Help! Tweaking My Lovan Rack for new Big A**ed Transrotor Turntable!


Folks, some input would be mighty appreciated.

I’ve been using a hand-me-down (though very nice!) Micro Seiki dd-40 turntable for a number of years and finally got the upgrade itch (it helps the upgrade itch when your cartridge is going on 30 years old, and sounding like it!).

I went down the rabbit hole and picked up a Transrotor Fat Bob S turntable, with an Acoustic Solid 12" arm and a Benz Micro Ebony cartridge. All with only about 30 hours of use at a great price. Yay!

Though I have considered getting rid of my old Lovan Classic rack for a new custom jobby, I’m pretty much spent out and I think I’ll have to make do for now, working with the Lovan.

The Fat Bob turntable is 55 lbs of solid aluminum and built like Thor’s hammer.

I figure this will finally get me to fill my Lovan stands for a bit more rigidity - probably with rice. The stand is the old 3 legged triangular shaped bass, which means the thin MDF shelves can feel like they sit sort of precariously on top. But the stand itself feels quite solid.

I want to incorporate a wood platform base, as many do, because I really love the look of a nice wood slab.

At first I thought maybe I’d have 3 spikes drilled in to the bottom corners of the wood base to directly couple it to the rest of the Lovan frame, vs resting it on the top mdf shelf. But I’m not sure that’s really necessary. And I’d like to incorporate some isolation as well, I think. So I’m thinking of just laying it on the top shelf, with something in between.

My first thought is to place a Symposium Segue shelf between the top of the Lovan shelf and the wood base.

Other than that...I’m flummoxed as to all the other choices...roller blocks? Symposium Fat Padz? Vibrapods? Herbie’s Tendersoft footers? Voo-Doo Isopods?  What should I put between the wood platform base and my Lovan shelf?

Any comments of suggestions on the direction I’m going?

Thanks!

(BTW, I’m an resolutely NOT a DIY/Handy-man type, so I’m not trying to go to heroic efforts, wishing this to be as painless as possible).
prof

ASC (Acoustic Science Corp.) offers a product named Wall Damp. It comes in 4" squares (I believe) and long strips, and was designed to act as constrained layer damping when installed between layers of sheetrock. I recently heard it's effectiveness (in Audiogon member folkfreak's music room), which is fantastic! Art Noxon states that the huge 4' x 8' sheets of drywall, when confronted with sound waves and other vibrations, behave as do drumheads when struck---bend, bow, and flex, creating an audible resonance. Rap your walls with your knuckles---they make a clearly audible sound, not a good thing. Folkfreak's walls sounded like slate when I rapped them! Wall resonance is a commonly-overlooked characteristic of the acoustic behavior of listening rooms imo---the final frontier! 

ASC sells the scraps and end pieces from Wall Damp installations by the lb., for real cheap. I just bought a lb., plenty for putting between 1- the two pieces of acrylic (or one of acrylic, one of aluminum; I haven't yet decided) that make up the pickup-arm mounting board of my newly-acquired turntable, and 2- the two 3/4" layers of my table's shelf. I will bolt or screw the two together, with a layer of Wall Damp between them. Sounds promising, ay? I can't see a downside, in theory at least.

@bdp24

Sounds interesting!

How big are the sheets you received?

Also, do they have an odor?  I've seen quite a few comments by people who have bought more industrial-oriented sound isolation materials that they can give off quite a chemical smell.
Hey, that reminds me. Another good use for Cones is node Dampers on the walls, where max vibration occurs. It also occurs to me I sell Blue Meanies for room walls, one per wall, but as they have nothing to do with vibration or acoustic waves I probably shouldn’t talk about them. 
prof, the approximately 25 ASC Wall Damp scraps I received are all 4" by between 2.5" and 3". WD is just under 1/16" thick, with a layer of adhesive on both sides, like carpet tape. The odor you refer to, found in the roofing materials (tar paper products) people have been using in damping applications for decades (especially in the UK, in loudspeaker cabinets), is, thankfully, completely absent in Wall Damp.