Pros and Cons of Platter Mass

Looking at things from a different angle what "quality" tables
used a rather light weight platter and did they have a particular 
reason.

One example would be the Victor TT-101  of which a few here 
own. 

Playing the devils advocate if a heavy platter is not rotating 
at the correct speed is it then more difficult to manage/correct?

Playing the devils advocate if a heavy platter is not rotating
at the correct speed is it then more difficult to manage/correct?

Correct. Which is why the simplistic answers are... simplistic.

Merely turning the turntable on- just spinning the platter, not even playing a record- sets the entire system in motion and vibrating. No bearing is absolutely perfectly smooth. Nor any motor, nor belt. All this stuff is vibrating like crazy making noise the cartridge is going to pick up, and we haven't even started playing a record yet.

People need to understand mass is not magic. If all you are doing is adding mass to an otherwise identical platter then yes, that is better. At least in the case of the ones I have heard compared side by side. 

But who says we can only change the one thing? That's why these questions that like to look at just one aspect are so tedious. The only good thing about them is every once in a while they serve to maybe help make people aware the world is nowhere near as simple as these kinds of questions make you think.

Besides vibration there is speed stability. Don't care how massive the platter, dragging a stylus through music creates constantly varying braking loads. And yes it does matter. Some motor controllers allow user changes to response curves. One setting the controller responds quickly with a lot of torque, another slower with less, and all kinds of things in between. It is easy to hear the difference even with a very massive platter. 

Mass is not magic.

This sort of drag, you don't hear it as pitch but rather a loss of immediacy or dynamics. 

My last 2 tables, one was high mass, 25lb lead shot filled platter 3" thick. The other platter maybe about 3lbs couple three different materials an inch or so thick and smaller diameter as well. To hear the high mass guys talk this should be no contest, and it isn't. The smaller lighter platter kicks butt, far more dynamic, much better timbre and timing, just across the board superior.

Even something as seemingly simple as a platter there is a lot going on.

@totem395 
You are looking at this upside down -
the objective of a high mass platter is to make it immune to stylus drag.
How heavy does it need to be - Brinkmann says 15kg minimum, Kuzma  claims similar.
Kuzma says stylus drag cannot be eliminated completely - so it boils down to heavy platter, high resistance to stylus drag vs light platter less resistance to stylus drag which would require fast and smooth non invasive speed correction.
So it comes down to which is the lesser of the two evils - very small stylus drag effects on a high intertia platter, or larger speed errors corrected more vigorously on a light platter.
Unfprtunately cost always factors into design high mass platters with sutiable quality bearings are not cheap.

@totem395 
here is an example of high mass platter speed stability -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkrBPunk2rI

+1 dover

IME, speed consistency of "heavy" platters is a non-issue, given the drive systems that are now available.