Well, joining in on this Slate-o-Fest, I'm arranging to have a slab cut so I can test it (thanks Harvey), and we'll see if there is "no contest". Already, the simple baltic birch-ply/MDF recipe has beaten the fabled Shindo plinth (at least in terms of drawing away and killing off resonances/noise acording to the Shindo owner, no direct comparison on other sonic grounds yet) which everyone was hot to imitate back in the early days of the thread; and beaten, and by a fair margin, the EMT 'tables which were only spoken of in hushed whispers by Garrard fans who treated Lencos with extreme condescension (as I also found out at phonophono in Berlin when I was there, "the Lenco is not a serious 'table"). The upshot is, that in order to help catch up to the Lenco Direct Coupled to a birch-ply/MDF recipe, it is now becoming practice to couple the EMTs to a high-mass plinth Lenco (an admission that the Giant Direct Coupled Lenco was in fact superior to an EMT as it is being used)! For those who haven't seen or handled an EMT, they really do make both the Lencos AND the Garrards look like cheap toys. But sonics is another matter.
The sound of a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco is truly astonishing, and we haven't even begun to measure its true standing/ranking, as it is very difficult to get the owner of a $50K belt-drive (or $20K DD) to agree to a comparison. There are ways to do this, but it is taking a lot of time, I'm working on it ;-). Then there are relatively cheap ways to greatly improve the Lenco which does not require herculean efforts: intense treatment of the main bearing (VERY effective), installing new bushings in the main bearing (tricky but VERY effective), platforms (essential, I favour acrylic over stone which makes a HUGE difference), footers, and so on. Addressing the use of acrylic, it is as effective, if not more so, to place it under the Lenco as in it, as it isolates in platform form (when bonded to stone) the Lenco and actually focuses up its sound/performance across the spectrum. The combinations and permuations possible in plinth-building are literally infinite, and it is easy to make the error that because something is "effective", it is the best solution. For instance, back in the day of Jeff Day's write-up of a Garrard bolted to a low-mass complex plinth, I wrote that the Garrard would sound good when bolted to a pile of dogshit, not because the dog-shit was superior or effective, but because the Garrard was inherently an incredible-sounding machine. Low expectations (especially on the part of an audiophile steeped in the belt-drive dogma) leads to incorrect conclusion (that low-mas/complex is the way to go). It suddenly became de rigueur for everyone to rush out and build complex low-mas plinths in imitation of the 6moons plinth, and the philosophy was changing around the world as well as vinyl audiophiles the world over began to turn their backs on high mass as a philosophy, reviving that old "mass stores energy to kill musicality" canard. I had to fight battles on forums around the world (in order that idler-wheel drives be heard in all their glory and not hamstrung, which would lead to incorrect conclusions) in order to get them to reconsider, have a second look, and make comparisons (and indeed now the high-mass CLD plinth dominates). Context (experience and comparisons) is necessary for judgments to be meaningful. Then there is the phenomenon of the "new", making the latest new recipe (plinths)/product (SETs)/philosophy (low power/high efficiency) the end-all and be-all until the dust settles and everyone begins to hear what is actually going on.
There is also a desire on the part of many people, not only audiophiles (but nevertheless many audiophiles), to favour the extremely difficult, complex and/or expensive process/product simply bcause it is difficult, complex and/or expensive. This does not mean necessarily superior (as the Shindo owner - another extremely time-consuming and complicated product even if wood - attests).
The issue is not whether or not slate has internal resonances, but whether or not slate can draw away and kill noise from the 'table as effectively as a wooden plinth, and even if so, without recourse to extremely expensive/time-consuming procedures. Slate may have no internal resonances (I'll find out), but it is the metal of the top-plate - regular or Reinderspeter - vibrating against the slate, a hard surface - which will cause noise/resonances in the metal itself, without being drawn away, to cause problems. There are no perfect surfaces. Imagine metal hitting wood: you get a dull thud. Imagine metal hitting stone: it sets up a high-frequency ringing. Which is why I referred earlier to the ceramic ball phenomenon: an extremely hard material (harder than metal), which seemed like a good idea, but which in the end fabricated the illusion of increased detail rather than its reality (the metal-to-ceramic created a disparate-material barrier which filtered out the bass frequencies in order to unnaturally highlight midrange and high frequencies). Such a ringing from metal slapping stone would imitate this phenomenon as well. I can see, on the other hand, that stone/slate is much heavier and less flexible than wood, so we'll see anyway what happens when I receive the slate.
Finally, is slate truly more effective than other types of stone - like marble or soapstone for instance - or is this simply another mythology arising, like that created by Origin Live for the RB-250 (marketing their product, which worked), created by Shindo for their fabled plinth (marketing their product, which is at least half the price, which worked), created by Garrarders concerning the grease-bearing (I and many others prefer the oil-bearing of the 401, yet grease-bearing Garrards continue to command the highest prices), and so on. It would be instructive to have a similar marble plinth built and see what happens. Marble does itself have certain interesting structural properties, and even more limestone, and sandstone, and so on. Soapstone is soft and easily worked, and has been used to build speaker cabinets by a company up in Scandinavia. Before the rise of the slate plinth, there was a granite plinth marketted in England (again) for the Garrard, which was highly-regarded.
But are any of these stone alternatives superior to Direct Coupling to a high-mass CLD wooden plinth? In order to find out, I'm having a slab cut large and thick enough to test out on its own without coupling to a plinth, but thin enough to afterwards be coupled to a wooden plinth. I'll mount my handy-dandy RS-A1 tonearm so I can swap back and forth instantly to get an accurate idea of what's going on. As always, you can depend on me to report honestly, if slate is as incredible as everyone makes it out to be, then I'll incorporate it in future plinths.
Getting to Reinderspeter's top-plate, this does indeed address one of the Lenco's main weaknesses, that [relatively] flimsy pressed top-plate: the thick and strong steel will be harder to move, will not flex nearly as much, and couples VERY effectively to a wooden (or stone) plinth. Traditionally, simply stacking up audiophile ideas (such as adding Reinderspeter's top-plate to slate) leads to sonic disaster, systems have to be balanced. But, it will be easy to simply marry a Reinderspeter top-plate to the slate slab I am having made. Of course, this all takes time, so be patient!!
Getting back to other issues, hi Mariusz, don't worry, I'm not accusing you of promoting belt-drives, my adding a belt-drive project to my long list of projects reflects my support of all turntable designs, which is why I am investigating, for instance, the issue of quartz-locking versus servo-controlled DDs, and the issue of torque (a bare minimum is necessary) versus inertia (improtant to have enough inertia to overcome the motor's sonic signature/imperfections). The Rotary Platform is truly a beauty, with a solid brass platter which is i 1/2" thick at the rim, and some 3/16" thick!! Feels like much more than 15 pounds, in the same way the Lenco's 8-9 pound platter feels like much more than that. I'm actually looking forward to hearing it once done, I LOVED my Maplenoll turntable back in the day, which amongst belt-drives was King for SLAM, bass and PRaT (which is why Walker took it as his basic platform for the pricey Walker turntables). Until I tripped over the litle Garrard SP-25 in a Helsinki fleamarket, that is. I'll be coupling it to a high-mass plinth, as always, haven't heard a 'table yet which didn't benefit from this. The Technics SP-10 MKII mythology, for instance, already in the long-ago said that a minimum 60-pound plinth was necessary to extract performance from it.
I've recently gone back to the RS-A1/Denon DL-103"E", that is a Denon redone by phonophono in Berlin, and Boy is this the most perfect match, still, that I have found for it, though there are strengths in some other matches. The phonophono '103 has MUCH better bass, detail, and high frequencies than the conical-tipped one, and is less bright to boot!!
Anyway, have fun with your repsective projects all, getting close to realizing the Reinderspeter Project, and working on getting that slate slab done!! In the meatime, my "regular" Giant Direct Coupled Lenco continue amaze and delight!! LOVE the Trumpets of Leipzig LP (Baroque) I picked up for 25 cents recently!!
