What's the deal with idler turntables and do they have a place in modern HiFi?

I have a lenco on a massive aluminium plinth and no more noise than a belt drive. I had a pink triangle pt too before.

Hi Tom
I went through many threads years ago with the vpi table. With the verdier i do have his French thread but prefer one i found at fabricland. Gutermann but the exact one i need to look further.. the deck has  been designed for thread so its string/thread is applied very loose. This technique would never work on a belt drive being converted to thread.

In a bit of a crisis as i up at the lake and my lenovo, not to be confused with lenco, just died on me. Bears can’t provide me with spare memory cards which i think it is. I selfishly ask for help from almarg or others here. It is beeping 3 times will not power up. I have tried reinserting the memory card. Did not work.

Re: lenco. Just an observation.

From three decks l75 i found when used in the actual speed slot, the notch for say 33.33 they run fast. Is this by design to deal with stylus drag? Idk. The swiss engineers were very smart and the motor itself a thing of beauty - to me. But it is all hooked up to a mechanical wheel. Setting the speed a little slower is a bit of a pita, but once set it runs fine other than what i noted in previous post. But all that damping in the plinth does have its effect. It is very musical just not as extended as my other deck.

Sorry for any typos - hate using this forum on a phone.

Hi Richard,

Thom
Have you considered introducing a little series R Into the power supply and scoping the motor current draw to vicariously look at stylus drag as a function of motor current draw?

Yes.  I've been wrestling with capturing the time domain of interest.  Our ears are so discerning in comparison with instrumentation, that sometimes, I feel that efforts like this are futile, and so, I put them off for another day.

Thom @ Galibier Design

Hi ct1057,

Re: lenco. Just an observation.

From three decks l75 i found when used in the actual speed slot, the notch for say 33.33 they run fast. Is this by design to deal with stylus drag? Idk. The swiss engineers were very smart and the motor itself a thing of beauty - to me. But it is all hooked up to a mechanical wheel. Setting the speed a little slower is a bit of a pita, but once set it runs fine other than what i noted in previous post. But all that damping in the plinth does have its effect. It is very musical just not as extended as my other deck.

I seriously doubt this is to take stylus drag into account.  If you think about it (and accept stylus drag as influencing speed stability) then it would exist at 33.33, 34, 45, etc.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

Hi Pani,

I am not a TT designer but having heard many turntables (most of them are belt driven and many of them with heavy platters), less than 5% of them actually could hide their "high mass" artefacts. So, for me it is just statistics

I’ve had the same experience with most high mass turntable designs as well. It’s not my place to criticize other manufacturers, but I think everyone knows my position on drive belt materials.

I’m coming to the point that mass (when done right) is more about noise sinking than about speed stability. It’s something that I can’t test, because all of my platter damping tricks add mass (one of the ingredients is lead shot), so I can’t separate the two variables.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design