Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

"There are all sorts of problems with slate - marriage of surfaces - "
True, but it is possible, as you will soon see for yourselves.

"Lenco-to-slate (regardless of the CLD nature of slate, it is still stone and so hard, which means metal slapping against stone as no surface is perfect) and slate-to-plinth - the inability to Direct Couple"

Again, possible...just a different discipline, but not as different as one might imagine. However, it doesn't nail easily. ;)

"The traditional recipe, i.e. wood, still represents the best real-world solution."

Wood is probably the easy way. Still, there are merits to slate that wood cannot begin to imitate. Think of slate as the ultimate constrained layer because it is that. It isn't a project DIY material for the faint hearted or rank beginners, though. It has the curious property of becoming an advanced project which requires extensive planning.

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Everything you have said is true, Mosin... Despite the preparation, discussions with the shop, measurements... There were still 2 complete failures bfore the third go round. When i got the "correct" one home, the table still wouldnt seat properly! After much grinding, swearing, testing, swearing,grinding, swearing VERY loudly.... I finally got the thing together.... Slate is not easy to work with, and yet i want to do it all over again..... Insanity.

So, Mosin and Hxt1, based on your personal experiences with building from slate, it would seem that the prices of the two commercial products are not at all out of line. Would you agree? (Of the two, I favor Jonathan Weiss' plinth, because it is far more massive than the one made in Wales, but I was not so satisfied with the way they treat the tonearm mount. It seems to just sit in a hole in the top deck and may not be well coupled to the platter bearing therefore.)

Lew,

A few points... First, the cost is inline due to the reasons I stated earlier. Second, the meaning of "well coupled to the platter bearing" is different from what everyone has come to accept. The reason is because the constrained layer nature of slate is so efficient that sounds actually change when they travel through it. They don't go far with thick slate, so the coupling becames sheerly a mechanical one. If the mount won't allow the tonearm to become misaligned, it has done its job because there are none of the resonance coupling issues that exist with wood and other materials. It really is that different. That said, Weiss will make one however you like because slate can be cut in virtually any way you can imagine...for a price. I don't know about the other guy, though.

mosin

I was worried also about (i) how to bolt my Triplanar onto a slate surface, and (ii) whether the slate surface of the tonearm mount can be made perfectly flat and plane parallel to the turntable chassis. If I did it, I would use the "Reinderspeter" (4mm-thick flat steel) top-plate that I recently purchased, and that engenders another question (mentioned by Hxt1) of how to affix the plate to the slate surface, which again has to be as flat as possible. (Do you have an opinion on how to do this?) I am anxious to see the results of your own efforts to incorporate slate in a plinth.