Thoughts On Turntable Clamps And Weights

Thank you for the interesting and thoughtful responses.  From what I gather, locking the vinyl to the platter, with either a weight or clamp, is helpful to a point.  But more force does not necessarily equal improved performance. 

These are only opinions, but yes.  You need to listen for yourself.  In some cases, I can imagine that one might prefer no weight or clamp.

I've been using a DIY 8 ounce weight (Thorens TD125 MkII) for 20 years without any noticeable decline in sound quality (the deck/bearing seem to be fine).

I tried a few heavier (some much heavier) commercial weights, but did not care for the sound (decline in harmonics/reverb), but mine is a "sprung" deck.

Give a light weight/weight a try.

For my taste I prefer the contact between the weight/record to be hard/solid (no leather, felt or other soft interfaces).

I suspect that I might be satisfied with an even lighter weight, but never got around to experimenting.

My DIY weight is a small Mapleshade brass cone mounted to a Thorens 45 rpm adapter (oddly the diameter of the cone and the adapter are the same).

DeKay

I’ve found the sonic distinctions between various weights & clamps to be subtle at best. That said, over time I’ve settled on Stillpoints LPI as favorite.

The real value of a center weight comes when used in conjunction with a ring clamp to effect whole-record clamping. There’s only so much clamping you can do from JUST the label area.

Also of importance are ergonomics and thoughtful design features like: if an end groove fails, does this weight help or hurt my stlyus’ chances of survival? The thick pucks (like Stillpoints) are helpful because they’ll block the headshell / body well before a cantilever gets near a clipping edge.

I also remember an early version of Clearaudio's Twister clamp where the metal twist knob would pop off surprisingly easily; might as well have been a cartridge & record wrecking ball at that point. Wtf! Fortunately later versions fixed this.

I would contact Pro-Ject and ask them to make a recommendation. That a clamping device wasn’t included with the turntable suggests it sounds best without one. You will need a threaded spindle to use a clamp. It can flatten a warped record  somewhat but don’t expect miracles.

I prefer a weight. My turntable sounds better with one and once the platter (it’s heavy) is spinning, I don’t have to turn it on and off to change a record versus a clamp.