Upgrade description

Your final turntable

I bet many people hate to say goodbye to the good old turntable...

Some people are luckier than other- it's the ones who bought a GyroDec (John Michell's unjustly overlooked masterpiece). For the unlucky it's good to know that it still is possible to buy this great player. It's good - and it can get even better! As many knows through reading different ads in High Fidelity and other magazines, this turntable can be modified resulting in even absolutely great sound-improvements.

Gert Pedersen (the man behind the beautiful suspensions on Niels Nørby and other's GyroDec) have systemized these upgrades. The upgrade consists of four points.

Note that all four steps must be carried out simultaneously to achieve the wanted result.

First modification consist in discarding the hopeless spiralsprings (real men don't like spiralsprings) and replace them with rubberband-suspensions, inspired of SME's MODEL 30. These are very beautiful, precisely machined in polished stainless steel. Each spiralspring are replaced by 3 O-rings accurately suited to match the job. The original opportunity to adjust the chassis from the upside remains, though you have to remove the 'nice' covercups, which everyone who can hear, have removed already.

 

Second modification consist in an ingenious stabilization of horizontal movement on the whole floating chassis. A couple of poles are used to fix a kevlar-wire, which via a rubberdisconnected screw are attached in point of each suspension. After adjustment, nothing ever moves sideways again!

Third modification consists in removing the entire motorsystem from firm contact with the acrylic bottom, on GyroDec MK I-III. Instead, the motor is hung up in 4 quite small rubbersuspensions, who are adjustable in all directions.
This step is not executed on models with stand-alone motors.

 

Motor rubber-suspension (not executed on stand-alone motors)

Temporarily final modification consist in a resonance-deadening of the chassis underside, plus sanddampening and reinforcement around the main bearing. Detailed installation-instructions with drawings and drillmeasurements follows.

 

Listen... the soundimprovements are found in the shape of a much quieter rendering of the sound, and a much better sense of extension in both bass and treble.

Summarized you can say, that for just a little extra money you can rebuild a MICHELL GYRODEC to become a worldclass turntable.

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Here's a summary of the Michell GyroDec upgrade shown:

1. The floating chassis is hung up in rubberbands inspired by SME's MODEL 30. Top- and bottomsuspension are precisely machined, and made from polished stainless steel. Topsuspension remains adjustable.

2. The floating chassis is locked horizontally by flexible, but highly stable kevlar-wires, fixed to adjustable poles.

3. The main bearing is reinforced with a double steel-attachment around the central part. The top-attachment part works like a well around the main bearing, and keeps the sand away.

4. The chassis underside is stiffened/resonancedamped with special chemical metal, and the spaces between the 3 "underside-seperators" plus the sand-container, gets filled with oven-dried sand.

5. On GyroDec MK I-III, the motor's contact with the bottom acrylic-plinth are removed and the motor is hung up in 4 small rubberbands, adjustable in all directions.
The motor on models with stand-alone does not need to be upgraded.

These steps provide sound improvements such as much quieter sound-rendering. With a pre-known record, especially kettledrum/bassdrum/double-bass and cello gets tightened up, so strikes are heard extremely fast and precise without muddy distortion. Apart from this, the extension in both bass and treble are improved a lot.

Prices are found under Info & prices.