Megasam - someone somewhere here suggested using heads of spoons (removed from their stems) sitting in Vibrapods, and then glass marbles sitting in them. Simple enough so I tried it. Believe it or not they sounded better if I sat the spoon head in up-turned E-A-R feet, but I got a sense of the effect of roller-bearings (no one brings them into NZ). Very good natural dynamics, some coloration, but primarily of the support (ie the Vibrapods or E-A-R feet), but also a mild ringing (perhaps the glass marbles, I will try ball-bearings soon). Definitely better than cones. Better with thin spoon heads like cheap metal measuring spoons than with your best silver (fortunately). I will do it a bit more properly next time and use precision surfaces (still much cheaper than bringing something in). If all that works I will start looking into getting something like the MIBs. As you say, the big difference was with the CD player. I am not so sure yet about the effect on my valve monos, with the el-cheapo test there was an unwanted coloration with the monos. Interestingly the effect is good between my Neuance shelves and my components, when I had thought the Neuance shelves had made fancy footers redundant - in fact all the cones I have fail to improve on using just the Neuance shelf - they do not improve isolation and add coloration. But the roller-bearing idea seems like it improves isolation further - very impressive.
