An honest report on a 1979 idler-drive deck, restored properly.
Twelve weeks of daily listening to a turntable that, in stock form, most reviewers would not bother with. After a complete bearing rebuild and a new plinth, it is, embarrassingly, the best deck in the house.
The deck arrived in a cardboard box that was, by the time it crossed my threshold, mostly held together by parcel tape. The vendor — a small dealer in the West Midlands whom I had bought from twice before — had been honest about what it was. A 1979 idler-drive turntable, originally a broadcast deck, in functional but tired condition. The motor ran. The plinth was original and not in good condition. The arm was missing. The price was a hundred and twenty pounds.
I knew, when I bought it, that I would not be using it as it arrived. Idler-drive turntables of this vintage are, in my experience, almost without exception in need of work before they can be listened to seriously. The motor bearings are typically forty years past their service intervals. The idler wheel itself, the rubber-tyred component that transmits the motor's rotation to the platter, is almost always hardened by age and contributes the rumble for which the format is sometimes — unfairly — dismissed.
What I did
The restoration took me about three weekends, plus a fortnight of waiting for parts. The bearings were rebuilt by a specialist in Bristol who does this kind of work regularly and well. The idler wheel was replaced with a new-old-stock unit from a small supplier in the Netherlands. The plinth — which had been water-damaged at some point in its history — was discarded entirely and replaced with a new one made from layers of birch ply, slate, and high-density rubber, built to a design I had been thinking about for some time.
The arm question was solved separately. I fitted a mid-priced modern unipivot arm of a type that was not made in 1979 and would not have been considered appropriate. I do not, in principle, mind anachronism in this context. The point of the exercise was to have a working turntable that played records well, not to recreate a 1979 listening room.
What it sounds like
I have been listening to the deck almost daily for the past three months, in rotation with two other turntables that I would happily recommend to most readers. One is a respected belt-drive deck from the mid-1990s. The other is a contemporary direct-drive deck of recent manufacture. Both are competent, well-set-up, and pleasant to use.
The idler deck sounds different from both of them. The difference is hard to describe precisely, and I have been turning the descriptions over in my head for several weeks now without arriving at one I am fully satisfied with. The deck has, I think, an unusual relationship with the leading edge of a note. Where the belt-drive deck presents notes as arriving smoothly and the direct-drive deck presents them as arriving precisely, the idler-drive deck presents them as arriving with weight.
The deck has, I think, an unusual relationship with the leading edge of a note. Notes arrive with weight, in a way I have not heard from any belt-drive at any price.
This is not, I want to be careful, the same thing as "bass." The bass response of all three decks is, on most material, broadly similar. The weight I am describing is something more like an extra millisecond of physical presence on every leading edge of every note. The piano sounds, faintly, more like an object. The double bass sounds, faintly, more like a string being pulled. The drum kit sounds, faintly, more like a room.
What it sounds like, less impressionistically
I have spent some hours trying to measure the difference, with limited success. The wow and flutter figures on the rebuilt idler deck are good — better than the belt-drive deck, broadly comparable to the direct-drive — but not extraordinary. The signal-to-noise ratio is acceptable but not class-leading. There is no obvious measurement that explains what I am hearing.
I do not, particularly, mind this. The point of this magazine, and of the hobby it documents, is not to chase measurements that explain everything. It is to listen carefully, to report honestly on what one hears, and to leave open the possibility that the equipment is doing something the measurements do not yet capture.
What I would not say
I would not say that this deck is unequivocally better than the other two. The direct-drive deck is more convenient. The belt-drive deck is more forgiving of setup mistakes. Both will give years of reliable service without the kind of intervention this idler deck has required.
I would also not say that idler-drive is, in general, better than belt-drive or direct-drive as a format. I have heard several other idler decks in the past few years, and most of them have been disappointing. The format is highly dependent on the bearing condition, the idler wheel condition, the plinth design, and the speed regulation — and a deck that has been properly rebuilt sounds wildly different from one that has not.
What I would say
What I will say is this: the deck on my rack is now the one I reach for first, when I have time to listen properly. It is not the most accurate deck. It is not the quietest deck. It is not the deck I would lend to someone who was new to the hobby and wanted something they could not break. It is, however, the deck that — after twelve weeks of careful comparison — I most often want to hear.
That is, in the end, the only measurement that counts. The restored idler-drive deck is going to stay where it is for some time.