Spindle oil

KY reduces friction wonderfully. ;)

Sean,

I think that you missed the point about viscous damping. The intent is to compensate for stylus drag. The drag from a stylus is highly variable exerting a very small but non-uniform braking force. The theory behind viscous damping is that applying a highly uniform braking force that is many times greater than stlyus drag will swamp out the effect of the stylus. I can't prove the validity of this theory, but there seems to be a great deal of supporting evidence. The primary evidence is that the vast majority of high-end turntables have bearings with a lot of vicous damping and are decidedly not optimized for low friction.

Variance in viscosity is not an issue for two reasons. 1) Temperatures in a turntable bearing will not change enough to be meaningful. There simply is not enough energy present to affect more than a one or possibly two degree temperature change. 2) The magnitude of drag is relatively unimportant. Any change in drag from temperature will be slow and gradual enough to be irrelevant.

Back to the original thread, my experience is that bearing oil viscosity does make a small difference in sound. My unproven theory is that oil with the higest viscosity that produces laminar (non-turbulent) flow in the bearing will be optimal. Turbulent flow will produce less uniform drag. So the objective is to maximize drag without turbulence. Radial bearing clearance and bearing design both effect flow so the best viscosity will be different for each bearing design.

Beyond viscosity it is difficult to imagine that additives or expensive formulations would be relevant. When it comes to lubrication a turntable bearing is a cake walk. Low temp, low speed, low pressure and clean.

Teres: If your stylus is centered in the groove, there's minimal drag. The only "friction" that the stylus should encounter would be converted as motion in the cantilever, which energizes the cartridge and is converted to electrical impulses known as music. If the stylus is exerting massive amounts of drag i.e. enough to cause the platter to destabilize rotational speed and effect the stability of the motor / speed regulation system, you're vinyl system is in really bad shape.

Then again, i keep forgetting some very important facts here. Most of you folks are using pivoted arms that are only in the center of the groove at two points per record side. I guess that if i were dragging my stylus sideways through all of grooves except for a very few, i'd be more concerned about this. Then again, one would think that they would be more concerned with the damage being done to their irreplaceable vinly recordings than to how much speed variation such an arrangement was causing.

Outside of all of this, i guess that one should contact the manufacturer of their table. They should know how well their products are designed and whether or not they need some type of "band aid" to work properly. Sean
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Sean, I'm suprised to see this side of you. Now that you have been proven wrong, you've decided to go on the attack labeling designs that deviate from what you consider to be proper as "piss-poor?"

If the platter rotates at a constant speed and continues to do so for a long period of time then it is a good design, case closed. It doesn't make one bit of difference how the final result is achieved.

So I'll go back to the original question and try to make my point once again. The folks at VPI, Teres, Linn, Basis, etc. have dedicated countless hours to optimize every aspect of the performance of their tables. I believe it to be highly unlikely that you can improve that performance by using a lubricant other than the one they recommend.

Sean,

What causes variation in stylus drag is groove modulation. Loud passages create more drag. This will be the case regardless of how well the stylus is centered.

Viscous damping is a successful, widely used technique, not a Band aid".