A reappearance of Black Diamond Racing?

The lead platter is mostly for looks. Chris came out with a much better platter, but it was all black and my lead shot platter just looks so good especially spinning..... besides, that upgrade would have been in my eyes a half-measure. The Full Monty which I still may do one day, is to have the platter machined out of a Source Shelf.

Right around the time I would have done that DJ decided it would be a good idea to steal my turntable design, and so never did get one thick enough for a platter. Could still be done easily enough, bonding a couple Shelf together for thickness then machining the platter. Chris’s brother Bryce did the Teres platters and could probably do one for me easily enough. Just need to get up the motivation to get into it again.

mc, Groovetracer makes both an acrylic and Delrin version of their Rega replacement platter, which are reported to sound quite different. VPI switched to acrylic for their platters for a while, but quickly considered it a step backwards from the Delrin they were using (for the top layer of the TNT 2-5 and Aries 1 platters, and the entire HW-19), and switched again to first stainless steel (in the TNT-5) and then aluminum.

“Geoff disapproves of lead.”

You can say that again. Where lead is the most obvious for anyone who’s never figured it out, the bass gets all messed up, unnatural sounding and glumpy. It’s one of the very worst materials ever foisted on young naive audiophiles. It even happened to Pierre at Mapleshade and yes very far from naive. He used a ton of it at the shows. He even had a guy on staff who’s duty it was to make sure all the lead arrived at the Shows. Of course, when you look at my scheme how materials sound, from best to worst, according to hardness guess which material brings up the rear!

One Teres platter version, the black one, was I think Delrin. Most of these materials- acrylic, Delrin, aluminum, MDF, stainless, all the usual suspects - are used more because they are affordable and easily worked with than anything. In other words its not like they are the best materials, its they are the least bad materials that can be used cost-effectively. That is why those few materials keep showing up and being used again and again.

Its like the band-aid or system matching MyFi approach to cables- instead of doing the hard work of finding something genuinely across the board excellent we'll take the easy way out and try and balance a lack here with a surplus there.

That's why you keep seeing these things being laminated together. Its like wine or whiskey. This one's too sharp, that one's too mellow, hey but if we blend em all together.... Only at least the wineries are honest and up front about it. In audio for some reason they feel compelled to make up BS like constrained layer damping. Please. Its a blend. Because you don't really know what you're doing. Just come out and admit it.

In the case of BDR its not just the carbon fiber. A lot of it is the material in between. Which I know for a fact because DJ sent me a Shelf with no carbon fiber that works as well as the more expensive ones with. Hard to say exactly since you cannot compare different sizes and this one was an odd size but it sure seemed to work just as expected only without the CF.

I purchased (7) from Music Direct back in the day. Both TTs, the preamp, both phonostages and a pair of Pass monos. Benefit from "The Shelf ". Yes, they were spendy but worth it.