Wheel 3’s direct drive is a big deal. The first prototypes of Wheel 3 had belt drives. A belt drive is great at filtering out vibrations, but hard to control in a turntable like Wheel. We knew a directly driven plateau would be the best way forward for Wheel 3, but developing a new motor from scratch would take many months of extra time.
In a Wheel 3, everything between the stylus tip and the connectors is specially designed, nothing is standard. After months of intense discussion, we took the plunge: We decided to delay Wheel 3’s introduction, and built a direct drive motor for it.
Wheel 3 direct drive rotor with 24 neodymium N52 magnets. The entire motor has to be very flat to fit in Wheel 3’s design, and the tonearm would be very close to the motor. Luckily Wheel 3’s optical stylus is completely immune to magnet stray fields.
Simple
In theory, direct drive is the ideal solution. The plateau is the motor, with nothing in between. But a slow running motor, directly bolted to the plateau, and thus the record, and the stylus, without a flywheel, put on its side, is something entirely different.
Even the best direct drive motor isn't perfectly stable*. It cogs, ripples, and coils and magnets are never uniform, and in a Wheel, there’s no way to cover this up.
The axial flux multilayer pcb stator. It's built in Wheel 3’s top plate. Five optical sensors continuously monitor movement for ultra precise and silent motion.
Wheel control
It took us four years to develop a working control system for Wheel 2. It is a complex interplay between motors, sensors, electronics and software. Wheel 3’s self learning motion system is truly next gen. Combined with the direct drive motor, it’s look ahead strategy calculates all deviations in just one 360° turn, including unbalanced, off-center and warped records. Because it also continuously compares stylus and arm position measurements, it is pitch perfect from the first note. Tracking and groove contact precision are second to none.
*If you want to dive into the technology of turntable motors and more, read Korf Audio’s blog. Korf Audio builds very clever high-end tonearms, and the blog is very well written.