A Copernican View of the Turntable System

Dear Chris, This hobby is not only irrational but it also
make you greedy. I at last got a perfect SP 10 mk2 with all capacitors renewed but have no idea what to do with it.
Like those MM carts: buy now ,fast and as many as possible
and think or test later.Then this ebay 'syndrome' is realy
addictive. I am not able at the moment to resist but reduced my search to 'only' German ebay and ebay.com. The English have actualy nothing to offer(qua MM carts). BTW
I am very reluctant to remove my Kuzma and put the SP-10 instead.

Dear Lew, Thanks for the worning . I somehow thought that Raul recommended removal of the cover in casu.

Dear Halcro, I 'inspected' your system and have seen that
your DDTT is an Denon(?). Are we tolking about different animals? There is no place, so to speak, for the spikes on the underside of the SP-10. Or so I thought.

Regards,

To all of you plinth-less persons, it is possible and permissible to do something different from what Raul does and still get satisfactory results. Think outside Raul's box. The AT616 feet may be good, but they cannot possibly be the only "good" option for feet. Also, I wonder what you are all using for platter mats. I found the stock rubber mat supplied with my SP10 Mk2A was easily bested by an SAEC SS300 metal mat (purchased from Raul, by the way), and I am sure other mats would also be superior to the rubber. One that I aim to try on my Mk3 is a Boston Audio Mat2. The Mat2 has about the same weight as the stock rubber mat and so should have no deleterious effect on function of the servo mechanism. (I don't recommend a super heavy mat for that reason.) My experience tells me that the stock rubber mat may be responsible for the the closed-in, grayish, dull tonal quality that some have ascribed to direct-drive turntables. (I have seen each of these adjectives used; take your pick.) I even think that the stock mat may have more to do with the tone than does the plinth or lack of same.

Nandric: what Lewm said.

Lewm: As you can see from my system pics, my second arm is behind the tt and in from the left edge by about 4 inches. The pod was designed so that it could go partially underneath the tt's square top (that is crucial). The pivot to spindle distance is 230mm and that's no problem.

Halcro: I'm not sure what you are imagining with the rocking, but I should say that I'm beginning to become suspicious of the ridigity of my system. I received my Mint protractor a few weeks back and it makes me appreciate the very fine adjustments required to maintain proper alignment. The 616 footers are great for isolation and leveling, but the contact between their smooth tops and the bottom of the tt's chassis is probably less secure than the ideal. To test this, I'm going to recheck alignment in another week. If it's off, I'll blame the footers. It may be an easy fix, just a matter of adding some blu-tac between footer and tt, but we'll see. The contact between bottoms of footers and platform is definitely secure as those suckers are not easy to move once settled.

Chris: indeed the footers' ability to be adjusted is key, otherwise leveling would be haphazard. Is the contact between the top of your footers and tt secure? I'll pm you regarding price; it's complicated.

Lewm: I haven't done any extensive comparative tests between the stock mat and my current one, the Boston Audio Mat 2, but the latter definitely lowers the noise floor. It's a deep dark black background--as it should be. One issue I've noted however is that the Mat 2 doesn't 'grip' onto records like the stock rubber mat. On certain records (warped ones), as I've applied a dust cloth to the record prior to play, the record will not rotate at the same speed as the platter, i.e. the downward pressure of the cloth is slowing the record's rotation. I infer that the record then is not properly coupled with the mat. This never happened with the rubber mat. Although not evident with flat records, it may be the case that this lack of coupling is having some effect with them as well. I ordered a ttweights record clamp and will see whether it makes a difference.

Regarding footers, obviously the AT 616 are not the only option. Who ever said they were? Chris was using brass footers before and as he said will use for his second set up. I was using the more readily available 605 footers before. But as he noted and I concur, there are practical advantages to using the 616's. In addition to what Chris noted, the 616's are 4" wide and that provides more stability than the 605's. Although I believe there are sonic advantages as well, no one thinking of going plithless should be deterred by the unavailability of the 616's. In fact, I considered using Eden Sound's terrastone footers but they probably require drilling holes into the chassis--something that I wanted to avoid.

Dear Nandric,
My DD/TT is a Victor TT-81 made for JVC ( and soon to be replaced by its scarce and finer brother.....the TT-101).
They have their bottom metal 'cage' attached (just as the SP10s have) so that spikes or 'footers' can be positioned under this 'cage'.
I find that placing the spikes under the vertical cage perimeter, results in the greater stability with no movement whatsoever in my particular case.