Anyone recognize this Fons TT?

[absolon]

Found this rather cheesy looking TT this morning, a Fons International Mark 1.

It is a manual three speed direct drive with a very heavy platter. Both platter and arm are mounted to a suspended subchassis. Google has next to nothing but there was one link from the National Archive talking about how they use Theil, Fons etc for archiving.

It is in pretty rough cosmetic shape though fully functional and I probably would have saved my $15 and left it on the shelf but for the arm, a replacement for the original. It is a Grace G707 unfortunately missing the counterweight and sporting a cheap AT122 cartridge. I'm fairly confident I can find a replacement or have a friend make one up if I can determine the appropriate weight.

I've found the owners manual for the arm at the vinylengine but I'd still appreciate appreciate any info on either.

 

[absolon]

A little more searching and I found it was made by Fergus Fons in Scotland, a short-lived (75-82) company. The more common model is the GC30; this appears to have the same features but different cosmetics. Fons seems to be described as a poor man's Linn though I have no idea if that is true. I did read here that there is some conection between Fons, Ariston and Linn.

Opening up shows it is a belt drive with belt running under the deck. Platter is massive and the bulk of the weight in the table. Deck and top half of plinth is well done cast metal and bottom of plinth is cheap looking vinyl covered particle board, a very odd match. Broad range of voltage selections so this might well be an internationalized version of the GC30. Speed is electronically controlled rather than shifting the belt between pulley lands. Strobe ring is a bit gaudy, but very easy to read. It appears to have three raised 1/8" hard rubber rings on the platter to support the record so it may be no mat is intended?

After wiping the dust off and looking it over, I think I may have been a bit hasty in calling it cheesy. I think I'll clean it up and put a Luxman TA1 on it until I can get the Grace up and running.

 

[Holst]

Nice one, it looks like you found a lost gem.

 

[Johncan]

I have a CQ30 that looks identical to the table you found. Mine also has the Grace 707 tonearm. It is a fabulous turntable!! The critics are not kidding when they say it is a poor man's Linn. Set her up properly and she will sing for you.

Nice find. If you ever want to part with it, please let me know.

John

 

[Divotdog]

How about some pics after it is all cleaned up, looks like it might be a pretty cool TT. :yes:

 

[doucanoe]

It's the Fons! Heyyyyyyyy.

70's sitcom reference that Im sure be lost on many reading this.

Niffty table by the way.

RC

 

[absolon]

Johncan, thanks for that feedback. I was beginning to suspect it might be a diamond in the rough. Speeds are all accurate and stable and it is dead silent. I'm a fan of high mass suspended platters so I think I'll give this one the treatment. Do you use a mat with yours or just ride the record on the three o-rings?

The picture I saw in the vinylengine gallery ( http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/album_page.php?pic_id=408 ) is different but not greatly. I'll post pics when I've swapped the arms and this one is up and running again .

 

[Nat]

I am not sure about who did what, but Linn Fons and Ariston were all mixed up originally -- I think that Fons or Ariston was doing machining for Linn and there was some sort of patent infringment case which Linn won, though I remember thinking at the time that the reports I saw suggested that it was a less than obvious decision. I believe it had to do with the main bearing, which would suggest in might have been Ariston, since the Fons platter and bearing were significantly lighter than the Linns. HiFi News and Record Review revieved both the Linn and the Fons together, and kind of favored the Fons, though they regretted the cheesy cosmetics and sloppy construction. I think you made an excellent find.

 

[dogscanskate]

Iirc, the Ariston designer left Ariston to join Fergus-Fons in 1973 (me thinks). Linn machined parts for the Ariston Rd-11 and both came to an audio show in Europe with basically the same tt, one the Ariston Rd-11 and the other the Linn LP-12. The rest is history. The inverted bearing was whose creation? Seems like Ivor won that battle even though many experts side with the Ariston designer as the man behind the bearing.

As for the Cq-30, great find and worth maintaining !

 

[piece-it pete]

Very neat find!

It's the Fons! Heyyyyyyyy. RC

Where's the smiley for groaning??

Pete

 

[doucanoe]

Just couldn't resist Pete. I gotta get out more.

RC

 

[packrat]

What a coincidence, I just bought an armless CQ-30 purely out of curiosity! I am going to put an SME 3009 back on it.

Yours looks very similar to mine, except I don't have the strobe platter. Is it suspended? That Grace arm was a nice inclusion in what looks to be a dusty deal!

As for the Fons being a poor man's Linn - I'd call it more of a rich man's AR - the suspended part is a T-bar construction just like the AR-XA (etc.) and not the larger coffin shaped unit that an LP12 uses. It also has a pressed wood top plate, not a steel plate like Linn (or AR).

The electronic speed controlled DC motor was many years ahead of the trend, as was the upward cast (suedo inverted?) bearing, which is unique to Fons (and patented?). Both Linn and Ariston used a typical platter bearing with a pointed tip. The bearing on mine is very shiny with a slightly rounded end and has a very tight fit into the bearing well - I believe they advertised main bearing machining tolerances in the order of 0.5 thou of an inch.

 

[Johncan]

Johncan, thanks for that feedback. I was beginning to suspect it might be a diamond in the rough. Speeds are all accurate and stable and it is dead silent. I'm a fan of high mass suspended platters so I think I'll give this one the treatment. Do you use a mat with yours or just ride the record on the three o-rings?

The picture I saw in the vinylengine gallery ( http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/album_page.php?pic_id=408 ) is different but not greatly. I'll post pics when I've swapped the arms and this one is up and running again .

My platter is flat metal platter with a slightly raised outer lip. I use a felt pad on top of the platter. My Fons looks very similar to the one in the vinylengine link except my buttons are slightly different. I use mine to transcribe vinyl to CD. Rumble is minimal and the speed is dead-on.

John

 

[absolon]

Thanks for all the information. This is sounding better and better:thmbsp:

I'm not overly familiar with either the Linn or Ariston, but there are similarities to the Fons when looking at pictures of both. Due to positioning of the 3 platter o-rings, I'm fairly certain that this is meant for use without a mat. Deck on this one is metal, but stamped and formed rather than cast as I'd first thought. High quality metal work though the paint job, like the chipboard sub base, is low grade. I'd repaint except I'd lose the labeling. Orion lists a later and less expensive Mk 2 that may be the pressed wood deck version.

packrat, any trick to removing the platter? This one doesn't want to come off with standard tricks and due to the sub-deck belt, I'm wondering if there is some atypical means of removing it. I don't want to force it.

Checked the TT graveyard for a counterweight without success though I did pick up one that might be made to work. I'm going to have to fabricate a sleeve to mount to the tonearm that will carry the one I picked up this morning unless someone can put me on to a source for Grace parts. Also need to make up a mounting board so I can adapt the Luxman arm to the deck.

What really pisses me off is that I suspect the counterweight is stashed in the back of the store I picked this up at. There is a TT junkie that works there and he isn't allowed to buy for 5 days after the stuff hits the floor. He would have been the one who stocked this item, placing it inside the bottom section of an entertainment centre behind closed doors. I spoke to him about their stock just before I found this and he was saying they only had units with fixed headshells right now and they "are not nearly as good as removable headshells". He didn't look at all pleased when I found it and pointed out the Grace arm. I went back today and had them take a look, but no dice.

 

[Holst]

Here's an attempt at correcting the Ariston/Linn history part from HiFi World magazine.

The course of the Ariston story depends on who tells it - to this day it remains clouded by controversy. The gist is that, back in the early Seventies, Hamish Robertson approached a fresh- faced Ivor Tiefenbrun with a business idea. Ivor's dad owned an engineering facility in Glasgow, which Hamish wanted to manufacture his Ariston turntable. Although the deal came to nothing, soon after Ivor formed Linn Products and launched the LP12, a high- end deck in many ways similar to the Ariston. Hamish and Ivor duly fell out, one accusing the other of plagiarism.

This allegation is open to contention, since, despite the decksí obvious similarities, both owed a great debt to Thorens' TD 150, not to mention the original AR turntable. In truth, until the advent of the Oracle and Michell GyroDec (which appeared within weeks of each other in 1981), all belt-drive decks were pretty similarly fashioned.

Also some reaseach I did found said that Fergus Fons Ltd. joined William James 'Hamish' Robertson of Ariston in that suit.

So, from that we can guess that a Fons is not a Linn but it might truly be an Ariston design. By the way the RD11 had a better signal to noise rating than an lp12.

 

[packrat]

......
packrat, any trick to removing the platter? This one doesn't want to come off with standard tricks and due to the sub-deck belt, I'm wondering if there is some atypical means of removing it. I don't want to force it.

.....

That metal top deck sounds interesting - I wonder if your platter is exactly like the one on mine or if this is a different model all together?

All I can offer is to lift the platter up until you see the belt, and then try to slip it out of the groove it sits in. Mine has a one piece platter so the whole thing slips out of the bearing well with the shaft once I get the belt off. Rotating and lifting straight up at the same time might work too. Getting the platter back on is as much a pain - you have to stretch the belt back into the groove with shaft half inserted into the bearing well. The motor pully has a deep slot in it so this has all been accounted for in the design, although I think 3 hands are required get it back together easily.

BUT, you might want to check underneath to see if there is a screw into the side of the bearing housing. Maybe (pure guessing here) your bearing is different, and it's 'captured' like those on many low cost Japanese decks by a stepped bearing shaft and a screw going into the bearing housing. You can pull up on those all day long and until you take that little screw out of the side of the bearing housing the shaft will not move. (But these usually have removable platters.)

 

[packrat]

Here's an attempt at correcting the Ariston/Linn history part from HiFi World magazine.


Also some reaseach I did found said that Fergus Fons Ltd. joined William James 'Hamish' Robertson of Ariston in that suit.

So, from that we can guess that a Fons is not a Linn but it might truly be an Ariston design. By the way the RD11 had a better signal to noise rating than an lp12.

Somewhere else I read that Hamish Robertson formed Fons after leaving Ariston - now I wonder if it's nothing to do with him at all?

I believe that there is little similarity between the Fons and the Linn/Ariston. The suspension, the motor mounting location (on the sprung mass), the platter design, the bearing design, and the DC drive are all very unique to the Fons. But the Ariston outer platter on some models of RD11 did have the grooves in the top with rubber gaskets in them, just like the Fons that absolon has. Frankly, I'd love to get my hands on old issues of British hifi mags from the period just to read about what was going on back then over there.

 

[Holst]

I kept looking around last night, and I gather that Linn filed for patent protection against Ariston and Fons. The issue was all were using the same main bearing which Linn reguarded as being more important that the motor.
I suppose if we were to try to guess all the things the different compnays involved we up to one good guess might be Robertson looked at Turntables like the AR and came up with a way to allow the end user to decided what tonearm they wanted with his springs and clips and whatnot's.
It seems generally accepted in the court of public opinion that Tiefenbrun copied Robertsons plans and then proceeded to improve on the product over the years. Tiefenbrun obviously has better access to machine shops and such. Tiefenbrun thought the main bearing was the secret, Robertson felt it was the suspention and later improved that.
Just guessing but the Fons looks like they took the orginal idea and went their own way with electronic speed control.
It would be interesting to run the Fons through some real tests, not the vague wine tasting term reviews they use today and see where it places against the Linn and the Ariston.
My digging found Audio magazine listed the LP 12 and having a s/n of -60, HiFi world listed the RD11 at -72. Both are really good figures.
A real test would be wow and flutter stats, sometimes a weak point for low torque belt drives. The RD11 has a nifty 0.06%WRMS, my Audio with the Linn stat is elswhere this morning.
If the Fons fits in there, and there is every reason to believe it might, that is probably a whopper of a table.

 

[absolon]

The belly of the beast

Here are a couple of shots of the suspension, platter and arm.

There are a couple of keeper tabs that ride in the groove on the platter barrel preventing removal. Have to go in through the bottom but two quick turns of a screwdriver releases it. Platter bearing has a rounded end, Bearing pocket isn't particularly more substantial than I've seen before. Platter is cast, 1/4" thick plate, 1/2" rim and 3/8" walls on the barrel, about 5 lbs.

Arm cleaned up nicely and simply floats. I'm expecting good things from it! Got lucky with the counterweight and found one that will require minimum tweaking to fit on an old Sansui 2020BC. Cosmetically not a bad match either.

It looks like I might get to listen to it this weekend assuming DW doesn't get her knickers in a twist about the time I'll need to get it up and running.

 

[absolon]

Got it clean, lubed and arm set up using Baerwald alignment. Put a V15-III on it for initial play and cued up an East Wind direct cut version of the LA4. Very tight and solid and clear, certainly the best I've heard this cartridge sound. I'll be swapping and tweaking for a bit, but initial response is that the rumors are true, there is something to this table/arm combination.

Noted while working on it that while the motor is mounted to the steel sub chassis, the steel arm mount plate is decoupled from the motor/platter section by an aluminum channel extrusion. Also noted that it is a treat to adjust overhang and cartidge alignment by shifting the arm rather than mucking about with cartridge mount screws.