Vinyl Asylum: REVIEW: Lenco Jeremy Bearings Turntables by Gnnett

Model:	Jeremy Bearings
Category:	Turntables
Suggested Retail Price:	Various
Description:	Replacement Idler Drive Turntable Bearings
Manufacturer URL:	Lenco

Review by Gnnett on May 31, 2013 at 21:37:22
IP Address: 121.72.214.87 Add Your Review
for the Jeremy Bearings

The following is a review from a friend that may interest the idler wheel operators around here. No warrantee expressed or implied just for information.:-)

I have placed the photo's that accompany it in my gallery.

Regards

Grant

Jeremy’s Bearings
This hobby playing around with old LP machines has been very engrossing and rewarding.

I started with LP’s. I fell into the CD trap as my Linn Sondek LP12 was somewhat “limp”, lacking in dynamics (regardless what the UK press plaudits heaped praise on it) and the surface noise was always intrusive. The CD gave a breath of fresh air and blissfully quiet. However the quietness was also accompanied by graininess and hardness that grated leaving rather high “noise floor”. So that lead me to upgrades, then again with SACD’s and the more upgrades, much to my financial pain, albeit with a gradually “smoother” sound, less grainy and warmer, yet I wonder where is the “soul”, or in another way the songstress is lacking flesh, a bit like a very emaciated singer.

In the 1990’s being a follower of the Hi-Fi publications, I was curious about idler drive TT’s. My friends cottoned onto that. I expressed the wish to “try”, and to my everlasting thanks to my (unnamed) beneficiary, he gave me a Garrard 401. Research got me some understanding of plinth making; for example: the Shindo financially ruinous 301 system; Albert Porter who used Panzerholz and Basswood; Jean Nantais’ super large and heavy CLD plinths for Lenco’s and many other plinth designs published on the internet. My reading of wood properties and some understanding of unit weights, stiffness’s and damping properties lead me to use materials with properties similar to Porter’s design, but limited to those available in our tiny New Zealand market. So my CLD Bamboo/Cedar plinth design came to be. The first one for 9 ½” tone-arm & 401 gave me such a surprise: a “no-rumble” Garrard 401, glorious bass, dynamics on a par with CD’’s and the piano sound became listenable (compared to my limp LP12 which cannot do percussive sounds).

So more came by, with a Goldring G99 and ultimately and at greater cost, a Garrard 301 (of course).

But this is only an introduction to why the title is “Jeremy’s Bearings”.

As my luck run went on, this well-read friend happen to have received two Superbearing’s one for his G99 and one for a 301/401 Garrard ie a Redbeard (bottom of the rank of Jeremy’s bearings); but he did not have a Garrard whilst he had a G99! (I think it is a misunderstanding from him or a mistake in packaging from Jeremy, in any case, I was the beneficiary). I got to try it out before I pay for it, otherwise it would have to be flown back to Jeremy.

So I ran it in for Seven-Days as per Jeremy’s detailed notes. And after a few days of patiently replacing the oil and cleaning it out I listened to it. Wow! The “silence”: any LP with intrusive surface noise became quieter, yet the music was still there just as loud as before (how come?); this means a “lowered noise floor”. The music became more relaxing, easier to listen to, more details heard and better extensions at both ends and sweeter sound at the top end. I was sold, the upgrade is to my ears, significant, and so much so I send payment immediately before my friend changed his mind!

Being a bit of an engineer, I wanted to find out how did Jeremy’s design worked. Here what I found out:

Jeremy’s “GREASE_BEARING” for Lenco’s

In 2008, the internet reported some of Jeremy’s work on modifications to the standard Lenco bearings.

The Lenco bearings and mechanicals when well supported on a suitably designed plinth they do work very well and trumped most belt drive TT’s (refer to the famous TNJ’s “Reference Lenco” that Arthur Salvatore wrote so eloquently about). Yet there are improvements to come with the Jeremy bearings. The first thing I discovered was a “Lenco Grease-Bearing” which did away with many interfaces in the old ones: including the terribly leaking plastic cap [!], the circlip; the thin hard plastic disc; the ball bearing & the loose fitting spindle. Jeremy solved all that as shown above with much reduced propensity of oil leakage and many less interfaces for resonances and reflections to mar the music signals, ie more music retrieved.

Long version of the SUPERBEARING & Clamps for PTP

Next in production was named “Superbearing” produced by Jeremy (the name being given by internet writers and it appears to stick). This is a totally new drop-in Lenco bearing with a spindle 13mm diameter. It is THE ONE that excited the LencoHeaven threads (and also for unfortunate occurrences made it a bad reputation for Jeremy’s tardy deliveries.). Regardless of delivery dates, the comments on the sound are unanimous: “silence and much improved sound” from the old Lenco’s with more music retrieval.

This is the result of Jeremy’s research in the behaviour of resonances from different materials, namely the stainless steel spindle and the bronze socket and brass collar clamp and base clamp. His bronze mix is special, hard enough to bed-in with the SS without continuing to wear once run-in to bear the platter weight designed to carry. (It is noted that Jeremy did produce a “Standard” bearing with 9mm diameter shaft – like the original Lenco spindle.)

SUPERMARINE & V-III clamps

The Supermarine is the next one up the price chain (at about twice the cost). The spindle diameter is 13mm diameter and it includes these nifty looking rings of Lignum Vitae wood making it 50mm long: quite some tricky machining, fitting and bonding to get those annuli in place! The benefits are absorption of some resonances; take up the wear of the spindle (i.e. the wood to swell enough to take up the space between the spindle and socket walls); and also yield a “sweeter” sound. The wood jacket outside the socket is to dampen the resonance in the socket itself. A very pretty product, worthy of a see-through window under a TT plinth!

MAMMOTH V-III

The Mammoth is a Superbearing for a Lenco with a fatter 20mm diameter spindle for either stacked platters or equipped with a much heavier after-market platters (up to 7.0kg cf standard Lenco at 3.5kg). (I called it V-III as the V-I had been, and a V-II was reported to not work so well.) This one has been “upgraded” with a socket jacketed in wood.

LEGEND V-I

Next is this Legend. (I named it Version I as the tip looks smaller than the next one I found on the internet – shown below). Note the different metal used for the annulus below the Lignum Vitae. The large spindle diameter is similar to the Mammoth’s.

It is interesting to read on the Lignum Vitae: it had been traditionally used in marine heavy shipping in very powerful propeller bearings namely on some US submarines and ocean going ships as well as curiously in some watches. The key properties are very high wood densities (some of the heaviest woods on earth), high hardness (one of the hardest wood), high natural oils & good damping factors. I presume the use for the qualities was selected by Jeremy as mentioned above (self-lubricating & become armoured by metal debris to make it hard wearing and add a damping benefit).

LEGEND V-II

Note the larger tip diameter (made for stacked platters).

EVENT-HORIZON

The Event-Horizon priced at a really eye watering sum of £2500, is Jeremy’s current “State-of-the-Art”. It is big at bout 20+ mm diameters, and sports a socket with end grain Lignum Vitae plugs bonded to the socket walls as well as the annulus you see on the Photo above. Few fanatics with deep pockets have them, and as yet no-one has published what they heard from such a beauty. Note the extra spindle cap to allow stacked platters to be used: neat.

SUPER & UBER-BEARING

The above illustration is a Superbearing and an Uberbearing with 3 annuli of different colour Lignum Vitae (?)

REDBEARD (Garrard 401/301 Superbearing Mk I)

Now come the Garrard Jeremy bearings: first up is the standard called a Redbeard or a Superbearing (very similar in design to the Lenco Superbearing’s), offered on the US market at USD$925 and £595 in the UK. This has had a very complementary write up in Hi-Fi World. I had one originally, ran it in and enjoyed it very much. Now it will serve in a beautifully refurbished shiny Garrard 301 in automotive Mercedes black livery: a sight to behold!

SUPERBEARING Mk-II

My second Garrard, which is a 301, needed a Jeremy bearing. It was just too painful to go back to a standard bearing with the higher surface noise, lack of impact and the vagueness in the treble, just not so satisfying.

I had the opportunity to get this Garrard Superbearing Mk II at a friendly price, so “yes” was easy (I was told this sample of Mk II is “sloppy”, i.e. not finished as “tightly” as would have been. Jeremy’s technique is to machine the spindle to have an initial “interference” fit into the socket then followed by time consuming “honing” to just make the spindle slide into its mate socket. Note: Jeremy does not polish or run-in his bearings. He says that it should be run-in in situ to acclimatise to the prevailing temperatures (not sure about this, as the internal temperature inside my G99 is at about 28o C and in the Garrard’s 35o, i.e. well above the air temperatures of 20-28o in summer and 8-16o in winter in NZ).

I found little differences in sound between this Mk II and the Mk I (note the upper spindle collar is shorter at 20mm in the Mk I, similar to the sintered bronze length in the original Garrard bearings; cf 50mm in the Mk II).

LEVIATHAN (for 8kg platter)

This Leviathan has been long in the making and finally purpose built for me to suit my 301 with an 8kg SS platter. When used with the Superbearing, the Jeremy Redbeard showed some wear as it subsided in height; by about 0.7mm, which resulted in the SS platter jamming on the 301 chassis, hence the need for the Leviathan.

This Leviathan is prototype. It sports a Lignum Vitae annulus, not around the spindle, but inside, at the bottom of the socket (unlike Jeremy’s use of Lignum Vitae on the Legend, but I am told as used in the Event-Horizon). I found after some few months’ use that it is the Lignum Vitae that come to assist the bronze socket base to support the spindle as the diameter of the “wear” mark at the bottom of the spindle did not “grow” in these months’ of use as I noticed with my other Jeremy bearings. It will sometimes in the future hit the market at about £2000.

So what do these sounds like?

Well unless you can hear them, it is difficult to understand the magnitude of the improvement. Ultimately the sound is the be-all & end-all in this hobby. And of course the sound is relative as it depends on the rest of the chain in the system you use and in the acuity of the listener i.e. for this write-up, yours truly! (This writer may well have cloth ears!) Travelling from my awful LP12 to the current 301 with a Leviathan Jeremy bearing, that has been quite a journey. I still have the LP 12 and some days I re-connected it to give me a “datum” for comparison: yes, it is awful; yet I thought (and so did the deluded magazine writers) that it was the “bee’s knees”.

The - 301/Leviathan/XX-2/Sutherland 20-20/Shindo Aurieges/Hurricanes/Acoustat2+2 LP system - sound became beguiling, dynamic, focussed and detailed. The bass is more extended than with the Supermarine.

To put this in my own subjective scale, I would put the LP12: at 2.5; my old CD player: 2; my current SACD player: 3.5 then, the 301/401/G99 with their own bearings on my plinth design: 4.5 to 5; with the standard Jeremy bearing on any of these idler drive TT’s: 10; and with the Leviathan in a Garrard with the above system, the sound would top at: 20 (Just for a “real world” measure and to show I have not lost all my aural marbles, my regular experience at our Town Hall in Auckland with invited classical chamber performers or our National Orchestra would be placed at 90. (The very top international ones and in the best venues in Europe would be, for me 100).

With this system the treble is better and airier. The images are more “precise”, wider placement (outside the outer edge of my speakers) and deeper location (way behind my lounge back wall which is already 2m behind the speakers). The instruments images are smaller and “neater” or sharper. The bloom in the voices that I enjoyed - was missing during the run-in time but now is back with all its beauty. Surface noise has been pushed way back ever since the first Jeremy bearing (Superbearing Mk I, Mk II, Supermarine and Leviathan) and the others keep on being a little better as they wear-in and as I add more Supa-Goo. The LP sound is beguiling and it puts a huge grin on my face every time I put it on.

A special mention for the Supermarine on my G99 (similar plinth design) with its two Lignum Vitae annuli: the sound is a mite “sweeter” and therefore to me very enjoyable.

So I think Jeremy is, like, a “treasure” (as the Japanese call their recognised top artists or artisans like Shindo or Sugano). If you are lucky enough to have one of these, find the best way to make use of it in your idler turntable(s) and enjoy!

Long live the LP!

A few technical issues:

Jeremy’s bearings are for idler drive TT’s. The key understanding that Jeremy arrived at for his bearing designs are the need to remove the various interfaces that introduced unwanted resonances that mar the signal transmitted to the amplification chain. The movements picked up by the LP stylus are so small and the total amplification factor so large that unwanted resonances would mar or blur the sound. In addition any “wobbliness” of the bearing either vertically due to any compliant support (such as a plastic disc in the Lenco or the puck in the Garrard) or laterally due to the sloppy spindle to sintered bronze journals fit or flexible chassis, would remove some of the signal which would be lost before amplification. With a solid one piece socket, all the lossy mechanisms are deleted or minimised and of course, no oil leaks (just a top-up from time to time and an oil change once a year). With the research and the choice of material for the socket casting, the reflection from that interface as heard is better than other materials (which Jeremy found in his experimenting).

The bottom tip of the Jeremy bearings is in my mind, his “gem” and should be much applauded. I offer Jeremy my heartfelt thanks and ultimate praise for realising his brilliant concept. The very tight tolerances achieved in terms of lateral stiffness from his bearings come from shear patient machining and honing to get a tight fit. However a loose fit could be alleviated to a degree by using a thicker oil, and came Jeremy’s Supa-Goo!

The wear of the spindle both laterally and vertically occurs as it is run-in. But that much photographed and discussed bottom wear mark as concentric grooves, that wear is tiny ( <2mm) and once the worn area becomes big enough, the contact pressures become balanced and rotating in an oil bath reduce the long term wear to infinitesimal amount that means any Jeremy bearings should outlast most of us (as he said they will “wear-in” rather than “wear-out” and his warranty lasts his life-time). By the way, this is likely to apply to the various after-market bearings – a la Komoko - that made a dimple at the bottom of the original Garrard spindles (which I found in the previous part of my journey): don’t worry; those wear marks means your new bearing system were just “bedding–in” to take the platter load, no real damage and no dis-benefit.

Then comes the idler motors; both Lenco’s and Garrard’s are AC so there would be some “cogging” effects from the discrete accelerations from the poles. The high speed of rotation (1500 to 1600 RPM) and the weight of the rotor do help “smoothing’ out these discrete accelerations. The Garrard designers of old realised this and added a magnetic brake action which help smoothing this out. This means that a degree of “drag” offered by the use of the Supa-Goo thick oil that Jeremy supply with his bearings are beneficial, working for Lenco’s as the magnetic brake does for the Garrard. There is also another benefit as this thick oil would “stiffen” the lateral spindle-to-socket freedom which results with more precise and wider & deeper stereo imaging.

As to the upwards step ladder of Jeremy’s bearings; you would have a big chunk of the benefits with the standard or Superbearing; if you can afford it go for one further up. If you are thinking of a heavier platter and there you get better defined and more extended bass, go for the larger spindles like Jeremy’s Lenco Mammoth or Garrard Leviathan.

NUTCAKE

Product Weakness:	Long run in and delivery.
Product Strengths:	Takes vintage equipment to new level.

Associated Equipment for this Review:

Amplifier: ASL Hurricanes (triode- 100w)
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): Shindo Aurieges
Sources (CDP/Turntable): Review Product in Garrard 301
Speakers: Acoustat 2+2
Cables/Interconnects: Naim
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Jazz and Chamber plus
Type of Audition/Review: Home Audition

Amplifier:	ASL Hurricanes (triode- 100w)
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	Shindo Aurieges
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	Review Product in Garrard 301
Speakers:	Acoustat 2+2
Cables/Interconnects:	Naim
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	Jazz and Chamber plus
Type of Audition/Review:	Home Audition