VPI bearing oil/grease?

Hi all,

Some good general principles were laid out above. In general, you’re balancing out two parameters against each other: bearing play and damping. There’s no hard and fast rule. In addition to the local parameters within your control (your turntable drive system - motor, controller, drive belt, platter/mass, bearing play), you may have to adjust for the tuning of the rest of your system.

To maintain your sanity, I’d focus on the turntable to the exclusion of your downstream components, but I mention them above, mainly to make a point that this all fits together into a coherent whole.

I’ve not played with VPI’s, but everyone whose opinion I respect, tells me that they have enough play in them to work best with a lightweight lithium grease (think bicycle wheel bearings). At the other extreme, Galibiers, along the vintage Micro Seikis tend to work best with lubricants that are closer to water in viscosity than they are to something like 5W motor oil.

This is where I take issue with the use of thicker oils in my ‘tables – oils that can work, but which require a multi-hour seating process. It would be a great thing to build up the Galibier mythology, but it hurts the music.

Bearing play (as you’d correctly guess) is mitigated by increasing viscosity, and in general, the less play the better. Damping is a bit more complicated and here’s where the listening comes into play (to balance bearing rigidity against over-damping).

The unfortunate reality of all hi-fi components is that you can damp things too much. This is another case of having too much of a good thing. You’ll read various threads on how there’s nary a person (for example) who uses the silicone damping fluid in the Tri-Planar tonearms. The general consensus is that while an occasional “nasty” is tamed, it comes at the expense of a fairly ho-hum sound overall.

The same holds true in lubricant choice for turntable bearings, speaker design, and amplification design. It’s extremely challenging for example, to filter a power supply to the point where it’s quiet, but that still has great transient response. The common error with many “good” amplification components is that they get the quiet part right, but miss the nuance and subtle transient details. Getting to quiet is comparatively easy, but quiet with no sacrifice in musical nuance is a very challenge to pull off.

The good news is that experimentation won’t do any harm, and you have a system tuning component available to you. I’d advise against staying away from oils with detergents in them. Also, some oils will form a varnish after a while (3-In-One), but even this can be cleaned with something like carburetor cleaner. The synthetic motor oils are fine.

Here’s the link to more of my comments on the subject: http://www.galibierdesign.com/prd_bearing.html.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Thom_mackris, "the voice of reason". Thanks for another great post.

Frogman, I owned P.Lurnes Audiomeca TT with inverted bearing and had no idea what lubricant to use. But I own now Kuzma Stabi Ref. with inverted bearing and I orderd lubricant from Kuzma. I got the oil and not some grease.
It is dependant of the bearing construction as I think or understand the problem. But I am not a technical guy so no claims reg. the 'truth'.
Regards,

All,

Remember, that in the case of inverted bearings ... well, they're upside down.

It's been a long, long time (20+ years) since I've had one in my posession, and the issue of lubrication didn't come up.

Typically, inverted bearings have some sort of jeweled thrust bearing which doesn't require lube. As far as the side walls are concerned (in general), the oil needs to be viscuous enough to not seep out the bottom.

Unless someone has an innovative means of controlling the flow of the lube out the bottom of an inverted bearing, it appears to me that it would mandate a very thick oil, which in turn would mandate loose tolerances.

I'd love to hear more about this ...

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Being an inverted bearing, how would it work if a pool of light oil were deposited in the bearing such that when the shaft was inserted the oil would work its way up the and out of the top of the bearing. A small felt concentric ring around the bearing would absorb any excess oil and keep the top of the bearing lubricated. The shaft itself would spin in a very thin pool of oil. It wouldn't take much oil to do the job.

I'm looking at an early TNT bearing as I write this. It might work though there would be some "settling time" involved to get the shaft all the way down to the point where the ball bearing is in contact with the thrust plate.

Any thoughts (as I build my table)?