A reappearance of Black Diamond Racing?

“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.

George Merrill was at one time (in the 1980’s, at least) putting a top layer of lead on his turntable platters, in support of the notion that lead provides a better mechanical impedance to the vinyl of LP’s than does any other material. That was followed by the carbon graphite mats made by a couple of companies. Like everything else, everyone has their opinion, with theory to back it up.

Lead is the sort of material audiophiles instantly fall in love 🥰 with. Not too hard. Not too soft. 😬