Spin Doctor

Upgrades for the Wand 14-4 Turntable and Tonearm
In the January 2024 Spin Doctor, I wrote about the innovative Wand 14-4 turntable from New Zealand (footnote 3). Almost immediately after I finished that piece, I was contacted by The Wand's US distributor about checking out some upgrades that are available for the Wand 14-4.

The upgrades are mostly trickle-down developments from the 14-5 turntable, allowing 14-4 owners to get some of the benefits from that more upmarket model. The most significant is the EV Battery Power Supply, which, as the name suggests, takes the motor off the power grid using a battery housed in a separate enclosure styled to match the turntable's design. Designer Simon Brown chose an old-school lead-acid battery for the EV, so there are none of the fire concerns you can get with lithium-ion batteries.

When you make the upgrade, your old SMPS power supply that came with the 14-4 becomes the battery charger, taking about six hours to reach full capacity. That should be enough power for about eight hours of playback, but if you're having an all-night party and you run out of juice, a switch lets you go back to wall power. I found the EV battery made a small but repeatable improvement in resolution of low-level detail, raising the overall performance of the 14-4 by a notch or two. This wasn't as big a step up as you get when, eg, you upgrade a Linn LP12 to a Radikal DC, but it's noticeable and worthwhile.

The second upgrade is a set of IsoAcoustics Gaia II footers, which replace The Wand's proprietary isolation feet. How much of a difference these make will depend somewhat on the supporting surface under your 14-4, but in a typical American wood-frame house, the improvement can be substantial.

I have a theory that turntables developed outside the US—in Europe or in this case, New Zealand—are poorly equipped to deal with US home construction, where floors can bounce like a trampoline. A turntable with a bouncy suspension, or even one with no isolation, can be very sensitive to footfalls. I once installed a very expensive but completely solid German turntable in an apartment that was next to where the D train—part of New York's subway system—comes off the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn. Every time a train went by, the record would skip. A set of Gaia footers solved the problem.

I like the 14-4's standard footers, with their O-ring rubber suspension, but the IsoAcoustics Gaias take the isolation level up a step. They raise the height of the 14-4 by more than an inch, so the appearance isn't quite as low and sleek as before. I typically have my turntable sitting on a high-tech Kevlar and carbon-fiber shelf made years ago by a French company called Sicomin, which in turn sits on a rack that's anchored to the floor. With this solid foundation, the Gaia footers didn't make much of a difference, but I've seen and heard plenty of setups where they were a godsend.

Finally, I tried the carbon-fiber platter mat from the 14-5, a thin sheet of carbon fiber with radial slits. These slits are designed to confine energy transferred from the record to the mat in one area so that it dissipates before reaching the stylus on the next rotation of the record. When you buy the mat, you also get a carbon-fiber ring that covers the extended rim of the 14-4's oversized platter. When I reviewed the stock 14-4, this rim struck me as a safety concern; just one clumsy record-cueing job could end a night of listening in tears when your precious stylus lands on bare aluminum rim and exposed screw heads. The carbon-fiber ring puts a smooth cover over the dangerous bits. It may not be the ideal surface to land your stylus on, but it's unlikely to tear it off.

Sonically, the platter mat resulted in a small but clear improvement over the bare acrylic surface of the stock platter. As I wrote in Spin Doctor 4, I'm not a fan of hard platter surfaces unless there's a good clamping system to ensure a tight interface with the record. The 14-4 comes equipped with a well-designed dedicated clamp, but the carbon mat delivered improved detail and focus. Maybe it's those radial slits—who knows—but Simon Brown clearly knows what he's doing.

M•A Recordings Record Inner Sleeves
My friend Todd Garfinkle is a brilliant recording engineer, and for the last 36 years he has made some of the most beautiful recordings imaginable on his own M•A Recordings label (footnote 4). Like a modern-day audiophile reincarnation of Alan Lomax, he travels the world seeking amazing indigenous musicians, then records them in natural-sounding churches and other venues with exceptional acoustics. Todd's techniques are purist: He records with two omnidirectional microphones directly to two channels, leveraging his intuitive gift for finding the perfect spots for the musicians and the microphones. His recording setup fits in a carry-on bag.

For most of M•A Recordings' history, Todd embraced high-resolution digital formats for recording and distribution; more recently, he succumbed to requests to release some of his best-known recordings on vinyl. Unimpressed by any of the popular HDPE audiophile-grade inner sleeves, he sought a better solution for protecting his label's precious records. For some of his earlier CD releases, he used CD-sized sleeves made by a Japanese company, so he contacted that manufacturer to see if they had an LP-sized equivalent. They didn't, but after a few false starts, they proposed a sleeve made from the same material used in Shoji screens seen in Japanese homes. Room dividers. Historically, these screens were made from rice paper, but this made them quite fragile, especially in households with small children, who enjoyed poking little fingers through the paper. Modern screens use a much tougher woven blend of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), making them more resistant to little fingers but also permeable, so air can flow. Todd saw this as a big advantage over normal HDPE sleeves, which are airtight and watertight: They trap environmental humidity and any moisture left on the record after cleaning.

When you hold one in your hand, the M•A Recordings inner sleeves feel completely different from any sleeve you've previously encountered. They have a soft, clothlike texture that makes me think I could sew a pillowcase from it and be perfectly comfortable. Despite the softness, they have enough structure to allow a sleeved record to slide into the jacket without a corner folding over or having it bunch up as often happens with round-bottom HDPE sleeves. Measured against one of the popular Mo-Fi inner sleeves, I found the M•A inner just a tad narrower and perhaps a couple of millimeters taller. There's still plenty of width for 180gm or 200gm pressings. At the opening, the front and back edges are slightly offset, making it a bit easier to insert a record one-handed.

I know some people like to keep the record in its inner sleeve inside the outer sleeve but outside the jacket, but I like to keep my records sleeved as they came when new, with the record in its inner sleeve inside. When replacing the inner, I slide the record, including the new inner, into the factory-printed inner sleeve; then I slide the whole sandwich into the record jacket. The M•A sleeves were narrow enough to allow this with about 90% of printed inner sleeves. With the other 10% or so, the fit was too tight, so I had to insert the printed sleeve separately.

Garfinkle doesn't claim any special antistatic properties for his sleeves, but in use, I found that the softness of the M•A sleeves resulted in less friction and so less static buildup. I've seen some reviews complaining about the cost—$33.33 pack of 50 for 12" records $17.50 pack of 25 for 10" records—but with new records selling for $30 or more, $33.33 (get it?) for 50 sleeves, or about 67 cents each, hardly seems extravagant. There's also a 10" version for 78 collectors, but so far there is no 7" version. Highly recommended

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Footnote 3: Design Build Listen, PO Box 32, Motueka 7143, New Zealand. Tel: +64 21-502037. Email: info@designbuildlisten.com. Web: designbuildlisten.com. US importer: Profundo, 2051 Gattis School Rd. Suite 540/123, Round Rock, TX 78664. Tel: (510) 375-8651. Email: info@profundo.us. Web: profundo.us.

Footnote 4: M•A Recordings, PO Box 261192, Encino, CA 91426. Tel: (818) 907-9996. Email: info@marecordings.com. Web: marecordings.com.