The Empire 208 reinterpreted: a modern twist on an old spinner

Well, it's been getting a fair amount of attention at my place. I've been listening to more vinyl than ever before, and I don't see that changing!

Some more pictures of Scott's handiwork for you - here's another angle:

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An amazing piece of art.

I see you got the silver discs you guys played constantly with Friday installed.
 
It got my attention right from the start. (Actually, maybe before the start--I remember Nate alluding to some project he was cooking up before I ever saw the pics.) I just haven't said too much about because I don't know what to say. Other than I want one. :tresbon:
 
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IMO, that is the end of the line. Nothing like owning a work of art that plays records as well. Enjoy, your attention to detail did not go unoticed.
 
When first viewing this table, cueing it up and hearing it in action, I was reminded of that old line from the movie Crocodile Dundee.

"Thats not a knife... That's a knife"

Thanks to Scott and Nate, I will now forever view my own turntable as a mere toy ;)

RC
 
That thing is awesome! BTW where did the motor cylinder come from?
Hey Bill, everything was machined from aluminum stock by Scott. The guy's a magician! The motor cylinder is a section of aluminum tube with machined aluminum endcaps.

An amazing piece of art.

I see you got the silver discs you guys played constantly with Friday installed.
Yeah, they're great! I had some problems initially with the cone feet wobbling around a bit - the Vibrapod "grommets" were a touch soft for the lateral forces that were being exerted on them and the entire table was dancing around like an inebriated seaman. The discs that Scott made up for me have firmed things up perfectly, and now I'm able to level the table properly.

If it sounds only 1% as good as it looks, you have a winner. What a work of art!
It sounds very nice.

When first viewing this table, cueing it up and hearing it in action, I was reminded of that old line from the movie Crocodile Dundee.

"Thats not a knife... That's a knife"

Thanks to Scott and Nate, I will now forever view my own turntable as a mere toy ;)

RC
It was fun having it over at your get together Ron, but I don't think I'll be traveling with it much anymore. The whole endeavor was a bit... nerve-wracking. :)
 
It was nerve wracking just hooking up speakers and changing out gear in close proximity to it.

I'm really pleased it made it way over and was a joy to listen to but I think your right. That table wasn't designed to be a traveler :D

RC
 
This is an epic build.
Major kudos to my mentor, Scott, a super hero of TT tweaking.

Nate - that has just got to make you smile from ear to ear. My wife even drooled a little, when I showed it to her. She has a sweet spot for that style of table - But she gets these old dragster tire spinners that I put together for her :)
 
Awesome work, that has to be the most heavily modified 208 I've ever seen.

What happened to that old Shure arm?

The Shure arm will live on. AK member westend has plans for it.

Excellent. While not up to "modern" standards, a lot of those old arms are quite high quality.

Oh, most definitely! That Shure in particular is quite nice.
I hope that we will soon hear the arm in action. I have a long way to go but the journey has started.

I have to apologize to any Empire 108 or 208 original fanatics who may be offended by this design/bastardization/re-interpretation. I assure you I/we went through a ton of mental iterations before it ended up being this "skeletal" design. I wanted to pay homage and make a top plate design with the shape of the original Empires and utilize a massive solid plinth, but truth be told, I was tiring of that design and I think there are other types of turntable designs that benefit more from that school of design. But that wonderful main bearing with the oil grooved spindle simply needed to be utilized in the best and simplest design we could come up with. One of Nate's design mandates, was to be able to use a 12" arm, and therefore anything similar in proportion to the original plinth was not really an option.
So we indirectly ended up at this design. Nate also wanted his table to be able to accept a Linn arm he has, so his second arm pod is ready to have that arm bolted on as well.

Nate piqued my curiosity when he mentioned he might be interested in offering up one 208 if I were to make double the number of parts so he could have one of whatever creation bubbled to the surface. Since I had been watching for an Empire for a long time with little success, this had my design juices flowing almost immediately. So there are actually two of these exact machines out there, I gave the other to a close friend for his hardcore plunge back into analog. So Nate provided the impetus and undying support and faith necessary for a successful project like this. They took about 5 months to make because I had to work through a few invention ideas in the process (neither of which worked out I might add). But the brass platter weights were an accident, and I never intended for it to be so Gyrodek-esque. But in frustration after a failed attempt at a dynamic physical speed control design I've been perfecting for a while, I just plain bolted the weights to one of the platters and it was so utterly fantastic at damping, we abandoned all other plans for resonance damping of the horribly ringy stock platters (epoxy based damping, mass, etc. were planned but deemed unnecessary).

The motor pod is simply a more modern material based isolation, with an eye kept towards functionality which was at least as good as the rather functionally elegant original arrangement. But as quiet as the Papst motor is, it simply needed to be isolated from the main bearing and tonearm, and passe as that design has become. We had considered a DC based motor pod, but it would have continued to stray so far from the original design, that sacrificing two stock 208's would have been sacrilege and just plain bad taste. To be fair though, they were Nate's to do with as he pleased, and he wanted his table to have some cool factor as well. I hope we succeeded.

I have one more revision for the footer assemblies, a design I tested last week on the other one of these tables. So I'll be machining up some discs for Nate's which help with the stabilization and leveling abilities of these decks. The other deck already has them and I'm very happy with the improvement in both performance and functionality. With that slight change, these two twins are complete. :wave:

Nate set me up at Ron's, said "Lance, you should take a look at my Empire" when we were outside. My reaction was, "That's no Empire", didn't know what else to say. The TT (has it been named?) is a great piece of awesome engineering. The resultant sound speaks for the quality of the build, excellent.:thmbsp::thmbsp::thmbsp:

That's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
Yep, one of the coolest sounding, too.
 
Looks great Nate...admiring from afar, as usual! Too bad that you're so far away!

I won't catch-up to what you've been working on, but at last (5 months later...due to a Stereophile article and revised machining parts!) I received a cute little box from Germany today. After all of my various sales...things are starting to come together in somewhat more conventional Garrard-401-land. Headshell, cartridge and plinth all in the works!

Stay tuned!

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