Chowkwanyun: On the Hardware
Raymond Chowkwanyun

I. Nitty Gritty Maintenance

For years, I’ve used the Nitty Gritty record cleaner to good effect, becoming so addicted to the sound of clean records that I now clean before every play as well as applying Stylast to the needle. But there comes a time in every Nitty Gritty owner’s life when he (or she) must face the dreaded changing of the Vac-Sweep, that strip of velvet material which actually comes into contact with the record during cleaning. When things started growing on my Vac-Sweep, I knew the task could be put off no longer. I sucked it up and took my machine down to Gayle Van Syckle, President and CEO of the Nitty Gritty Company, so she could perform the dreaded changing of the Vac-Sweep for me.

It turned out to be surprisingly simple. First you rip off the old Vac-Sweep, leaving behind a nasty grody mess. Clean this off with sticky label remover (available in hardware stores), which leaves behind its own nasty grody mess. This second mess may, in turn, be cleaned off with alcohol. You now have a nice clean surface to work with. (I’ve tried soapy water and various other solvents. Believe me, only this two step process will do.)

The Nitty Gritty Vac-Sweep kit consists of (surprise!) new Vac-Sweeps plus strips of adhesive. Peel off the protective wax paper from the adhesive and apply to the top of the Nitty Gritty machine, being careful to align the holes on the adhesive strip with the holes in the machine. (The cleaning fluid gets pumped out of these holes). Cover your finger with that wax paper and tamp down the adhesive nice and tight. Now lay down a new Vac-Sweep, fuzzy side up, on top of the adhesive. The kit comes with a cardboard tool for applying the Vac-Sweep. I admit to being somewhat startled when Gayle contemptuously consigned this thing to the garbage. She started laying the Vac-Sweep down at one end and then slowly spread it out, being careful not to block the gap in the center. Once the Vac-Sweep is in place, tamp it down with your fingers. Gayle completed the process by giving the Vac-Sweep a haircut with some small scissors, ridding it of small stray fibers. In all, the process took no more than five minutes, leaving me to wonder why I’d been dreading it all these years.

Next up was the changing of the rubber capstan that turns the record around. (Naturally, this only applies to those models that actually have a capstan for automatic rotation of the record.) Begin by ripping the old capstan off with the aid of a pair of pliers. Clean off old glue and/or rubber residuals with an Exact-o (or any sharp edge) blade: with drive motor "on", let blade slide along contact surface (sides and top) of shaft, slicing away old stuff. When smooth, wipe with alcohol to remove any residual gunk for a smooth, clean surface on which to attach the new capstan.

Turn the new capstan upside down and put in three drops of superglue, swill it around a bit and flick the excess out with a sharp pronation of the wrists. (This last part is very important. You don’t want any excess glue that will work its merry way down the driveshaft and gum up the motor.) Finally, turn the new capstan right side up again before sticking it on the driveshaft. Hold down firmly for at least one full minute. A two fisted, four finger approach seems best. Let dry at least one full hour before using.

The Nitty Gritty cleans the underside of the record, so that if you want to check that it’s working properly, you have to stoop down and peer up to check that the vacuum is getting all the solution off. Hardly the sort of maneuver becoming of the dignity and all-around gravitas of a Senile Calumnist for Positive Feedback magazine. Gayle had a neat solution in the form of a record made of transparent plastic, enabling me to see all the underside goings-on. It turns out my unit sucks the record dry in four revolutions.

There is also an undocumented tweak for adjusting the Nitty Gritty to handle ultra thick records which Gayle asked me to pass along:

A. Remove (2) round "pins" from switch plate;

B. Insert 1/8" Phillips screwdriver shaft through holes to adjuster screws below (down about 1-1/2");

C. Turn both screws clockwise approximately a 1/4 turn to raise the height of the capstan.

All in all a delightful visit to Nitty Gritty HQ, brimming over with Old World standards of customer service. Just don’t mention the fact that you use Torumat instead of Nitty’s own Purifier cleaning fluids. This will result in an icy moment followed by the remark, "I suppose some people have to play around with their own solutions."

For the longest time, the Absolute Mound’s Harry Pearson used the IRS V as his reference loudspeaker system to the point where it became a designated audiophile icon. (HP has since moved on to the Genesis One, also designed by Arnie Nudell.) If you’ve always lusted after this particular audio icon but couldn’t find the necessary spare change between the cushions of your couch, be it known that two pairs of Eminent Technology LFT 8A’s make a reasonably good (yet affordable) approximation. Put side by side, two LFT 8A’s are just about the size of an IRS V panel: thus, a Poor Man’s IRS V, if you will.

Furthering the analogy, the midrange and tweeter on the LFT 8A are quasi-ribbons, a similar technology to the IRS V panel drivers. (In a true ribbon, a strip of pure aluminum drives the air as well as carrying the signal. In a quasi-ribbon, a panel of the ultra-light plastic, Mylar, is used to drive the air with the signal being carried by metal strips bound to the Mylar. In the case of the LFT 8A this metal is etched onto the Mylar in very thin (hence desirably light) strips, resembling a printed circuit trace.) The LFT 8A tweeter sits beside and is horizontally centered on the midrange. To form a single speaker (or channel) of your Poor Man’s IRS V, put two LFT 8A’s together with the tweeters on the inside.

This gives rise to a glass half-full/half-empty situation. If your glass be half-empty, this arrangement could be viewed as an MTM array (midrange-tweeter-midrange), against whose evils our own Lynn Olson inveighed in Positive Feedback Vol. 7, No. 1 ("Pay No Attention ...") and again in Vol. 7, No. 2 ("Reverberations" on P. 10-11). On the other hand, a recent guest in my listening room had a glass that was decidedly half-full. He opined that the paired ET 8A’s should be viewed as a giant coaxial driver. With the midranges extending above and below the ends of the two tweeters in the center, you could imagine that you are looking at a giant tweeter surrounded by an even more gigantic midrange: a virtual Tannoy, as it were. (The midrange driver is about three inches wide and forty two inches tall; the tweeter is one half inch wide by twenty inches tall.)

For the bass, the LFT 8A uses an 8 inch cone driver which sits below the quasi-ribbon panels. The "A" designation indicates an upgraded cone driver and crossover from the original LFT 8 model. Of course, this means we are without the huge IRS V bass towers (six drivers per side!) which are the true glory of that system. But this is, after all, only a Poor Man’s IRS V.

But enough of theory, how does it sound? Words like "meaty, beaty, big and bouncy" spring to mind. Sounds like the Unabanger Bio, doesn’t it? It is indeed a big — nay, huge — sound. And meaty in extremis. No anorexic planar sound here of the Martin-Logan CLS or Audiostatic ilk. The ET 8A’s stock in trade is Palpability with a capital "P". Yea, worthy even to be described, in that infamous phrase, as "packing a terrific wallop."

On the "Mars" track from Holst’s Planets (Mehta conducting), I thought I was about to be invaded, so weighty was the blast from big brass. We’re talking actual physical pressure on the pit of the stomach. One is literally pinned to one’s seat, rendered immobile by the sheer sonic impact. This is aside from any musical impact you understand. I’m talking pinned to the seat by wave upon wave of sonic pressure. The mind cannot accept what the ears are telling it — that a full symphony orchestra, in all its power and majesty, has just appeared in the listening room. Therefore the brain goes into the shock of denial and paralysis results.

As to bouncy, the plucked strings that begin the same track Mars do exactly that — you’d swear the strings were on trampolines. So the ET 8A’s don’t deal in mere crude sledgehammer slam; there is a quickness to these speakers (although admittedly not the quickness of an electrostat like the Martin-Logan CLS or Audiostatic). ‘Tis beef combined with finesse.

My left brain is telling me that these paired ET 8A’s lack the last word in transparency. There is a certain wooliness about the trumpets. They shimmer about the edges instead of being sharply defined. I’m speaking not of a shimmer of image, but of tone. The tone of the trumpets doesn’t quite achieve focus and gel, in my estimation. Then my right brain asks, "Who cares?" In the face of such luscious musicality, it tells the left brain to pipe down and stop being so anal.

The ability to deliver an honest 25Hz helps tremendously in conveying the feeling of a symphony orchestra in full flight. Let no mini-monitor maven con you into thinking you don’t really need the frequencies below 40Hz. Those 15 cycles between 40 and 25Hz may not seem like much, but without it, the bass, tuba, and bass trombone are emasculated. Only when you’ve heard this quality of bass will you understand what HP means by the bass being the foundation of the orchestra. Without it, you’ll never fully experience the sense of Total Impending Doom conveyed by the upwelling of German brass.

As well, the Poor Man’s IRS V is a very relaxed and natural sounding speaker, capable of providing hours of fatigue free musical enjoyment. It is, frankly, highly addictive, and should probably sport a Surgeon General’s Warning. I come from that school of audiophilism that believes the mark of a great system is not that it bops you over the head and calls attention to itself, but that it should let the music unfold naturally and effortlessly. Liquidity is a big part of that and the Poor Man’s IRS V delivers in spades. It is one of the most liquid of speakers, with never a hint of dryness except on extremely dry recordings.

My amps are the Manley Lab 440’s which have an output impedance of 5 ohms. This makes for a mismatch with the LFT 8A, which has a nominal impedance of 10 ohms. By wiring each pair of LFT 8A’s in parallel, I halve the nominal impedance, achieving a much better match with my amps. So, good as a single pair of LFT 8A’s sound, this improvement in impedance matching undoubtedly contributes mightily to the smoother, more relaxed sound obtained from two pairs of LFT 8A’s. Therefore if you own a single pair of LFT 8A’s and have a similar impedance mismatch with your amp, you might want to seriously consider getting a second pair of LFT 8A’s. (When I propounded this theory to Scott Frankland, he issued a stern nolle prosequi and demanded to know the impedance on the woofer. "Only the impedance on the bass matters," quoth he. Well who am I to argue with a writer for Stereopile — that infallible font of wisdom, truth and the American Way? Looking at the impedance chart in the speaker manual, it seems that the minimum impedance on the woofer is 10 ohms right around 75 Hz.)

I had previously experimented with doubling up the LFT 8 (the older version of this speaker). I may say that with the LFT 8A, I experienced none of the problems of image smearing that occurred with the old LFT 8. The LFT 8A is more transparent and has tighter bass than its older incarnation, and I believe this leads to the much improved imaging, although still not in the top drawer for these soundstaging artifacts.

Alas, like their LFT 8 predecessors, the LFT 8A’s cannot handle the "Saturn" track from the aforementioned Mehta’s traversal of Holst’s Planets Suite (104 dB SPL). The low organ pedal must correspond to some resonance in the bass cabinet of the LFT 8A’s, because they start hopping about like crazed rabbits in heat. However, this was the only one of my records on which I experienced any lack of power handling. (440 watts into each bass cabinet and 150 watts into each panel.)

This just goes to show that full orchestral music is the ultimate challenge for any system. Jazz and rock could not reveal the faults of this system. The limitations only became apparent when I turned to full orchestral music, with all that means in correctly reproducing the twenty or so core instruments of the orchestra — the whole of which can go from a whisper to a roar in a split second. The Poor Man’s IRS V does a better job than most, but I don’t want you to go away thinking it does a perfect job. As alluded to above, it is not the last word in transparency. The tonal qualities, while very good, also fall short of perfection. Nevertheless, the overall sound picture is overwhelmingly correct, especially in being able to convey the weight of an entire orchestra in full flight.

Conversely, of course, the inability of rock and jazz to smoke out the shortcomings of this speaker system means that it is superb for this type of music. Listen to some and you’ll see what I mean, starting with one of the best jazz albums ever made — some would say the best — Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. Not least because on "So What," Coltrane’s playing is just beginning to break loose from the old mold. It is an eerie precursor to what is to come in the next decade as the Trane takes, ahem, giant steps, and breaks completely free, culminating in that towering achievement, A Love Supreme.

As Miles opened up his horn on this first cut, the normally sedate Iron Man (PF’s own Dave Glackin) rocketed out of his chair like a pheasant flushed from cover, pointed to stage right and exclaimed, "I can hear a real trumpet right there!" Anyone’d think he’d just spotted a Gullwing Mercedes, for our Man of Fe is a devotee of German iron of a considerably more robust variety. Imagine his response if I’d had a master dub available instead of a well-worn commercial pre-record (albeit a 2 track). I admit to sharing the Iron Man’s enthusiasm. In this case, the trumpet did gel. There was none of that fuzziness about the edges that I heard on Holst’s Planets. You could peer right down into the bell of Miles’ horn on this recording.

I wish to also point out the shimmering delicacy of James Cobbs’ cymbal work. This is a sound you’ll not hear from any CD, I’ll wager. On analog tape, the decay of the cymbals is captured down the lowest level of detail. Which is not to overlook Paul Chambers’ rumbling bass. Those ominous chords that start "So What" never fail to send a shiver of anticipation up my spine.

One of my most memorable listening experiences was hearing the Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon over an IRS V system (panels powered by VTL 500’s). The ground literally shook beneath my seat. Did I mention that the true glory of the IRS V is its twin bass towers (self-powered at 1,000 watts per side)? With the Poor Man’s IRS V, no call to Caltech’s seismology lab was necessary to check on whether a tremblor had rumbled through. Nevertheless it did manage to pressurize the room and inflict pressure on the chest. Gilmour’s guitar sounds wonderfully chunky and Clare Torry’s heavenly squawking is as silky as ever.

The attraction of doubling LFT 8A’s is that a single pair of these speakers is so reasonably priced at $1,500 (soon to be $1,700) that the cost of doubling up is not prohibitive. Bear in mind, though, that you will have to factor in the cost of an additional pair of speaker cables to connect the two pairs of LFT 8A’s. As well, a pair of Sound Anchor stands ($200/pair) and possible upgrade to Cardas chassis wire ($100/pair). (My original pair of LFT 8A’s are Cardas wired, but due to a misunderstanding between the factory and myself, the second pair came standardly equipped with Monster. However, the sound is so glorious I am simply going to enjoy them for awhile before doing the Cardas modification.)

In sum, if you like your music rich, full-bodied, and dripping with calories, then the Poor Man’s IRS V should seriously appeal to you.

I always play my speakers with the grills off, as should you, if you want to get the most out of your speakers. This is one of the cheapest tweaks available. I have my LFT 8A’s on Sound Anchor stands. I had the front of the stands as close together as possible with a one inch gap in back so each pair formed an arc centered on my listening position.

Recently, I have been doing my listening in the near field, i.e., about six feet from the speakers.

The LFT 8A has optional settings allowing you to roll off the tweeter response. I ran mine flat.

You may also experiment with damping the woofer enclosure. I tried placing a 25 pound lead ingot on my inner pair of LFT 8A’s. The result was tighter bass and more transparency, but also a loss of dynamics. I preferred the more dynamic sound and took the ingots off.

For The Record
Room: irregular shape with approx dimensions 11 by 29 by 8.5 feet
Tape: Studer B62 transport, Manley Lab head and electronics
Pre: MFA Luminescence B1C
Amps: Bi-amped Manley Lab 440’s
Speakers: Stacked Eminent Technology LFT 8A’s
Interconnect: NBS King Serpent II
Speaker cable: NBS Siggie
Power cable: NBS Pro
Room treatment: BassTraps and RoomTunes
Isolation: UltraResolution Cornerstone, Brassfield plates

III. The Benz-Micro Ruby II

If you own a first generation Benz Ruby and are debating moving up to the new Ruby Mark II, debate no longer. There are no tradeoffs in moving up to the new Ruby, only improvements. Over the years, I have owned variously the Benz MC3, Reference, and Ruby. The Benz line of cartridges has a definite family resemblance, getting bigger and smoother in sound as you move up the food chain, with the current Ruby turning in the biggest, smoothest sound yet. The most outstanding feature of this new Ruby is the oodles of deep, yet controlled bass. Indeed, on Solti’s Venice, the Classic Records re-issue LP produced more bass than my reel to reel tape — the first time I’ve ever heard an LP outdo tape in the bass department.

This review might well be re-dubbed "The Joy of Bass," for this newfound capability transforms hitherto dry Deutsche Grammophon LP’s like Karajan’s Blue Danube (DG 139014), giving them a liquidity they never had before. Martha Argerich’s hair-raising pianism on Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit (DG 2530 540) has more of the heft of a real piano and less of the tinkly sounds of a toy instrument. In many respects, the Ruby II shares the same rich sound as the Koetsu Pro IV.

Dynamics is the forgotten dimension of audio — lost in the quest for better soundstaging and imaging. Yet dynamics are what gives music its spice. Nothing is guaranteed to produce uninvolved listening more than flattened dynamics. Without dynamics you lose the beat of the music, which is after all just variations in dynamics. No beat, no forward propulsion, and the music stagnates. It just happens that dynamics are the trademark of the entire Benz family of cartridges. On DCC’s superb re-mastering of Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus (DCC LPZ 2008), Max Roach’s drumbeats come crackling off the disc. And you can really hear that twist that Sonny gives to the end of the notes on Blue 7.

If you like the sound of the Vienna Philharmonic in their home stomping grounds of the Musikverein;

If richness of sound matters more to you than images etched in iron;

If dynamics and preserving the forward propulsion of the music is important to you;

In short, if you care more about getting the overall forest of your sound picture correct than in seeing the individual veins on each leaf, then the Benz Ruby II is the cartridge for you.

I have not heard those other contenders in the super-cartridge sweepstakes, the Grasshopper and the Clearaudio. However, I do not feel a need to, having compared the Ruby II to the sound of analog reel-to-reel tape, which is the standard against which all other media should be judged. It is a testimony to the Ruby II that it forms the basis for at least two after-market variants: the Cardas Heart, and the Wilson-Benesch.

All equipment same as for the Poor Man’s IRS V review, adding only the Versa Dynamics 1.2 turntable operating at 43 PSI at the arm. I use NBS King Serpent II for the phono cord.

In moving from the old to the new Ruby, I would suggest increasing the tracking weight and decreasing the VTA. My Ruby II is running at almost the maximum tracking weight available on the Versa turntable, because I encountered skipping problems at lighter weights. As the tracking weight increased, I felt the music becoming ever smoother and silkier. It is a rare thing in audio to solve a problem and get improved sound quality at the same time. Usually the audio gods impose a tradeoff.

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