Teac T1 transport and VRDS secrets revealed.

In case you didn't know it already, VRDS is a genius innovation from TEAC company and the abbreviation stands for Very Rigid Disc Clamping System.
You can trust me - this is ROCKET SCIENCE.
That's why VRDS is used by the worlds finest and most expensive CD players like top level Wadia, Spectral, Esoteric, Tascam, and of course TEAC. (anyway - Esoteric and Tascam are brands of teac company - the former is for filthy rich americans (sort of a Lexus) and the latter is for pro market - radio, broadcasting, studio, recording companies.)

There are 3 different levels of VRDS: Top one: full metal, middle one: metal-carbon composite hybrid and the cheap one : full plastic.

Under my magnifying glass below is the cheapest VRDS from a T1 transport. A real mean machine from TEAC - the entry level player with real high end pretensions.

VRDS Teac

So far so good - simple face plate, not too many buttons, nice alu decor, nice "elevator" style buttons with backlit, dimmable display, quite heavy box - looks much better than average players.

My job besides evaluating the player was to install Trichord 2 clock.

VRDS Teac

What a surprise - after removing the outer hood, we find inside the second metal chassis. I don't know what for - but lets assume it is very nice.

VRDS Teac

Wow - the VRDS looks positively high tech, and considering all these ribs on a massive support bridge , which look like a cheetah in full speed , I am really impressed.

But lets drill deeper. Oil of wisdom lies deed deeep.

VRDS Teac

You can appreciate three sections of this player - one is power supply, AC conditioning and raw rectification. Middle is mechanism, and right one is digital servo and SP/DIF transmitter circuit.

VRDS Teac

After removing - the bridge turns out to be a FAKE ONE. It is made of recycled car bumpers and has NO MECHANICAL ROLE. It is a mask, a decor. It is a push-up bra equivalent - to optically fool naive men who tend to "buy by eyes".

Under the rocket science bridge we reveal the steel piece of plate - not VERY RIGID for sure.
The motor is a standard Sony motor - a 3 dollar brushed Mabuchi from China.

VRDS Teac

The whole bridge including the famous clamp weights 30 grams and is VERY WOBBLY.

Teac used simply the standard Sony mechanism KSS240 and what they did - they turned it upside down - the motor went up, and the spindle centre went down.
NOTHING was added except the green plastic flywheel. It is just a standard sony mechanism and laser - the cheapest which existed at that time - circa 1999.

VRDS Teac

There is no magnetic rails like in the more costly KSS151A which is a base of MUCH more costly VRDS mechanism from middle and top range. In this cheap one - there is a mechanism and laser which is THE most popular laser of all time. Very reliable, lives long and reads everything really. It is just very slow due to tracking based on plastic snail gear. So the advance from track 1 to track 12 takes few seconds. But it is a minor issue.

Most important is that the replacement parts including laser are easy to find.

VRDS Teac sony laser

What was once the centre spindle for CD is now merely a loose support. The motor spins the upper green plate.

VRDS Teac

The green flywheel supposedly: supports the whole CD on entire surface ( I seriously doubt it) and also supposedly is slightly concave to flatten out CD wrinkles - I deny it.
The CD is held and centered by the central black piece which is standard Sony 240 support ring. See above - the metal ring and blask nipple in the middle spin the disk, not th egreen plastic.

In this cheap application, the huge clamp is ONLY a decor, a psychological selling point. Maybe in VRDS CMK-3,2 it works better.

VRDS Teac

This motor really is an inadequate piece of s**t.

If you think that Teac was alone using this plastic crap - look at Wadia - the king of VRDS !!!!!!

Modell	Mechanism	Comment
WADIA 21	VRDS CMK-4 – KSS-240A	Plastic crap
WADIA 23	Pioneer Stable Platter PEA1030	Plastic crap
WADIA 301	Pioneer Stable Platter PEA1343	Plastic crap
WADIA 302	Philips VAE 1250	Plastic crap
WADIA 830	Pioneer Stable Platter PEA1343	Plastic crap
WADIA 831	Pioneer Stable Platter	Plastic crap
WADIA 850	VRDS CMK-4-a – KSS-240A	Plastic crap

But wait a minute: here is what "Soundstage" magazine wrote in april 2000 about the 830 Modell and its mechanism versus VRDS CMK-4:
Wadia believes that a high-performance transport mechanism is a fundamental building block to superior sound and chose the highly regarded Pioneer PD-S505 Stable Platter mechanism to orchestrate CD playback. Wadia acknowledges that the PD-S505 is not quite the equal of the behemoth TEAC VRDS mechanism used in the more expensive 850...

BEHEMOTH !!??!! Bwaaahahahaha.

since we are here already - some laser cleaning is a nice thing to do.

The original clock, despite the fact it is a transport - was the cheapest and standard one. The player benefits from clock upgrade.

Evaluation of T1

This player, despite the fact that compared to real sony players - is 10 x overpriced and it has a fake VRDS - plays nice. With the clock and good digital cable (Siltech) it serves as a decent transport. It sounds fine and is VERY reliable.
Having said that - if you need a good transport - buy something better. Leave this one to naive people who know no better.
We, real men, choose real women, leaving the supermodells to the guys without imagination.

Interesting reading: newest VRDS mechanism - 15 years later. (and 5000 dollars costlier)
http://www.teac.com/esoteric/P-05D-05-brochure-Draft.pdf

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