these people are fooling around, many of the accessories and tweaks are just made up...why this happens to a great turntable just because it is unconventionally powered isindicative of narrow and vindictive minds at work. one warning do not use the steam recovery record cleaning mod, if the thermostat jams up it will melt your lp

opens the pores on your face

Can cause severe, disfiguring burns

What can I say that hasn't already been said. Very simply, if you love vinyl and don't mind an occasional severe disfiguring burn then this is the table for you. This table just dissappears behind a wall of steam and mechanical tumult. Sculding hot nuclear steam spews from a vast and impressive network of pipes and pressure release valves quickly filling the listening room. I still get an adrenaline rush when I turn the thing on. Oh, yes did I mention the music(that's what this hobby is all about) you can still hear the music!!! Even with the incredibly high noise floor. That's what it's all about folks. Beautiful, steam driven vinyl. If you're a long time fan of the sound of steam driven vinyl or have always wanted to try it but never new how to get started Lirpa is the way to go.

System

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This device always gets the best reviews.

I cannot figure out what it actually does.

When I first got this thing, I saw the UPS man drop it out of his truck, and when I opened the carton, to my horror it was clearly broken. There were parts all over. The anti-matter containment field was no longer keeping the electrons aligned. The particle generator kept shooting out miniature images of Princess Leah. Worst of all the free Yoda action-figure came with the brown snake--everybody's Yoda has the brown snake. I wanted the black snake.

Well a quick call to Ubid got all of this straightened out. The president of Lirpa labs, a fellow who looked surprisingly like Bob Carver, came out to my house and before I new it, everything was up and running. He had to make a couple trips to radioshack, but all is well. I got 4 RS battery cards out of the deal too. Best of all, I think he's back on speaking terms with stereophile now as a result.

Well how does it work? In a word, hellaciously amazingly good. It's like my 8 track tapes have 16 tracks. Thank goodness I cleaned out K-mart's selection. I now have all of the KC and the Sunshine Band's hits--all one of them. Let me tell you that when KC hits the high notes, all the dogs in the neighborhood come running. This thing has such high WAF that my wife has asked me to mount it to the hood of her minivan. I am not sure if that's a good idea though, with the dogs chasing and such.

I must give this a resounding class Pi recommedation--somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. It's not quite a 4 because of the Yoda snake deal. Soon I hope to report on its compatability with the Tice power conditioner and Goldmund speaker cables. These products reportedly spin electrons only in the forward direction, so this could be a match made in heaven.

CSO

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I recently came across one of these Lirpa Labs Turbo Steamtables at a cousin's wedding. The DJ (who also was doing the catering) had apparently built a stainless steel buffet warming table around the unit. So while he was spinning vinyl, he was also keeping the ziti and stuffed shells warm! The first thing I noticed was that the Lirpa Labs unit produced a less-than-neutral, delicately balanced (but slightly syrupy) flavor to the...wait, that was the veal. Seriously, I bought his table right then and there and I couldn't wait to get home and play some serious records. I was up all night, finding music in those grooves I hadn't heard in years! At dawn, I did notice a shift in the coloration once I switched over to french toast, sausage, and scrambled eggs. Things just sounded brighter when breakfast meats were being heated in the steam table, rather than heavier pastas. All around a great addition to any dining/listening room....4 stars for sound, 5 stars for keeping food warm, overall 4 stars!

RECALL NOTICE!!! Lirpa has recalled serial numbers LTS 10115 thru 10994 for improper suspension setup. During testing, the usual four jumbo green olives that support each corner (sixteen total) were installed with the pits left in. This produces a much harder and chewier jaw-breaking sound, rather than the quadra-olive(tm) hollow resonance effect desired. To compensate, Lirpa is offering all owners of these serial numbers a free pimento sound-core enhancement to the olive suspension. The resulting sound is much tastier and colorful. Remember to replace the quadra-olive suspension every 100 hours of playing (more often at higher elevations). 4-stars with the pimento enhancement (gustatorily and sonically recommended).

Makes a decent wok.

Takes at least 4 13 year old Phillipino kids to maintain.

I use one in each of my sweat-sh, uh, factories because I figure if they're going to listen to that crazy chicken music they might as well do Giffs shirts at the same time. In fact, I sent one to Howard Stern for his birthday.

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The unwavering support of the Lirpa community.

Hard to clean - small animals take refuge from the cold by the steam boilers. Deforestation of West Virginia necessary for extended periods of play. Seemingly continuous EPA inspections.

Recently I noticed that my Lirpa was beginning to sound a bit sluggish. Of course I suspected the Shropshire Newcomen coal-fired steam boiler. Could it be that the Romanian refugees I had purchased on eBay weren’t such a bargain after all?

A quick trip to the base of the turntable showed that the plucky Romanians were stoking industriously (much better than those Central American kids Kathy Lee Gifford pawned off on me – but that’s another review) and my mountain of coal was still as large as the Carpathians. So power wasn’t the problem. (I know I know, I should upgrade to cold fusion, but call me traditionalist – fusion just doesn’t have the warmth of fossil fuel, perhaps it’s the hole in the ozone.)

I was beginning to realize that this was not your typical bituminous bifurcation problem. I told the Romanians to take the night off, opened the release valves, donned my spelunking gear and lowered myself into the forward hatch of the tonearm.

Things appeared normal for the first 15 minutes of the descent, but I was not prepared for what I encountered just twelve maxwells past the Gaussian juncture. Although the previous owner had assured me that the factory had installed all of the Mk III modifications, the depleted uranium counterbalance was nowhere to be found! In its place was a jerry-rigged gallium/iridium-arsenide fixed-aspect field generator, obviously purloined from the ill-fated Lirpa One Series.

Aside from being devastated by the prevaricated representations made by the previous owner, I was now saddled with a seemingly insurmountable technological dilemma: How to dissemble the Gaussian juncture for counter-balance insertion without distorting the magnetic flux-capacitance inductors?

Fortunately, the answer was as close as the Lirpa Users Group (LUG) http://www.steamtable.org/users/lirpa/mkiii/mods/index.html

Alan Peterman, of Portland, Oregon had posted the obvious solution: De-couple the wave-resonance gimbals during the insertion process! Of course it seems obvious now, but at the time it really had me stumped. Thanks again, Alan!

Now it was simply a matter of machining the counterbalance to Mk III tolerances, which I was able to obtain from Kneel Yung Moon, who had a copy of the original factory blueprints! The insertion went without a hitch, and my Fluke measured ZERO inductor distortion!

The next morning, I powered up the table, which took a little longer than the customary 45 minutes, because the Romanians were still drunk from their night of freedom. The sound, however, was staggering. William Shatner’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” brought tears to my eyes again. All of the delicate nuances of Alan Sherman’s live performance of “Camp Grenada” were revealed once more. As David has noted in a previous review, the Lirpa positively bleets.

Yes, there are pitfalls, trials and tribulations involved with Lirpa ownership. But when one hears the subphonic regurgitations of John Cale, these difficulties pale in comparison with the aural pleasure Lirpa ownership affords.

System:

Lirpa Labs Turbo Steamtable – now with ALL Mk III mods, Romanian coal-stokers
(replaced the standard Nepalese coal-stoking Lirpa Sherpas)
Zeigler/Nixon Trutheller 2.b Amplifaxer
with Sirica/Jaworsky sub-poena module)
Universal Esperanto Speakers
Morrison Venezuelan Beaver-Fur Interconnects
Tripp/Goldman surge protector

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Incredible Synergy with Krell KAV-300i and RadioShack Interconnects

shhhhhhhhh!! It's a secret!!

The Lirpa is the best turntable to show off the usually recalcitrant Krell KAV-300i integrated. The Krell chimerates, depending on the goatiness of the interconnects. With the Radio Shack Theatre Gold interconnects in other parts of the system, the Lirpa positively bleets. One has never heard better, except perhaps with Bose 901s or the famous Dynalab SDA 2.8 speakers.

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Adapts to mouse fodder.

Smell

It has been known for some time that
the drive system of Turbo can be subject to flutter.

Mouse drive is the answer!

Mouse drive provides that tweak which smoothes the wheezes and gasps (which so many of us love) produced by the steamtable, without doing away with those sexy sound effects!

Mouse drive operates at an exact 33 1/3
mouse RPM. It produces no audable hum
or vibration.

The ferris wheel connects directly to the Lirba table via the usual belt.

And these little critters really perform! Round and round.

Low upkeep. Six months pettets supplied.
Low maintenance.
Three critters supplied, wheel, belt for
$l9.95. Thousand mile radius only.

Garage Stereo
Greenbelt, Ark. 30470

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Outperforms all in its class

Minor upgrades can be costly

I recently got this off Ubid for a steal price of only $8507.00 plus shipping ($480)... I was so stoked to hook it up because I've heard so much about this unit. I was a little disappointed with it at first during the "breaking in" stage because it melted some of my records like candles. Then I visited the Lirpa website and discovered a new upgrade - Cold Fusion - apparently, some Russian scientist discovered how to impliment cold fusion into the drive system of the modern turntable. It carried a hefty price tag at just under $200k but since I spent that much on cables alone I figured it was worth it. And it was! Along with the standard diamond-tip quad-needle upgrade, the Cold fusion drive brought out sounds on my records that I never knew existed! I never knew they put 5.1 surround sound encoding on vinyl lps, but they do... my old records now have a quintraphonic soundstage that I've never even experienced listening to CD's.
The electromagnetic space detector is fantastic for defogging, ionization and it's intended function: track selection. I was a little put off by the remote at first. I mean, I didn't know what to feed him or where he was gonna sleep and whatnot, but since I put on my Thomas Dolby - Golden Age of Wireless and we both rocked out to She Blinded Me With Science, we've been getting along famously. He sleeps in the catbox when I'm not home and I haven't had to feed him yet. I think he eats bugs because I haven't had any pests lately.
Last week I almost had a meltdown, but I managed to engage the emergency shut-off switch before it exploded. Also, just so you know - if you're planning to upgrade to the cold fusion drive system, be aware that it's quite large - I had to build an extra room off the side of the house to enclose it (and keep in mind that all 4 walls as well as ceiling and floor must have a 2" thick lead barrier with no gaps).
Another great benefit of this thing is the fact that it doesn't skip. Weighing in at over 5000 lbs, I can't even move it. I hear that next year they are coming out with one for the car stereo audiophile. My sources say that it's going to be internal combustion driven and it will have 2 models - slot loading and tray loading. Who knows, maybe there's a 10 lp changer on the way.
I was thinking of building a sauna so I can make use of the steam drive, but if someone wants to buy it off me I might consider selling it.

This is the perfect record player. Buy it as soon as you can!

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