Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

Dear Halcro, Prompted by Geoch's posts above, I read up the thread from there and came to your post about the unusual behavior of your motor/platter with the 1.8kg M-S copper mat on it. What is the weight of your platter alone? If the weight of the Cu mat is a significant fraction of the total weight of the platter, what you are observing means to me that the brake mechanism of the TT101 simply cannot stop the platter "dead', because of the increased momentum of the platter/mat combo. This alone would not trouble me, but it could also mean that the servo system might be "confused" by the increased rotating mass during LP play, so at the micro level, the speed control with the copper mat might be subpar. It is a fact that these systems were designed as a whole; the servo is calibrated to the mass of the stock platter/mat. I have repeatedly mentioned this; super heavy mats on a direct drive might not be such a good idea for that reason. (And then if one adds one of those 4 or 5 kg record weights, one is making the situation worse and also inviting rapid bearing wear.) What I like about the SAEC SS300 metal mat is that it weighs about the same as the stock Technics rubber mat on the SP10 Mk2A and Mk3 (they use the exact same rubber mat), so screwing up the servo is not an issue.

Go with the pigskin - it's football season.

Dear Geoch,
the felt mat I am using on top of a Micro Seiki Cu 180g mat weighs 5,9 g. It is very thin. On the back it is covered with a black laquer bringing it into good contact with the Cu 180g mat, also keeping everything absolutely flat (!).
I recall that I payed 100 Euros for the felt mat.

It is always a matter of try and error - but this combination really convinced me and believe me I tried some...

I think Halcro's experiment with the pig mat might have been successful because it is flat. Nevertheless I know some guys swearing on a wave like mat...

all the best for your experiments.

Fun Only

all the best with experimenting

I knew this guy that used a pigskin platter pad... he would buy *raw* pigskin at the local slaughterhouse, cut it out and kept the thing in a jar in the 'fridge when not in use, until the bacteria got to it... the LPs tended to get greasy and smelled like bacon.

The idea is that it was 'natural'- natural sound, get it? The slaughterhouse stopped selling to him when they found out what he was up to...

Because of their complexity however.......if they malfunction.....parts are 'unobtanium'....and they often cannot be repaired.

This is Halcro's original premise and sadly I now have personal experience confirming its truth.

I longed to live dangerously so I bought a mal functioning tt101 with the idea that it could be fixed, a la Lewm's proposal, by a 'trained professional'. It could not.

The 'cannot' in the depressing sentence 'Your Victor tt101 cannot be fixed' is not, however, metaphysical. A trained professional with loads of time, resources and good will can probably fix such a machine, but such a person, if such there be (the guy who runs www.amp8.com is probably one such person), will need to charge a fee disproportionate to the value of the table. So, for all intents and purposes it is dangerous to live with these tables, well, at least the tt101.

So, Halcro, I have to withdraw myself from the 101 club before even attending the first meeting.