High mass vs Low Mass Turntables - Sound difference?


As I am recently back playing with analog gear after some 15 years away, I thought I would ask the long time experts here about the two major camps of record players -- high vs low mass-loaded-type tables...

For example, an equivalently priced VPI table (say a Classic, Aries or Prime) versus a Rega RP8/10 or equivalent Funk Firm table...  the design philosophies are so different ... one built like a tank, the other like a lightweight sports car...

Just wondering if the folks here have had direct experience with such or similar tables, and what have been your experiences and sense of strengths and weaknesses of these two different types of tables.



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I have a better idea. How about getting a Well Tempered table and not worry about resonance? No vibrations will get through the cup of goo the arm sits in. Oh, BTW, no bearings in the arm either. 
@10timps - I had one of the original Well-Tempered turntables many years ago. It had been upgraded and tweaked considerably and was a terrific table for the money. The design, these many years later, is still quite ingenious. The difference I have experienced between that table and other higher mass tables that eventually replaced it was less of the sense of a turntable going around--I refer to it as a "halo" that is simply absent now. And bass performance is considerably better, even though I am using a linear arm, which is not the last word in deep bass delivery. There are, of course, trade-offs to the high mass approach, isolation being one of them, but such trade-offs exist with pretty much everything. 
I like suspended tables which are placed on butcher block shelving mounted in an alcove in the wall using lots of space frame structure to prevent bass energy induced room vibrations from perturbing them.  This seems to work well.  I am using a SOTA Sapphire and a VPI HW-19 Mk. IV and they both work very well with this set-up.  They both weigh about 50 lb.s and the wall-mounted shelving weighs another 100 lb.s.  Not sure if this qualifies as light or heavy weight....I'm sure there are much heavier turntables than these. 

WRT light weight suspensionless turntables, I've never heard one that could reproduce deep bass well or resist structural vibrations.  I include the Regas and VPI Scouts in this category.  I've owned them both and couldn't wait to get back to the good 'ole HW-19, the most consistent (and underrated) turntable on the planet.  By the way, the quickest way to judge turntable bass performance is to get a CD of the same recording as your favorite vinyl and compare.  CD's have their problems, but true bass is not one of them.  If your turntables bass does not sound like the CD, your turntable has an issue.
Geoffkait " What a load of hooey."
Wow, is that the pot calling the kettle black.
@dcbingaman


+1 My experience exactly. Geoffkait doesn’t seem to know what "plastic" is and that Vinyl and acrylic are forms of plastic. He clearly thinks that the  majority of light weight turntables are made from something other than plastics. The amount of "hooey" on audiogon seems be directly proportional to Geoffkait activity.