cube-tube
Super Member
I tried a little something today to see if I hear any difference and improve on the performance of the SL-1700MK2.
So far, I don't hear any negative results from doing this, and it did seem to "clean things up". From what I'm hearing on familiar records, this little mod has firmed up the lower and upper bass as well as refined the midrange and treble. Sound stage has definitely opened up more, giving the music and instruments more space to breathe. Imaging is quite startling! Vocals are more three dimensional, and I believe there's even more in the way of dynamics.
I honestly wasn't expecting this kind of improvement, if any really.
The mod consists of five #83 O-rings which are 1/2" OD and 5/16" ID. They're the chunkiest ones I could find that fit the tonearm tube. I got this idea from people putting heat shrink on these tonearms to help dampen them. Since I didn't want to put heat shrink on my arm, I figured this would also do the trick, if not do a better job! If it works on vacuum tubes, it should work on a tonearm too.
Adding these five O-rings added roughly 0.45g of weight to the tonearm, at least where I have them placed. I guess this could be "tuned" depending on where on the arm you place them. I kind of placed them randomly as to not create equal distances between them. My thought behind this is that if I placed them equal distance from each other, that might cause some kind of tuned resonance. I don't know, it sounds good anyway. LOL
In the end, I think this is a very worthy mod that's extremely easy to apply and remove with zero permanent alterations to the arm. Just a couple of minutes to put them on as well as remove them.
Anyway, enough rambling. Here's a few pics. Let me know what you guys think! And yes, I re-balanced the arm and readjusted VTF.
So far, I don't hear any negative results from doing this, and it did seem to "clean things up". From what I'm hearing on familiar records, this little mod has firmed up the lower and upper bass as well as refined the midrange and treble. Sound stage has definitely opened up more, giving the music and instruments more space to breathe. Imaging is quite startling! Vocals are more three dimensional, and I believe there's even more in the way of dynamics.
I honestly wasn't expecting this kind of improvement, if any really.
The mod consists of five #83 O-rings which are 1/2" OD and 5/16" ID. They're the chunkiest ones I could find that fit the tonearm tube. I got this idea from people putting heat shrink on these tonearms to help dampen them. Since I didn't want to put heat shrink on my arm, I figured this would also do the trick, if not do a better job! If it works on vacuum tubes, it should work on a tonearm too.
Adding these five O-rings added roughly 0.45g of weight to the tonearm, at least where I have them placed. I guess this could be "tuned" depending on where on the arm you place them. I kind of placed them randomly as to not create equal distances between them. My thought behind this is that if I placed them equal distance from each other, that might cause some kind of tuned resonance. I don't know, it sounds good anyway. LOL
In the end, I think this is a very worthy mod that's extremely easy to apply and remove with zero permanent alterations to the arm. Just a couple of minutes to put them on as well as remove them.
Anyway, enough rambling. Here's a few pics. Let me know what you guys think! And yes, I re-balanced the arm and readjusted VTF.
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