Anxious to prolong my mono-maniacal buzz, I reached for an early LP version of soprano Bidú Sayão's 1945 recording of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras 5, with the composer conducting an ensemble of eight cellos and one double bass (LP, Columbia Masterworks ML 5231). With the Mr. T, her voice was more human and compelling than without. Again, tempos seemed steadier, and the plucked notes of the cellos had greater apparent force. It was here that the word Wow made the first of many appearances in my notes.
My Shindo Monbrison preamplifier and Shindo Haut-Brion power amp were beginning to feel left out, so I powered down the system and plugged them into two of the Mr. T's five remaining AC outlets. I gave the amp the outlet closest to the Mr. T's AC input socket, with the preamp in the next socket down and the turntable in the one after that. I don't know if that served any practical purpose, but it cost nothing to do so, and required only a few seconds more than to do it haphazardly. With the system switched back on and fully warmed up, I returned to that Stones LP. Although it wasn't as big a gain as when I went from having no Mr. T at all to using it just with the turntable, there was no question that my system's musicality had taken another step forward: Wyman's bass lines were even stronger, and in "Route 66," the words were more intelligible, the handclaps stronger and less "mushy" sounding.
With the mono pickup still in place, I played the Electric Recording Company's reissue of the Tommy Flanagan Trio's Overseas (LP, Prestige/ERC 7134). Every instrument—drums, bass, and, of course, Flanagan's piano—sounded clearer and, again, less mushy, and seemed more musically strong and purposeful. For example, right after the second middle eight in "Chelsea Bridge," bassist Wilbur Little plays a little descending figure that leads back to the verse. It's a nothing-fancy turnaround—except that, with the Mr. T supplying the whole system, I could better hear the determination, the temporal leaning forward, in his playing. And in a galliard composed for lute by John Dowland, from guitarist Julian Bream's The Golden Age of English Lute Music (mono LP, RCA Victor Soria Series LD-2560), the Shindo Mr. T allowed the melodies to unfold with a greater sense of ease, yet with no less rhythmic precision or momentum.
No less important: In those first days with the Mr. T, the sound of my system was consistently fine—until the day I removed it to have it photographed. While the Mr. T was missing from my system, Jason Victor Serinus reviewed Régine Crespin's 1963 recording of Ravel's orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade, with Ernest Ansermet conducting the Swiss Romande Orchestra (LP, Decca SXL-6081)—which is, incidentally, the rare Decca LP whose US edition (LP, London OS 25821) sounds slightly better—prompting me to plug everything in my system back into my power strip, so I could hear that record right away. It sounded amazing—huge and colorful, with enough clear, open space around the instruments that I could all but hear the movements of the string players' bowing arms—but there was some grain in the sound of Crespin's voice, especially in the louder bits. When I reinserted the Mr. T and listened again, the grain was gone, and so was my resistance to change: I decided to buy my review sample. No more muddy water for me or my playback system.
Idle hands
It was just 19 months ago, in the December 2016 Stereophile, that I wrote in this space about refurbishing the motor of my Garrard 301 turntable, which was manufactured in 1957. Among the individual chores I performed were the servicing of the upper and lower motor-axle bearings, which I replaced with brand-new bronze bearings from an Italian firm called AudioSilente. I also replaced the felt washers that surround those bearings: these are soaked in oil just prior to assembling the motor, to keep the bearings supplied with lubricant.
Not long after, AudioSilente's Simone Lucchetti told me that his firm was developing other aftermarket parts for classic vintage turntables, and promised to stay in touch—a promise he kept a couple of weeks ago, when he e-mailed to announce AudioSilente's replacement idler wheel for the Garrard 301 ($100 plus shipping). Reportedly the result of a yearlong development effort that included a long study of the correct density of rubber required for the application, the AudioSilente idler is a wheel, 60mm in diameter and precision-machined from aluminum alloy, to which is bonded a rubber ring of square cross section—this in contrast to the original Garrard idler, whose smaller metal hub is more or less encased within a larger rubber wheel. A slender steel rod is press-fitted through the center of the idler to form the upper and lower axles, with rounded tips and polished surfaces. Those axles are intended to fit upper and lower bronze bushings in the 301's two-part idler carrier; the bushings are replaceable, the upper more easily than the lower—although realigning them, if and when such a thing is necessary, is nearly impossible in the field.
The contact area of the AudioSilente idler is 4.6mm thick—precisely the same as in the original idler. But the diameters of the AudioSilente and Garrard axles may also differ slightly; according to Lucchetti, at some point during the period of the 301's production Garrard increased the axle diameter by 0.09mm. To accommodate that change, as well as the reasonable assumption that the bores of the original bushings would have widened with wear over time, AudioSilente splits the difference and makes their axles 0.045mm larger than the originals—and includes with every new idler a new pair of bushings, sized to fit their wheel. Their advice to buyers: Fit the new idler first to the original lower bushing, noting whether the idler spins freely but without wobble; if all is well, then fit the original bushing over the upper axle—and if that bushing is too tight or shows excessive slop, replace only that one with the new AudioSilente bushing (a tool is included to ease that procedure). Only in extreme circumstances should the original lower bushing be replaced.
That said, when I set about replacing my original Garrard idler with the review sample of the AudioSilente idler, the wheel's lower axle seemed to perfectly fit my turntable's lower bushing—and when I lowered in place the 301's upper bushing, I was relieved to see that it, too, fit well. The new idler spun with ease—the original had spun just a shade more freely—with no wobble or play. I measured the axles of my original idler and the AudioSilente replacement and found them almost identical: 2.43mm for the old, 2.44mm for the new. With the platter removed, the motor switched on, and the original idler engaged against the motor pulley, I could hear a gentle whirring sound, probably originating from the axle bushings; with the AudioSilente, I heard a sound that was similar in character but somewhat less audible.
More telling than my wheel-listening comparisons were my music-listening comparisons. I used both idlers to play Jascha Horenstein and the London Symphony Orchestra's recording of Mahler's Symphony 3 (2 LPs, Nonesuch HB-73023), chosen in part for the silences and near-silences in its first movement, which I imagined would expose any egregious drive-system noise. As it turned out, neither wheel bested the other in that regard, but with the AudioSilente idler, the quiet susurrating of the double basses as they oscillate between A and B was clearer, with better-defined stops and starts; and chords played on the concert harp sounded more like a harp and less like a piano. And in "I Wonder Where You Are Tonight," from Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Time (LP, Decca DL 74896), Monroe's voice was more spatially present when the platter was driven by the AudioSilente idler—and, for some crazy reason, the recording's excessive artificial reverb was less distracting.
Those differences were slight, as borne out by the measurements I made using Dr. Feickert Analogue's PlatterSpeed app for the iPhone 6: Overall, the results (figs.1 and 2) were better with the AudioSilente idler, which yielded a relative speed deviation of ±0.02% on a low-pass–filtered signal, as opposed to measurements of –0.04%/+0.05% for the stock idler. (In truth, neither did badly, especially considering that this turntable was made in the last year before stereo LPs hit the market.)
It was just 19 months ago, in the December 2016 Stereophile, that I wrote in this space about refurbishing the motor of my Garrard 301 turntable, which was manufactured in 1957. Among the individual chores I performed were the servicing of the upper and lower motor-axle bearings, which I replaced with brand-new bronze bearings from an Italian firm called AudioSilente. I also replaced the felt washers that surround those bearings: these are soaked in oil just prior to assembling the motor, to keep the bearings supplied with lubricant.
Not long after, AudioSilente's Simone Lucchetti told me that his firm was developing other aftermarket parts for classic vintage turntables, and promised to stay in touch—a promise he kept a couple of weeks ago, when he e-mailed to announce AudioSilente's replacement idler wheel for the Garrard 301 ($100 plus shipping). Reportedly the result of a yearlong development effort that included a long study of the correct density of rubber required for the application, the AudioSilente idler is a wheel, 60mm in diameter and precision-machined from aluminum alloy, to which is bonded a rubber ring of square cross section—this in contrast to the original Garrard idler, whose smaller metal hub is more or less encased within a larger rubber wheel. A slender steel rod is press-fitted through the center of the idler to form the upper and lower axles, with rounded tips and polished surfaces. Those axles are intended to fit upper and lower bronze bushings in the 301's two-part idler carrier; the bushings are replaceable, the upper more easily than the lower—although realigning them, if and when such a thing is necessary, is nearly impossible in the field.
That said, when I set about replacing my original Garrard idler with the review sample of the AudioSilente idler, the wheel's lower axle seemed to perfectly fit my turntable's lower bushing—and when I lowered in place the 301's upper bushing, I was relieved to see that it, too, fit well. The new idler spun with ease—the original had spun just a shade more freely—with no wobble or play. I measured the axles of my original idler and the AudioSilente replacement and found them almost identical: 2.43mm for the old, 2.44mm for the new. With the platter removed, the motor switched on, and the original idler engaged against the motor pulley, I could hear a gentle whirring sound, probably originating from the axle bushings; with the AudioSilente, I heard a sound that was similar in character but somewhat less audible.
More telling than my wheel-listening comparisons were my music-listening comparisons. I used both idlers to play Jascha Horenstein and the London Symphony Orchestra's recording of Mahler's Symphony 3 (2 LPs, Nonesuch HB-73023), chosen in part for the silences and near-silences in its first movement, which I imagined would expose any egregious drive-system noise. As it turned out, neither wheel bested the other in that regard, but with the AudioSilente idler, the quiet susurrating of the double basses as they oscillate between A and B was clearer, with better-defined stops and starts; and chords played on the concert harp sounded more like a harp and less like a piano. And in "I Wonder Where You Are Tonight," from Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Time (LP, Decca DL 74896), Monroe's voice was more spatially present when the platter was driven by the AudioSilente idler—and, for some crazy reason, the recording's excessive artificial reverb was less distracting.
Fig. 1 (left), Fig. 2 (right)
All in all, as either an upgrade or a replacement for a worn or damaged original, the distinctly affordable AudioSilente idler wheel is an excellent value, and highly recommended.
