Direct drive vs belt vs rim vs idler arm

Hi Mosin – regarding your Merry Go Round.

As a manufacturer, I find you have left out a very important detail for us to consider.

Please tell us what type of BEARING your merry go round uses. Is it something nice and smooth and slippery or does it float ?

You see IMO - this is a total resonance vibration hobby. An imperfect sharp rock of various designs and angles that goes into an imperfect groove of an imperfect piece of plastic..... to make vibrations ........

In the last three years I have found as an amateur that the Achilles Heel for turntables I have owned - seems to be the BEARING.

It also seems to be the elephant in the room. Pretty boring. You can’t even see the damn thing. I think it’s still there. But the platter is too heavy for me to think about lifting it out right now. Will look later later.... Some squirt some oil in, others squirt in grease. Still others have found some secret product? Maybe it came from the moon?

IMO - it contains the family jewels and is the DNA as far as how any of the turntables I have owned actually sounded. It is the ROOT.

Put a TT motor right up to the Bearing or close to it – the result is usually a turntable designed like a fortress (spaceship?) to protect against all those vibration / resonance nasties. Not that there is anything wrong with this - many ways to skins a cat here.

How many people on this thread other than actual designers and manufacturers, know what type of bearing is contained in their turntable? How many know what the replacement cost is, and its percentage relation to the cost of your whole TT?

Well here is maybe a little silver bullet for you – in my humble opinion.

Find this out and you may find out if your table was built for:

1)Performance
2)Profit
3)To win the beauty contest.
4)All of the above.

IMO - 4 is the correct answer - Hey we do have to listen and look at it every day, and you want your manufacturer to stay in business right - for support ?

For those looking to buy a turntable – challenge your seller to give this information to you.

Look.. I am done – I think – my vinyl journey. After what I have learned however as an Amateur, I would never ever again buy an expensive turntable without this information.

So

What if you find out that the $5000 table you are eyeing has a bearing that costs 68 dollars to replace? Would you still buy it ? This is just thought...

So the BEARING imo is one, but not the only BIG Rock in this hobby.

No more coffee for me this morning...sorry if any of this comes off as cynical....

Actually, high precision bearings are not that expensive. Balls with sub micron tolerances can be purchased for pennies- even in ceramic and ruby. Shafts can be had very cheaply that are ground to high precision tolerances. That is the product of an industrial base that today produces robust machinery that lasts 10s of million to 100s of million cycles. The markup that an individual may pay for a bearing at retail is 10-100 times the price that a high volume manufacturer would pay. A good example are the ball bearings in my mower deck. The autoparts store wanted $55 each for these things and I needed 6 of them. I bought the exact same bearings at an online auction site- a pack of 12 for $22. A large volume manufacturer can probably get them for less than a dollar a piece. Think I got junk for $22? That was several years ago and these bearings have lasted just as long as the factory originals.
My tt has a hardened steel ball turning on a flat sapphire disc. It is not only very quiet, but would likely last for a billion cycles. At 33 1/3 rpm that is 57 years continuous running. My great great grandkids will be playing records on it.

Dear Tonywinsc: +++++ " So it is very likely that you could play a particular record one day and it seems to sound really great- pace is on and the music flows and the next time it sound kind of dead- all based on the randomness of the record position to the platter. " +++++

you are absolutely right and this problem is an important part of the non-perfect LP/analog medium.

The LPs that I use on my self evaluation audio item method are marked to lower that " problem " and be more consistent during different audio item evaluations.

In the past appeared a manual tool to center the LPs ( I think was named: Center-O-Disc or something like that. I remember it works fine. ) ) y used and I think I still have somewhere. Now that you brought this extremely important subject I will try to find out and test it again. I know I will have an improvement on quality performance level, no doubt about.

Other than that device the only serious attempt to elimate the off center LP problems was Nakamichi through its 1000 TT model and latter on with the Nakamichi TT Dragon.

I don't know how easy or hard is to the LP manufacturers to have their LPs with a " perfect " hole centered. Today we pay a lot of money for new LPs/reissues and the like but the LP manufacturers never fixed that problem and IMHO no one of them take care about.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Tonywinsc - my post was meant to imply the Bearing Design. Sorry for the confusion. The bearing being the part that is typically replaced.

TonyWinsc - My tt has a hardened steel ball turning on a flat sapphire disc. It is not only very quiet, but would likely last for a billion cycles. At 33 1/3 rpm that is 57 years continuous running. My great great grandkids will be playing records on it.

Oh I agree that all these tables will be around for our great great grandkids to use - if they want them.

When you say very quiet - what is this based on? What tables have you compared next to it in the same room/gear to make this statement?

By chance did these tables also have the same tonearm/cartridge on them as well going through the same gear?

How many years does a billion cycles translate to ? Is longevity of an affordable bearing your prime consideration?

These are not direct questions to you - just some considerations. I think when people come on forums and say something like "very quiet" it needs a reference, a standard that the personal opinion is based on.

I will just say this.

Sometimes, something needs to removed to be able to hear the difference it makes.

Cheers

Tonywinsc - 57 years continuous running bearing life - thanks.