Acrylic platter

Lew, are you familiar with the Kenwood TS-10 Ceramic turntable sheet for the L07D? Was this considered an upgrade over SS?

Sorry, no CAF for me this year. RMAF is next.

Dave, I am familiar with it at a distance. I don't own one. And the reason I don't own one is that there is unanimous agreement among those that do or did own one that it is inferior to the stock stainless steel platter sheet, in terms of sonics.

I spent 4 hours at the show yesterday. The best thing that happened is that I bought 20 great LPs from one of the vendors for a total of $100. The VPI direct-drive cum 3D printed tonearm was there, but I did not even bother to see them, because I know I cannot judge how they would sound in a totally strange environment. I did however see the new Saskia II, and I had a nice chat with Win Tinnon, who is a great guy and good friend. He is showing it with headphones, using a Schroeder tonearm and a vintage Panasonic strain gauge cartridge which is driven by a Dave Slagle tube-based preamplifier. As Win himself admitted, the problem is that the headphones he was given to use by another company are not that great. I could only marvel at the beauty of the Saskia and the obvious state of the art approach taken by Win. His new controller is quite impressive.

Best vinyl room, or one of the best, was the Robiyatt Audio one with Miyajima cartridges on demo. Their latest mono was in a Gray tonearm on a restored Gray turntable, very very cool. They were using restored Quad 63s, by Electrostatic Solutions. The amps and preamp were new Miyajima products. The Miya phono stage has THREE phono inputs. Seems that manufacturers are getting the message.

Two addenda:

(1) The ceramic platter to which I am referring in my first paragraph is the one Dave asked about, the optional ceramic platter for the L07D.

(2) I made a technical error in stating that the Slagle preamp drives the strain gauge cartridge. It's obviously the other way around; the cartridge drives the preamp.

I just compared the SEAC SS 300 (solid) mat with the acrylic one but 5mm thick. My friend Lew advised the SEAC for my SP 10 mk II. Now I was always an admirer of P.Lurne who was the TT designer by Goldmund first and started his own company 'Audiomeca'later. I owned his Audiomeca J1 with acrylic/lead platter and nearly bought an mat because there was any on this TT. But I thought I should ask first instead to buy first and than ask later. So I eventualy grasped that this TT or rather the platter should be used without any mat. The theory behid was that acrylic and the stuff of which LP's are made are similar in ,uh, structure. Well when I corrected the arm hight for the 'level difference' I was stunned by the fact that this, say, 40 euro mat sounds better as the 'metal one'. Actually 'metal on metal' make no sense to me. And I nearly bought the expensive Micro copper mat but was, lucky me, scared by its weight (and price).
But as Dgarretson already mentioned one should first measure the lenght of his spindle. I have just sufficient space to put my Orsonic DS 200 disc stabilizer on my records. To me this stabilizer is indispensable.

Dear Nandric, I don't quite understand. You wrote, "I was stunned by the fact that this, say, 40 euro mat sounds better as the 'metal one'." What mat are you referring to? It seemed you were really saying that the acrylic Lurne' naked platter surface was preferable to the SAEC. So I am puzzled what 40 Euro mat you refer to.

But then you also made reference to the SP10 Mk2. I do stand by my long ago statement to you, that the SAEC metal mat is superior to the rubber mat that is OEM on the Technics. That's all I said back then. I personally do not care for the "sound" of acrylic despite the structural similarity of acrylic to vinyl, but that is a separate issue. In fact, the use of an acrylic platter is a reason not to buy a turntable, for me. I do like the graphite mats from Boston Audio in preference to the SAEC, these days.