Its been an interesting read.
Arthur is a long time analog-vinyl listener. He's one of the 99.9% of the rest of vinyl spinners, who run decks driven by belts, string, dental floss, video tape, etc.
He was prompted to buy a Lenco idler drive table, and review it.
Idlers were pretty much driven out of listening favor when the move was made from hifi-mono, to hifi-stereo, because of the rumble that most idler wheels made as they contacted the platter. Mono cancels out rumble, so it was no so apparent until the move to stereo. Once stereo hit, idlers fell from favor.
The rumble came because most idler wheels are quite large, fat, and present a substantial contact patch where they touch the platter.
Lenco made an idler wheel with a precision ground knife edge that barely had a contact patch. The Lenco wheels are extremely smooth and quiet. They also have extremely heavy platters (on several models) that act like flywheels; once in motion they're hard to slow down, and take a long time to spin down.
Well, Arthur, bought a renovated Lenco by a guy thats trying to make a name for himself as a renovator/retailer of old freshly rebuilt Lencos.
IMO, he paid WAY too much for his deck that he's reviewed. Admittedly, its a hot-rod, with a new custom bearing, massive plinth, and allot of tighten up work.
If I'm not mistaken, he took what some of us have been buying, for next to nothing, paid far too much for it, and has now reviewed it as if it were an Everymans affordable Lenco. If I'm not mistaken, he paid like $5k for something that, for example, I just bought for $24.99, and will build to his standard of hot-rod pretty much for the price of a new tonearm, or maybe I'll build the tonearm and beat his hot-rod price by 95% or more!?!
My point,.... he's taken something inexpensive, and is now turning it into this expensive thing, because all of these "audiophiles" now must have a Lenco TT in their collection.
This all frustrates me, because I saw the same thing happen in fly fishing a few years back, where a trend developed, reviewers and critics moved people, a movie came from it, and suddenly we had all these fancy dressed d00ds roaming the rivers of the west, looking completely clueless, tying themselves into knots on the river bank, but looking damn fine doing it.
Fortunately, the fancy d00ds rediscovered their golf clubs, and that trend has subsided somewhat. I don't doubt that some died out there though, hopelessly tangled in fly fishing line!
Back to my point,...... Arthur bought this overly expensive hot-rod. He gloated over it, and posted his reviews.
As soon as he posted his reviews, people started to review the reviewer, and the internet being what it is, the World Wide Web, people whom English is a second language for, started commenting about his review, mostly positive (I mostly read from the Lenco forum perspective). This is all well and good, until someone makes a simple suggestion, in their second language, about how the turntable builder could have been less stringent and used a third party product in the build for a sonic improvement, and somehow the most vague hint of collusion between the reviewer and the builder was misinterpreted by the reviewer (there was no overt suggestion of collusion, just a ESL comment). This misinterpretation offended him, Arthur, and he started into bad mouthing the Lenco forum, and the forum membership at several different audio hifi sites.
The reviewer couldn't handle a bad review comment and melted down.
I've been on the sidelines quietly watching and not commenting, except here.
So, I'm back to not reading reviewers for the next couple of decades. When I need to have a question answered, I'll just ask the people on the real audio frontlines for their opinions.
Topic: Anyone Here Read Arthur Salvatore Reviews? (Read 5052 times)