Townshend Pods under TT Don’t Do

It's not them, it's you.


Yer, right....

Turntables that are designed with suspension work great. Suspending a turntable yourself, not so much.

The ClearAudio Master Solution uses three sharp spikes for the turntable with a separate motor pod. This is similar to my old Teres and my current Origin Live Sovereign, both of which are similar no-suspension designs and both of which have been used with Pods with excellent results. They were of course used under a shelf and not directly under the table.

The Clearaudio is 24kg, roughly 50 lbs. What shelf were you using it on? How heavy is the shelf? And how many Pods and what color/load?

The Teres turntable was also used on Nobsound springs for quite some time before upgrading to Pods. Never with any of these were they the least bit touchy. The only other person I know to have had a problem is willgolf, and his was due to a mixup between pounds and kilograms. Once they got that right everything was fine. Really curious to try and understand what is going on here.

I’ve seen what you’re talking about but the issue was the wrong springs and they weren’t loaded correctly. If you’re touching the table and it shakes you have a dampening issue. There is no shock absorber or accumulator.

A spring will bounce, that is what they do. The correct pod and being adjusted correctly, won’t. (I should say shouldn’t) something is wrong.

After building as many heavy plinths for TT as I’ve built you got a GUMMY PUFFER issue..:-) (Spring dampeners). Thorens will wobble all over when they go bad.. Gummy Puffers.. The 30 to 200 lb  plinths I build for Thoren, Russco, Garrard, Sparta, Fairchild, EMT, Roberts. Transcription and Broadcast TTs. Have springs and not the least bit touchy..

I may anchor the TT to the plinth but the plinth gets springs and dampeners or the mechanical noise would go through the roof. It’s just TT 101..

Air or a mag lift platter is a step up for vertical isolation, but you still have a horizonal issue because the bushing and spindle still touch..

A standard 3.5" concrete slab is like a trampoline.. You really want dampening and decoupling there if it’s on a soil bed.. A couple million pound Rock face would be a good starting place if you want solid..
There is no such thing as solid.. A life time of anchoring STUFF.. It just moves..

Regards

Used a Teakwood shelf, 1.5” thick, 23”x17”, butcher block style, approx weight 14 lbs., it looked beautiful. I used 4 pods. C size springs. Total weight est. 66 to 70 lbs. Townshend agreed with the C size springs.
 I moved the Pods around to get the best balance. I listened to music for 7 days with the pods. I gave it time to settle in. Balance was perfectly set. The TT sounded fine with the Pods. It just didn’t like to be touched ever so softly. I didn’t bang into it or try to make it jump. I know better than banging on a TT. I’m using a Graham Phantom Elite tone arm , 9”.  Had arm for the last 6 months. Bought new in 2021, Cartridge is a Benz LPS. TT is set up to the max. I take great pride in setting up TT’s. My Oracle Delphi with a ET2 arm used to be hard to set up perfectly. Learned a lot from that TT.
As I said earlier, I’ll used the Pods under my phono amp very soon, it weighs 50 lbs.
 I did buy some Nobsound springs first but I thought my TT deserved better and that’s why I purchased the Townshend 
‘Respectfully 
Joe