Lube for turntable - What do you prefer?


This weekend I relubed my turntable with high-grade machine oil - previously using universal grease in the main bearing. The sound has cleared up dramatically - I am gobsmacked!

What oil/grease do you prefer/recommend in your turntable?

Kind regards,
Dewald Visser
dewald_visser
I agree with Dougdeacon on what the maufacturer recommends. I run a Michell Gyrodec and I use Mobile 1 5w30 Synthetic motor oil on my bearing.
Dear friends: Dewald visser is the manufacturer!!!!

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.
In that case he should know the answer!

It depends, as I said, on the tolerances of the bearing and also on the materials inside the bearing.

With that information a mechanical engineer with lubrications expertise could make a recommendation based on real knowledge. Recommendations from audiophiles who use different tables would be useless, and I've already posted many useless things here! ;-)

Doug
Guys,

I have sound, after careful research that oil is the better choice for lubing the bearing...

It is a low tolerance bearing with plastic sleeves and thus the oil be better.

Thanx anyway - what I want to know is what do you find works best in your machine?

DV
Being a mechanical engineer, I can tell you that it is fairly straigh forward to pull out a machine design text and look for lubrication weight formulas. It's all based on hydrostatic forces created by the oil between two rotation cylindrical surfaces.

The tough part is determining the clearance between the two bearing surfaces. I seriously doubt you find such informoation in the turntable manual.

Long story short, its just like Dougdeacon said- large clearances need grease (often called bushings) and small clearances need oil (often called journal bearings).