Revolver Turntable Review

The Revolver is a two-speed turntable manufactured in England by Sundown Electronic Engineering, Ltd. (S.E.E.). It is sold in the United States as a complete record player, fitted with a Linn Basik LV X tone-arm and Linn Basik moving-magnet cartridge. Its disarmingly simple exterior conceals some unusual and quite sophisticated design features.

The Revolver’s 2-pound platter, like its mounting base, is constructed of a dense fiberboard. It is belt-driven by a small a.c. synchronous motor. The motor shaft carries two pulleys of different diameters, for 33-1/3 and 45 rpm, that are fully exposed and accessible above the base surface, and the rubber belt rides on the smooth, ungrooved outer rim of the platter. The speed is changed by manually shifting the belt to the appropriate pulley diameter. The belt, circular in cross section, is about 1/16 inch in diameter and operates under very low tension. Since the speed is determined by the power-line frequency, there are no vernier adjustments.

The turntable spindle rotates in a precision sleeve bearing. During installation, a drop of oil (furnished with the unit) is placed in the bearing sleeve before inserting the spindle. Because of close dimensional tolerances, the shaft requires several hours to descend fully into the sleeve after the platter is installed. The manufacturer also recommends that the turntable be “run in” for several hours in order to achieve its optimum performance.

Two components of the Revolver have unusual names, the Pig and the Starmat. The Starmat (for Standard Analogue Record Mat) is a flat record mat, about Vi6 inch thick, made of polyester fibers and filled with finely divided carbon particles. It is electrically conductive and drains off static electricity from the disc to the system ground through the spindle. The Pig (for Precision Instant Grip) is a small rubber device that is pushed down over the spindle to hold the disc firmly against the mat.

The unique construction of the Revolver is not visible or otherwise apparent to the user. The base consists of a sandwich of two fiberboard platforms. The lower platform measures 16-1/2 x 14-3/8 x 3/4 inches and is supported on three large, soft, molded-rubber feet. The upper platform, which carries the motor, turntable, and tonearm, is 15-3/4 x 13-1/2 x 1/2 inches. Holes in the lower platform provide clearance for the turntable bearing and the tonearm base. The pushbutton power switch is located at the front left of the upper platform.

The upper platform, which at first seems to be rigidly coupled to the lower one, is actually separated from it by two thin foam-rubber strips that help to isolate the playing components from vibration entering through the mounting feet. The rear corners of the upper platform also carry lead weights, which pass through clearance holes in the lower platform. Presumably these weights provide the mass distribution required for optimum performance of the isolation system.

The Linn Basik LV X is a well-made but relatively inexpensive tonearm fitted with a universal plug-in headshell. The rotating counterweight carries large, clearly visible tracking-force calibrations at intervals of 0.1 gram, and the cueing lever is located at the arm’s base. An arm rest with locking clip extends forward from the base, and the antiskating dial (which can be adjusted while playing a record) is located below the arm rest. The Linn Basik cartridge is fitted with a spherical stylus; its radius is unspecified but is presumably close to 0.7 mil. According to the Revolver’s instruction manual, the cartridge should be operated at a vertical tracking force between 1.7 and 2.0 grams.

The Revolver turntable, which weighs slightly over 14 pounds, is available in red, gray, or black-ash veneer and is furnished with a hinged, tinted-plastic dust cover. The integral 4-foot signal cable is fitted with gold-plated connectors. The price of the complete system is $500 in red or gray finish, $550 in black-ash veneer.

Lab Tests

We used a 1.8-gram tracking force for our tests of the Linn Basik cartridge, although we also checked its tracking at forces as low as 1.25 grams. Other than balancing the arm (since the Revolver is shipped with its counterweight removed), we made no adjustments to the system. We also measured the effective mass of the arm/cartridge combination, the accuracy of its tracking-force adjustments, its tracking error, the antiskating dial calibration, and the effectiveness of the arm-lift (cueing) system in raising and lowering the pickup without changing its playing point on the record. We removed the cartridge shell from the tonearm and measured the capacitance to ground of the left and right signal channels.

Other tests of the cartridge included its frequency Response, crosstalk (channel separation), output voltage, tracking distortion with several test records, low-frequency resonance in the Basik arm, and ability to track warped records. Listening tests of the complete Revolver system involved not only a variety of music recordings but several test records designed to establish the tracking abilities and limitations of a cartridge. Another system test evaluated the effectiveness of the base isolation system in reducing the transmission of vibration through the mounting feet to the pickup.

The cartridge output was 3.85 millivolts at a recorded velocity of 3.54 cm/s. With a total cartridge load of47,000 ohms and 170 picofarads (100 in the arm and signal cable wiring plus 70 in our external connections), frequency response was flat from 40 to 6,000 Hz with the CBS STR 100 test record, rising smoothly to a maximum of +8 dB at 17,000 Hz. The channel separation was 21 to 24 dB from 500 to 12,000 Hz and remained a very good 15 dB all the way to 20,000 Hz. The two channels were unusually symmetrical, giving exactly the same output voltage and virtually identical response and crosstalk curves. The vertical tracking angle of the stylus was 20 degrees.

The high-velocity tracking tests indicated that the Linn Basik, despite its low price ($75), is an excellent cartridge. At 1.25 grams it was able to play our low-frequency test record (the Cook 60), the midfrequency (1,000-Hz) Fairchild 101, and the 60-micrometer level of the German HiFi #2 record (300 Hz). At the 1.8-gram force we used throughout our tests, the cartridge tracked the 80-micrometer level of this last record (some incipient distortion was audible at 70 micrometers, but it did not constitute what we would consider mistracking). Finally, the 90-micrometer level of the DIN 45-549 tracking-test record was playable at 1.8 grams. The Basik cartridge also produced a visually perfect sine wave from the 30-cm/s 1,000-Hz signals on the Fairchild 101 test record.

The combined effective mass of the arm and cartridge was a moderate 22 grams, which resonated with the stylus compliance at an ideal frequency of 9 to 10 Hz. The system was only average in its ability to track badly warped records, however. The Linn Basik LV X arm was easy to balance, and the readability and accuracy of its stylus-force indications were exemplary. The largest error (compared with an accurate balance gauge) was 0.1 gram, but at most settings there was no measurable error. The antiskating dial, like most we have seen, had to be set slightly higher than the tracking force in order to exert an equal force on both groove walls, but we found a 2.5-gram antiskating setting to be satisfactory for all tracking forces from 1.25 to 1.8 grams.

The cueing lift worked smoothly, with a damped descent that took 4 seconds, and there was no detectable outward drift of the pickup during the descent. The Linn Basik is one of only a handful of all the tonearms we have used and tested over the years that can be raised and lowered without repeating several seconds of the record. The solution here is a strip of soft rubber on the lift bar—why doesn’t everyone do that? Measuring the tracking error of the arm (an inherently imprecise process for which we use a special protractor) indicated a negligible maximum error of 0.4 degree per inch of radius. A computer plot of the tracking error, based on our measurements of the arm’s key dimensions, agreed almost exactly with the measured error.

The turntable’s speed was about 0.5 percent slow at 33V3 rpm and almost exactly correct at 45 rpm. The flutter measured 0.1 percent RMS with JIS weighting and ±0.15 percent DIN peak weighted. The rumble was —41 dB unweighted, — 55 dB with ARLL weighting, and — 59 dB with DIN B weighting. The isolation afforded by the two-stage decoupling system of the Revolver was good but not outstanding. There was one narrow transmission peak at 10 Hz, a larger one at about 30 Hz, and a smaller one at 90 Hz.

Comments

Our experience with the Revolver confirms a principle that we have long found to be valid; a simple, basically competent product design is most likely to offer the optimum combination of performance, reliability, and cost. No doubt one could come up with record-playing systems providing somewhat better performance than the Revolver in specific respects, but those that real ly outpointed it in any meaningful way would be considerably more expensive and quite probably less satisfactory in one or more other respects, such as ease of setup and handling or reliability.

For those people who are primarily interested in listening to records and do not particularly relish a protracted setup process involving endless minute adjustments of cartridge position, etc., we can heartily recommend the Revolver system. We were quite favorably impressed by the excellence and functionality of the Linn Basik LV X arm and by the obvious quality of the Linn Basik cartridge. The cartridge’s high-frequency emphasis, most of it between 10,000 and 20,000 Hz, looks alarming on graph paper, yet we never heard any undesirable sound quality that could be attributed to it. In performing its essential task of tracking high recorded levels over a wide frequency range without audible distortion, the cartridge proved to be outstanding. And on the turntable’s part, audible hum, rumble, and flutter were simply nonexistent at any usable listening level.

The Revolver represents a balanced combination of components that deliver a high level of performance and reliability at a price that, by current standards, is quite moderate. The serious phonophile whose taste surpasses his budget should find it a worthwhile addition to his music system.

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