Review of S5, by Ben Anderson
Hello I’ve had this turntable for nearly a year now and feel I’ve
started to get it to sing so thought I might write a little something
about it. This is a high mass suspended turntable with a unipivot arm
and glass enclosure built on a Italian slate plinth.
When I first
recieved it I was surprised to find it covered in dust and fitted with
a tatty and frayed phono lead also the belt was crumbling and the
record weight was missing. However not being one to let appearances put
me off I started by cleaning away all the rubber stuck to the motor
pully and dusting the whole thing. The first impressions sonically were
not really what I expected, not that I knew what to expect of course.
This was and is my first proper turntable.
I got in touch with Simon Yorke over the internet and asked him quite a
few questions with regards set up and about aquiring a new belt and
what to do about the missing record weight. He is a very friendly and
generous man from what I can tell about someone from conversing by
email. He said he did not make the S5 record weight anymore but could
modify one from the current top model the S10, he also was able to
supply me with a new belt made from Pyrothane (non slip clear type) and
as I requested a new ball for the bearing. After a mistake on my part
concerning postage for the above items it was suggested to me by Simon
that I send him a record to add to his collection as payment for the
postage which I forgot to add to his payment, I of course agreed and
started to think what I should get him, more of this later.
Now then, she had a new belt, a cleaned motor pully and as instructed
all metal parts of the table and arm had been rubbed with furniture wax
which the excess was then polished off, this protects the metals’
finish and provides just the right amount of damping to the surface
according to her maker. I removed the bearing which was quite dry and
fitted the new ball with clear silicone into the cup, renewing the oil
with 3-in-1 oil.
Some days later after chatting on a forum I realised that the previous
owner had attached the bias thread to the wrong part of the tonearm so
that it was in fact having the exact opposite affect it should have
had. Unsurprisingly correcting this brought about a pleasurable
improvement to the listening. Curiosity had me open up the power supply
box and I took the opportunity to clean the fuse and fuseholder.
Over the following months I have fiddled with the bias and other
aspects of cartridge setup, she has been treated to a nice new phono
cable and I think I’m listening to how she should sound. The record
clamp is a perfect fit both physically and aesthetically being almost
completely identical to the original. The previous owner must have
bought the latest model arm at some point as she sports the S7
unipivot, I don’t know what the original model arm sounded like so
cannot comment but see no reason to think that this is anything other
than an improvement.
The turntable is serial number sixty seven and the arm is number thirty
something, this probably makes the table built around 1990ish as a
guess. The arm I don’t know.
To review it I suppose I should tell you lots of matter of fact things
to do with my stereo and what I have known before or heard at shows but
alas as I said before this is my first proper turntable so really have
little to refer to. The best I can do is to try and explain how it is
to listen to for me. Since getting her into fine fettle the sound she
makes with my Grado is a window into a space and feeling, so much of
the ambiance of the venue exists in my listening room, now my bedroom,
that this has as much affect upon me as the music itself. Like the set
of a play, no, like the places of memories. How much of the feeling of
a memory is the place in whch the event occured? So much. The venue is
not part of the music but a major part of the recording I’ll go as far
to say the most important part, the year, the season, the period of the
building the hard floor the height of the ceiling the size of the
windows and even the mood of the audience are human things that not
only define the listening at the time the piece was played and recorded
but tie me tightly to this thing, to them, when they were there as if I
was there and they could not see me.
I listen now in my bedroom so that as I lay in bed, either at night
before I sleep or as I doze after I have woken, I am in the right place
with my speakers aligned toward the pillows. No better way to bring in
the day than a light snooze with Rossini playing or to conjure
unfathomable dreams by playing Bachs’ Cello Concertos before closing my
eyes. I can choose where and when I go through this window though other
factors intervene meaning my destination can be different each time,
sometimes a record ‘sounds’ different each time to me, I can only
conclude this is a sign of the emotional conversation between the music
and I, that the same piece can sound unfamiliar each time, that I am
not listening to the music as such at all but the mood is taking me off
to somewhere along a path chosen in agreement by my subconscious and
the composer, with the musician as a guide. For me to be able to sneak
into a performance that was held before I was born or in a country I
have not been to or played by a musician long gone is literally magical
to me. To become a passenger in someone elses memories is what it is.
To review the recordplayer is really to review the music or more
accurately the mood that the music brings about in me.
He told me he liked modern classical and modern jazz and funky electro
ninja shit (his words). Having only come to vinyl and resurected my
love of hifi a couple of years ago what could I give Simon in the way
of music? Several weeks of looking and almost ordering records,
frustration resulted in a Google search entitled ‘weird music on vinyl’
which produced a website called Trunkrecords and on this site I found a
record called ‘The Tommorow People’. This was a television series from
the seventies for children which used music created by the BBC
Stereophonic Workshop. The actual record is what’s known as a Library
record and had not been released before containing sounds made by the BBC
when they were experimenting with the first elctronic music. Such
noises as you might have heard on Doctor Who. Not music as such and I
appologised to him for that but a record of something not heard much
and rather odd. In his words ‘interesting and strange, I like’.
All the best, Ben Anderson.