Two things nobody warns you about importing Japanese hi-fi: the 50/60Hz motor question, and why a turntable ships worse than a heavier amp

[RenSynthJp]

Following on from the Hard Off and shipping-limits threads I posted earlier this month - I went and priced a couple of real parcels this week and hit two things that I had not seen written down anywhere, so here they are.

1. Voltage is the famous problem. Frequency is the quiet one.

Everyone knows Japanese domestic gear is 100V and that you need a step-down transformer. What gets skipped is that Japan runs two mains frequencies - 50Hz in the east (Tokyo, Tohoku) and 60Hz in the west (Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka). The dividing line runs through Shizuoka and Niigata.

For most of what we buy this does not matter. Amps, tuners, CD players, anything with a switching or conventional PSU: frequency is irrelevant, voltage is everything.

Where it does matter is motors:

- A direct-drive turntable with quartz speed control regulates the platter electronically. Technics put quartz lock on the SL-1200MK2 in 1979 and it does not care what your grid does. Buy one of those and forget about it.
- A belt-drive deck running an AC synchronous motor derives its speed from the mains frequency. A 60Hz-market deck on a 50Hz supply runs slow, and no amount of transformer fixes that - a transformer changes volts, not hertz. Some designs have a swappable pulley or a switch for it; a lot of the cheap 70s stuff does not.
- Same principle applies to some open-reel and cassette transports with synchronous capstan motors.

So the question to ask a seller is not "is it 100V" (it is), it is "what kind of motor". Worth knowing before you bid rather than after.

2. The turntable ships worse than the amp, even though it weighs less

This one genuinely surprised me. I quoted two realistic boxed parcels out of Japan on 29 August: