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Springs under turntable

I picked up a set of springs for $35 on Amazon. I intended to use them under a preamp but one thing led to another and I tried them under the turntable. Now, this is no mean feat. It’s a Garrard 401 in a 60pound 50mm slate plinth. The spring device is interesting. It’s sold under the Nobsound brand and is made up of two 45mm wide solid billets of aluminum endcaps with recesses to fit up to seven small springs. It’s very well made. You can add or remove springs depending on the weight distribution. I had to do this with a level and it only took a few minutes. They look good. I did not fit them for floor isolation as I have concrete. I played a few tracks before fitting, and played the same tracks after fitting. Improvement in bass definition, speed, air, inner detail, more space around instruments, nicer timbre and color. Pleasant surprise for little money.
noromance
rixthetrick's avatar
rixthetrick
1,060 posts
 
Congratulations uberwaltz, seems you're making promising advances mate. Keep us posted.

Indranil, have you tried the rubber bands thing we discussed?
If it works, then yeah I would seriously consider the uprated springs. I was also thinking, have you tried a little mass of something dense to level the whole suspended mass by moving it on the outer rim of the shelf?


mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Uberwaltz, if you put the resonance frequency anywhere within the range of 20 to 150 Hz you are likely to make a change in the way you perceive bass. If everything else is set up correctly and of reasonable quality it is hard to believe that would make an improvement in overall balance or "tightness." If the resonance frequency of the suspension is down where a whole bunch of turntable designers think it belongs it should not change the tonal quality of the music but rather improve signal to noise ratio and and response to physical insults. The main purpose of a suspension is to limit interaction with the environment. 
rixthetrick's avatar
rixthetrick
1,060 posts
 
mijostyn, seems like he's got it :-)
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Lewm, You put a record on the turntable with any record weight type device you use then press the turntable down evenly to stretch or compress the springs equally then let go and count. 3 hz is very slow and should be fairly easy to count. If the turntable bounces so fast you can't count it then you need to use springs with a lower rate or add mass to the turntable.
When I hit my Sota with a hammer I am not hitting the suspended part of the turntable. That is inside the plinth. If I abruptly jerk the outside of the turntable (moving it say 1/4") the suspended section will start bouncing at 3 Hz. The tonearm will not skip. If I jerk it hard enough to bottom out the suspension in any direction then the tonearm will skip in a major way.
indranilsen
113 posts
 
@rixthetric- Yes I tried using rubber band on the footer which was at the top point in a triangular configuration to increase the spring rate. This indeed help me with balancing the turntable better w/o hitting the bottom but it didn’t resolve the footfall issue. In fact adding spring rate led to more frequent bouncing of the spring as I anticipated and that was counterproductive when isolating vibrations in the sub sonic domain...
@mijostyn- None of the footers including Solid Tech as I experienced could bring the natural frequency down to 3hz. I initially thought that these footers were isolating footfalls but I was wrong. I had a low pass filter on the Luxman phono pre amplifier which was turned on by mistake... When the flipped the switch back to no filter the woofers started moving...
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