New Teres Direct Drive Motor Available as Option

I own the KAB strobe and it is very nice. It is also more accurate than the fluorescent light bulb. The fluorescent light bulb turns on and off approximately 60 or 50 times per second depending on where you live. However, the frequency is never exactly 60Hz or 50Hz, though it is usually close. The KAB strobe, since it runs on batteries and not mains, is more accurate.

I'm the friend Willster mentioned with the bearing wear problem. Not that I would call it a problem myself. All that happened is I noticed the delrin coating on the thrust plate wears through fairly quickly. I thought this might have something to do with the fact that, while my table when new was amazingly dead silent, it didn't seem quite the same a few months later. Mind you, there was still zero audible noise of any kind you could positively associate with the turntable. I'm talking more of a feeling that had been lost or faded away over time. If that was all there was to it then it wouldn't be anything to write home about. But there is a bit more to the story.

The bearing went to a local machinist, who basically said nice work, and offered a few ideas for improvement. The one I decided to try was to replace the brass/delrin thrust plate with silicon carbide, and the stainless ball bearing with silicon nitride.

After many hours of use only the tiniest speck of contact wear can be seen on the new thrust plate. A tiny percentage of the area of wear the stock brass part showed. Amazingly dead silence had returned. This is where Willster got his bearing wear idea.

There is of course a tradeoff in terms of sound. As luck would have it, Chris happened to be in Seattle one day, we were able to hook up, and he spent some hours listening to my system. At some point we talked about the bearing mod. He was surprised, because he did try these materials but felt they added hardness - the surprise being he said there was no trace of hardness in my system. The changes heard in my system (and this is by me, Chris did not have the time to A/B this) were towards a more lively, dynamic presentation.

Anyway, if anyone go the idea that Willsters friend (me) was in any way dissatisfied with Chris or Teres, consider this: the only reason I came across this just now is doing a little research before ordering the new Verus motor. Frankly, having met with Chris on a few occasions, heard platter shootouts and owned some of his stuff, I know from first hand experience it is all good value for money - enough so that I emailed him ordering the Verus BEFORE looking around for more info.

Hope this helps clear things up a little.

Chuck911 said "The changes heard in my system (and this is by me, Chris did not have the time to A/B this) were towards a more lively, dynamic presentation."

Just a thought, but perhaps what Chris perceived as "added hardness" in another system translates directly to what you heard.

After all, you are using a relatively low powered tubed integrated amp (or were at the time of the aforementioned assessment) in a large room with the speakers way out in the room. Dynamics have never been your systems forte (at least not to these ears) so perhaps Chris's "added hardness" translates to your "lively, dynamic". i.e. a happy synergy.