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

Redboy

a few good watts
Subscriber
My latest turntable started life as an Empire 208. It made its debut at doucanoe's Cobblefest over the weekend, and I wanted to share the story behind it with everyone because it's a cool one!

[CLICK HERE to skip the long story and go straight to the pictures. :)]

I'm not sure just how far back to go, but suffice it to say that ever since I saw my first Empire 208, I've been a bit obsessed with them. They're such timeless beauties, as cool today as they were when the first came out fifty years ago. They also happen to be very well made turntables, posessing three critical attributes of any great turntable - a good motor, a heavy and well-balanced platter, and a genuinely excellent bearing.

Here's a picture of my first Empire 208 in original condition, as found by member treserious

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The old Empires have their weaknesses, too. They are limited somewhat by the fifty year old tonearms attached to them. Their top plates are a bit resonant, attached to a resonant box of a wood base. The platter, while well built, is incredibly resonant. In fact, it rings like a bell, singing like a tuning fork looooong after being struck. Not so good for vinyl playback.

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The story of this turntable starts with a different turntable that I bought. A Lenco L78, specifically. Being that it was a Lenco, my search for information about it naturally took me to Lenco Heaven, another online forum full of fanatic Lenco lovers who also happen to be genuinely good audio aficionados, passionate about music and turntables and amplifiers and speakers and everything else we like here at AudioKarma. If you haven’t been there, check it out sometime.

I joined Lenco Heaven and posted an introductory thread, where I showed some pictures of some audio toys and my DIY stuff. That same day I got a message from a moderator there who, in a bizarre “small world” twist, just happened to live in the same metro area as me. RFgumby also turned out to be an AK member with a few posts to his name. The guy’s an incredible wealth of knowledge with some great experience in the audio game and really amazing DIY skills.
 
Scott and I exchanged some PMs and ideas and stories and somewhere in there I let on that I had an Empire 208 turntable at home. My memory of the conversation is a bit fuzzy but I believe Scott said something like, “Oh cool, I’ve always wanted to mess around with one of those tables to take it to the next level!” and I said something like, “Cool, so have I! And coincidentally, I happen to have two of them here at home. What if I donate the Empires and you do all the work?” :)

I’d seen pictures of Scott’s creations and knew he was fully capable of creating one hell of an astounding machine. I was pretty excited about the idea.

Over the next couple of months we kicked around several different scenarios with two general courses – modify and improve on the traditional aesthetic, or re-engineer from the ground up. Ultimately we decided on the latter. Now, before the purists out there get all worked up about this, let me say that the donor turntables weren’t in the best condition, and no Empire parts were irreversibly damaged in the making of this turntable. That is to say, if I really wanted to I could take this thing apart, put it all back on the original chassis, and have an original Empire 208 again. That’s if I wanted to.
 
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Time passed. Scott put countless hours into machining super cool parts for the turntables, I checked in over the phone between countless diaper changes, and then one day he called me up and asked me if I wanted to come over and put them together.

Yes!!

Here’s the end result.

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At Cobblefest I this past weekend...

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Highlights?

The original motor is now housed in a separate pod, fully isolating motor vibration from the cartridge.

The original bearing assembly has been fitted into an extremely rigid aluminum block, to which three tonearm spars have been attached. Two of the three spars are currently equipped with mounting plates for tonearms and on the third is a bubble level, which could be swapped out for a third tonearm mount in the future. Each tonearm mounting plate has a machined block of Delrin between it and the spar, which allows rigid coupling of the arm but offers some damping from any transmitted bearing noise. Cool, huh?

The base assembly sits on three ingenious foot pods. A brass cone foot is threaded to a rod that runs through two Vibrapods each, making a large-scale vibration isolation grommet of sorts. I think Scott has pictures of this arrangement that will make it a bit clearer.

The original platter has been fitted with eight machined brass weights, screwed to the underside. The weights add about four pounds to the six pound original, so we’ve got some good rotational energy going with this thing. Incidentally, Scott and I were looking at all sorts of damping compounds and platter mats to kill the platter ring, but once the weights were fitted, the platter became dead as wood. Thunk. Cool!
 
My table is currently fitted with my Schick 12” tonearm, and a Denon DL103 cart. I’ve got a little work to do before it’s truly dialed in, but initial impressions are more than favorable – this thing absolutely rocks!

Thanks so much to Scott for all his hard work on this thing. It’s one sweet machine. :thmbsp:
 
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Nate, you are hands down my HERO!!! :ntwrthy:


EDIT: Now I know why you've been silent regarding the state of your Empire project. Nice work brother, I want to be just like you when I grow up! :yes:
 
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Nate, you are hands down my HERO!!! :ntwrthy:


EDIT: Now I know why you've been silent regarding the state of your Empire project. Nice work brother, I want to be just like you when I grow up! :yes:
Nah, I'm just fortunate to have had a couple of 208s cluttering up the space. Scott did all the work on this one, and deserves all the accolades.

This did turn out rather well for me, though. :)
 
Awesome work, that has to be the most heavily modified 208 I've ever seen.

What happened to that old Shure arm?
 
Excellent. While not up to "modern" standards, a lot of those old arms are quite high quality.
 
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