Still rollin’, so join me this week as I service a rare and absolutely beautiful Yamaha PX-3 direct drive linear tracking turntable.

The Yamaha PX-3 turntable is certainly rare, at least here in Australia. It’s also absolutely beautiful and in the same ilk design-wise as the equally lovely Pioneer PL-L1000, the gorgeous Technics SL-M3 and even the baby Technics SL-10. I’ve written about all of these, and more, previously.

These decks and others like them represented the last great high-tech vinyl turntable push from Japan, on the eve of the introduction of the compact disc. They are, for this and other reasons, highly collectible and desirable machines.

BTW, you guys sick of turntable articles yet..?! There are hundreds more, I’m just writing about turntables I’ve looked at in the last couple of months at the moment, as these are fresh in my mind. We need to dig into the archives…!

Background

This beautiful Yamaha PX-3 belongs to Scott, one of my more serious customers and Yamaha collectors. Scott hopefully won’t mind me saying this, but he is a really decent human, and people like Scott make my job of working on their classic hi-fi equipment a pleasure. I mean this in all seriousness: good customers are like gold.

So Scott has been on a hi-fi collecting mission over the past year or two, and we’ve had various conversations about classic gear. Scott has accumulated some of the pieces we’ve discussed and many others we haven’t, including the incredible, almost NOS condition Yamaha PX-3, which this article is about.

I think it’s fair to say that Scott, and quite a few others, have built at least part of their systems around conversations like these, articles like the one you’re reading today, and the few others available elsewhere on the interwebs.

If you love golden era Yamaha hi-fi equipment as much as Scott and I do, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss articles on many more great Yamaha pieces, including many of Scott’s, like the Yamaha M-2, M-4, two Yamaha B-3s, etc.

For a video overview of the Yamaha PX-3 and my work on it, check out my first video in a while:

Yamaha PX-3 Features

The Yamaha PX-3 is a solid, well-built mid-tier direct drive linear tracking turntable from around 1981, just before the arrival of compact disc. Equipment like this is so rare these days that it seems even Yamaha has forgotten about it, naming a poxy modern class D PA amplifier the PX3, and having no reference to the original and way cooler PX-3 anywhere on their website or history. Shame, Yamaha. Don’t go buying one of those, BTW!

Like other linear trackers, the PX-3 uses a servo control system to attempt to eliminate tracking error. The tangential alignment of a linear tracking arm does, in theory, eliminate the error, but the small amount of ‘hang’ that occurs as the arm tracks the groove due to the non-zero friction in the arm system means that there will inevitably be some small amount of ‘lagging’ induced tracking error.

A Servo motor and sensors correct for this, so the actual tracking error at any given moment is low, but rarely actually zero, just to make a technical point. It’s still much lower than with conventional radially mounted arms, however.

The other consideration with short-armed linear trackers like the Yamaha PX-3 is cartridge matching. By design, the tonearm mass of machines like these is relatively low, and this means you’ll be limited in terms of the cartridges you can use with them. The best suited will be medium to higher compliance designs like the Audio Technica AT-VM95ML I fitted here.

This eliminates many of the better low-compliance moving coil cartridges from the equation, unfortunately. There are still good MC options available, but definitely no Denon DL-103s here at the budget end and certainly no Ortofon MC-A90 or Supex SDX-1100D, two carts I use on my FR-64S, please people! Cartridge-tonearm matching is a science, so if you need tailored assistance, our advisory service is at your service!

As usual, Audio Database has some good information about the Yamaha PX-3.

Yamaha PX-3 Specifications

As always, courtesy of our friends @ Vinyl Engine, adapted by Liquid Mike

Drive system: direct drive

Motor: 4-phase, 8-pole coreless DC Hall motor

Servo control: quartz PLL

Platter: 300mm die-cast aluminium, 1.6kg (including mat)

Speeds: 33 and 45rpm

Signal to noise ratio: 77dB

Wow and flutter: 0.015% WRMS (wowsers, that’s low)

Arm type: linear tracking

Effective length: 190mm

Effective mass: 17g (at 1.5g tracking force)

Cartridge weight: 5 to 11g (10 to 16g with sub weights)

Dimensions: 469 x 149 x 428mm

Weight: 12kg

Year: 1981

Service

This Yamaha PX-3 had likely never had service before, so this was an excellent opportunity to attend to the arm drive belts, cleaning and lubrication, and the damaged cartridge you’ll see in the images. I also took the opportunity to replace the failure-prone RIFA mains safety capacitor, which I do as a general precaution. Let’s go.

Results

Servicing this absolutely beautiful Yamaha PX-3 was a real pleasure. I’m pleased to report that she runs perfectly now after a little care and attention, as most pieces do. I think Scott picked a real winner here. I just cannot imagine another PX-3 or any other turntable from 1981 presenting in this condition.

Sonically, this turntable is dead quiet, as all good turntables should be, with no mechanical noise emanating from the deck, nor any obvious hum or rumble, even with headphones. Wow and flutter is not noticeable, confirming the excellent spec, and the AT-VM95ML sounded predictably spacious and rich, without any obvious emphasis of a certain part of the spectrum, nor any objectionable distortion.

This is courtesy of the design and a correctly set-up tangentially tracking tonearm. That’s important too because if overhang is anything other than 0mm on a linear tracker, tracking distortion will be through the roof, and that ain’t good.

As I always say regarding any piece of hi-fi equipment: get the best condition example you can. Good condition means someone cared for the equipment and likely had it maintained by people who cared. Nothing scares me more than a highly complex piece covered in dust, dirt and with bits and pieces broken. In fact, I often refuse such pieces.

A quick check on sales aggregator Hifi Shark shows that the Yamaha PX-3 typically sells for very sensible money. Most will need TLC by this age, provided by someone who doesn’t just look at something like this and think: Recap! I’ve seen these turntables sell for $1000 – 2000 AUD, and that represents spectacular buying, so if you have the opportunity, you know what to do.

In terms of performance compared to modern turntables of the same price, well, you already know the answer to that, or you wouldn’t be here. I would take this over anything new up to about 4 or 5K AUD, no need to even think about that. No, it doesn’t have a wooden headshell, leather platter or other ‘hi-fi hipster bro’ parts and materials, but thank goodness! I’ll tell you what it is: it’s made in Japan, during the golden era, and that means something.

What does made in Japan mean? Well, generally, exceptional design and engineering, well-thought-out products that work ergonomically and technically, and that are well-made and well-finished, far ahead of designs from elsewhere in most cases. It means equipment that sounds good because Japanese hi-fi culture demands that. And, for all those reasons, it means equipment that is desirable, collectible and long-lasting. Bravo Japan.

🙂

Thanks!

As always, thank you for visiting. I hope you found this article informative, and perhaps it even inspires you to go and find your own Yamaha PX-3! If you have a PX-3 you’d like me to look at or any other lovely linear tracker for that matter, you are welcome to contact us.

Sidenote: As you know, very little quality, original content like this exists until articles like it are created. I was recently asked: Who pays me to write these articles? My surprised reply was “Nobody!”, though that would be nice! 

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