a finish like SME. You just have to look at their own turntables and arms to see what quality goes into the machining and finish of their products (pity they don't sound better).

If, as I believe, SME manufactures the Keel (which itself has an exceptional black anodized finish) it would be quite simple to have them make up a batch or two of the Klimax cases in black. Linn would need to have it made in batches to have it be cost effective which would make it something they might not feel is cost effective to have as a regular product. This possibility is also indicated by the Aro Keel which Linn will only make if they have orders for at least 20 units. It is just not cost effective to make in smaller batches. It is also notable that once Linn places the order for the Keels it is about eight weeks before they receive them - a clear indication that there is more than meets the eye to making a Keel properly. And also that there is likely justification on manufacturing grounds for the price of the Keel.

Of course, all of this is just speculation on my part but I like to think it is at least informed speculation. Until Linn come out with the full story it is all I have to go on. An additional note is that I just talked to our Linn rep less than an hour ago and when asked about the black Klimax gear he said it was definitely all gone now. Oh well, maybe we'll get another batch for the 20th anniversary. :cry:
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Post by Tony Tune-age »

Well, that certaily sounds like a decent therory 8) . Thanks for taking the time to provide some useful insight Thomas. As you stated, there is way more to this topic - than meets the eye :!:

By the way, congratulations on your Harmonihyllan Miner & Thor audio rack. Perhaps you could share your experience with this new audio rack, once you've had time to listen 8) .
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