Over the time we did lot of custom projects for our clients, ranging from the different recycled turntables, custom arm boards for the specific tone arms to fit Soulines turntables and the other turntables as well, plinths for idler drive turntables (Garrard 401, etc.), custom sized and shaped dust covers, etc.
In order to achieve the maximum quality of the realized custom projects we approach those along the same design and manufacturing principles like our turntable models, employing high technology of CAD and 3D-SW design software, and CNC manufacturing.
Please browse the projects listed below, and if you find something which you might be required for your turntable system, please do not hesitate to contact; we will try to offer you the best solution along with the reasonable costs.
Every project is thoroughly described along with selected pictures and screen shoots from SW software and the final costs of the finished project.

 

This project was the one of those which we like the most to do; no particular requests, no scheduled deliveries, so we can fully concentrate on recycling and re-use of parts and spare materials lying around for a long time and to work in spare time only.
Realization was running at a slow pace, totally relaxed, and took much longer than usual, but the end results are great, much better than we expected at the beginning.

 

The Main plinth is made of the two circle shaped Baltic Birch plywood (left overs from some loudspeakers building project) glued together. Vibrations coming from the surrounding environment are prevented from entering the main plinth by the employment of the isolation cones-feet, which are in contact with the main plinth only over the rubber-cork washers of different diameter, a kind of a "soft" type coupling.
Cones are leftovers from our Dostoyevsky model, made of solid aluminum and have small silicone pucks on the bottom providing further isolation from the shelf/rack/stand on which the turntable is rest on.
Cones are height adjustable allowing easy leveling of the turntable.

Sub-plinth is made of smaller two circle shaped Baltic Birch plywood boards (again left overs from some loudspeakers building project) and an old egg-shaped IKEA kitchen cutting board, which are all glued together and drilled and cut in order to provide space for the motor and the main bearing.
Sub-plinth and main plinth are 3-point coupled over differently sized rubber-cork washers, and a 5mm thick rubber-cork pad is inserted in between the main and sub plinth for further vibration damping.

Glass platter, main bearing with the sub-platter and motor comes from a few different old Rega Planar2 and Planar3 turntables, left overs from different repair/recycling/upgrading projects we have done over the last few years.
Motor itself is coupled to the sub-plinth in a "typical loose" Rega way, but with the additional 2mm thick Acrylic made plate whose flexibility mimics Rega's top veneer plate in Planar models; Acrylic plate is coupled to the sub-plinth over the rubber-cork washers, for further isolation against motor born vibrations.

 

The tone-arm is an exception in this project, being intentionally bought new for a customer who wanted to purchase our Satie DCX turntable model with some good quality basic tonearm, but at the end he changed his mind for the more advanced tonearm. Thus this Moth TA2 tonearm which is actually an OEM Rega RB220 tone-arm has stayed unused for a year or a so.
Having a good experience with upgrading Rega tone-arms (and OEM Rega too) with better interconnect cable, we upgraded it with the Cordial cable along with the quality RCA connectors and dedicated ground wire.

 

After initial listening tests with the Ortofon 2M Silver MM cartridge mounted, we were more than satisfied with the sound of this new recycled turntable model, concluding that sound wise it can compete with any commercially available turntable in the price range of EUR500-1500.

We are very glad that our good friend Artist IG @deki_ink was again in charge for the visual appearance, providing his expertise and support on painting duties for this project; He applied air-brush and different spray and hand painting techniques.

 

Some time ago a good friend of ours, who is a high-end enthusiast and avid music listener, obtained the Usher TD-10 high-end speakers. At the beginning he was satisfied with their sound, but after a few changes and upgrades in his system, notably the better source (DAC, CD player and streamer/server) he started to feel that Usher TD-10 should sound better.
After sorting out all of the aspects of his system, source components, amplification, cables, electricity (power conditioners and main cables), stands and racks and the room acoustics, his sound expectations were still not fulfilled.
The only thing still left untouched were Usher's crossovers and internal wiring and damping.

Thus he asked if we feel confident enough to try to sort this out; having some experience in speaker building/upgrades along with our extensive expertise in turntables design/manufacture, and knowing that some of the most admired local speaker builders will more than happy to help and provide some good advices, we decided to accept the challenge.

Removing the bass drivers in order to inspect the design of the crossovers, we became assured that crossovers along with internal wiring are the definitive bottle neck of our friend's audio system. Used components, capacitors, coils and resistors, internal wiring, crossover's PCB's (common to other Usher speakers models as well) and internal cabinet damping looked questionable.
After obtaining the Usher's TD-10 crossovers schematics, we measured all the original crossovers components, and the coils were measuring very bad, their internal resistance in particular; further, all the coils were made of the same diameter copper wire which is not very good; furthermore, overall price of the crossovers components with internal wiring didn't look right, considering the retail price of the Usher TD-10 speakers.

 

Thus we decided to rebuild the crossovers with the high quality components of the same values, avoid any PCB's, using point to point soldering instead, upgrade internal wiring and speaker terminals and try to improve box's internal damping, using 100% natural long hair wool and good quality damping panels, made of natural cotton and wool.

After some research and recommendations we decided to use:
- Jantzen Audio Wax Coil (paraffin-wax impregnated pure copper foil-based inductor) for the coils
- Jantzen Audio 10W The Superes resistors
- Jantzen Audio Amber Z-Caps and Silver-Z Cap capacitors for the mid/tweeter part of the crossover
- Clarity Cap CSA capacitors for bass part of the crossover
- generic pole terminals were changed with the WBT-0705Cu nextgen™ pole terminals
- all the internal wiring was done with the Van den Hul CS12

Due to the physical size of the chosen crossovers components and restricted space inside the boxes, we finished with the somewhat odd crossovers plan, but that was the only way to assemble them in such a restricted space, using point to point soldering only, and maintaining the appropriate distance and orientation between the coils. Crossovers were separated to the bass part and the mid/tweeter part and built onto two 10mm Baltic Birch plywood plates of different size, accordingly.<

We decided not to glue the crossovers components, but to use the self-locking plastic loops/ties for fixing. In order to achieve good isolation of the components against vibrations and resonance we were  inserting the rubber-cork pads/tracks between the self-locking plastic loops/ties and the components, between the components and Baltic Birch plywood plate and also between the components itself.

 

New crossovers were mounted inside the boxes, fitting perfectly on the bottom of the box, thus we soldered all the wires and pole terminals and left them working a couple of weeks in order to burn-in. After the burn-in period and some initial listening tests, we did new internal damping.

First, we fully stuffed the separate mid/tweeter chamber with the 100% natural long hair wool (produced and bought locally), damping the mid driver resonances. For the bass chamber, we've tailor cut damping material sheets in a way to fit inside the boxes, using internal box bracing and curve shaped boxes sides to support them in place, thus avoiding gluing. Further, we added 100% natural long haired wool and some natural wool pressed sheets on the top of the crossovers and behind the bass driver in order to fully tame the resonances in the bass chamber.

 

After the critical listening test, we were surprised how good the final results were; most notably the soundstage became bigger in all directions, voices and lyrics became more intelligible, beginning and end of the individual notes/sounds became very clear, and lot of the new details started appearing, making listening more enjoyable and emotionally intensive, than it was before crossovers rebuilding and upgrade.

Having invested lot of energy, time and money in his system, the owner was finally grinning from ear to ear, playing some of his fav CDs/tracks.

Usher TD-10 have two reflex ports, the smaller one for the mid/tweeter chamber and the bigger one for the bass chamber/driver, so if required some additional fine tuning, it's easily doable by closing/semi-closing the ports.

The only request we had for this project was that somehow it has to be connected to the Pink Floyd.
Chassis comes from an old Rega Planar3 record player, from the times when they used thick and heavy HD particle board for their turntable models, while the drive system, platter and the motor along with it's controlling electronics, comes from an old Telefunken turntable.
Direct drive motor is actually Japanese made, big and heavy Hal type motor, and platter itself weigh 1.3kg which is not bad at all. Time and time again, Japanese made direct drive systems from the late '70s and the beginning of '80s, proved themselves as a great drive system for a good sounding turntable, when the other parts of the turntable are designed and executed well and cleverly. For the tone arm we used a generic Japanese made tone-arm salvaged from some broken and heavily abused Metzasound turntable; sadly the arm lift was not functional and horizontal arm's bearings were in a very bad condition; after precise repairing with some tailor made new parts and with the new head shell and interconnect cables, the tone arm was successfully put back in function in it's full glory.

We are very glad that our good friend Artist IG @deki_ink was again in charge for the visual appearance, providing his expertise and support on designing/painting duties for this project; He applied air-brush and different spray and hand painting techniques.

We organized a promotion of the Dark Side edition recycled turntable in the local coffee shop playing our fav records, on the February 23rd this year, which was purely accidentally just a few days before The Dark Side of the Moon 50th Anniversary (March the 1st 1973); so the proud purchaser was even more pleased and happy with his new recycled turntable dedicated to the Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon LP record.

 

Since we had some left over plywood parts for the very first version (from 2013) of our Dostoyevsky turntable model, which were laying around for almost 10 years (being rejected then due to some minor imperfections in woodwork), we decided not to trash them completely.

Thus, we modified those plywood parts in order to accommodate them to install an AC motor from some wasted Rega Planar3 record player along with  small PCB containing starting capacitors, an on/off switch and a power cable.

Further, we fixed an old Alphason Delta tone arm which was laying in the closet for a long time and desperately needed some attention.

We are very pleased with the final result, as the Dostoyevsky/Alphason in combination with the Benz Micro Ruby Z cartridge sounded so impressively, putting to a shame some much more expensive models from a very famous turntable brands, we had for a comparison.

 

After a long time we had some luxury (time wise) to dedicate ourselves to the turntable recycling, again. This time it was a strict concept, making mini range of the recycled turntables, inspired by Japanese fighter pilots and flying aces of World War II, Mr. Saburo Sakai, Mr. Takeo Tanimizu and others, as well as their fighter planes.

We are very glad that our good friend Artist IG @deki_ink took participation in this recycling project from the beginning, providing his support and painting chassis and sub-chassis parts of all three models; in order to resemble the original style and color schemes of Japanese Zero's WWII fighter planes, he used air-brush and different hand painting techniques.

All three models, HINOMARU, HAYATE NAKAJIMA and DIVINE WIND are assembled from salvaged and recycled/refurbished various parts (platter, board, motor, tone-arm, etc.) from several old turntables, Telefunken, Fisher, Siemens, Engelbert, which all were designated for garbage/waste. In order to achieve the high quality sound reproduction, parts like platter, tone-arm/internal wiring, chassis and sub-chassis of every model have been upgraded and strategically damped, while different other parts were mechanically remodeled and adjusted in order to fit each other.

HINOMARU and DIVINE WIND models are belt-driven and HAYATE NAKAJIMA is a direct drive model. All 3 models are fully manual ones, sporting both speeds, 33.33rpm and 45rpm.

We hope that future owners of these three turntables will enjoy them as much as we enjoyed making them.

DIVINE WIND

 

HINOMARU

 

HAYATE NAKAJIMA

 

We've been approached by the local music aficionado and highly demanding audiophile with the request to design and manufacture a plinth for his beloved Garrard 401 in the style of our Dostoyevsky DCX turntable model; several Baltic Birch plywood layers bonded together, balanced and even mass distribution, high level of vibration control, etc.

Creating a massive Baltic Birch plywood plinth and applying our turntable design principles in the same time was a highly demanding task. Baltic Birch plywood is relatively "lively" material, and vibration control in a such a massive block made of Baltic Birch plywood is not an easy task. Further, some design restrictions conditioned by the original Garrard metal plinth design and how it's fixed to the rest of the table brought design difficulties and some compromise.

Design was done by the help of the 3D CAD modeling software, applying even mass distribution throughout. Further, rubber-cork washers of different sizes and shapes were strategical used when fixing the Garrard 401 massive metal plinth to the plywood plinth for the better vibration control. Furthermore, two different arm-boards, one made of aluminum, and one made of Acrylic, were designed and manufactured, following the idea to use the heavier aluminum one for the heavier tone-arms, and the lighter Acrylic one for the lighter tone-arms.

After the designing was finished we engaged our partner company N.N. Acoustics to manufacture the plywood plinth itself. Thankfully to their expertise and extensive experience in the Baltic Birch plywood manufactured loudspeakers, they did a great job!

We were more than pleased with the end results, and mostly rewarding was a grin on the face of our client when he heard the sound of his Garrard 401/Jelco 750/Koetsu combination, once the turntable was ready and installed in his audio system.

Total cost of this commissioned project was around EUR 800.00, where the total sum can be split 50/50 between the costs of the materials and manufacturing and the design and testing expenses.

 

 

Customer from Australia kindly asked us to manufacture a custom arm-board for his Soulines Kubrick DCX turntable.
After receiving the drawings of the mounting plan for the Brinkmann 10.5 tone-arm we manufactured an aluminum arm-board in the same style (in appearance) as our standard aluminum Kubrick's arm-boards matching perfectly the Kubrick DCX turntable and allowing precise and easy mount of the Brinkmann 10.5 tone-arm.

 

Detailed description and pictures of this project are coming soon.

The task was to design and manufacture the Acrylic arm-board extension for the Pro-ject Evolution 12" tone arm to fit the Scheu chassis along with the design and manufacturing of the aluminum arm base collar to fit the Pro-ject Evolution 12" tone-arm and arm-board extension.

 

Detailed description and pictures of this project are coming soon.