wow and flutter

Mayanitis,

I don't think the arm/cartridge resonance is relevant for what you hear at your 3 kHz test track unless it is a 3 kHz tone superimposed on a low frequency (near the arm cartridge resonance frequency)signal.

You should make sure that the platter bearing is properly lubricated. An old bearing with insufficient lubrication may cause flutter.

If the bearing and belts etc are fine, then you might improve things with a heavier platter.

If none of the advice above (i.e cleaning the belt, lubrication etc)helps, then you'll either have to learn to live with it or get another TT such as suggested already by Psychicanimal.

Good luck!

- Harald

To chime in, wow is a distortion in reproduced sound consisting of a slow rise and fall of pitch caused by speed variation in the reproducing system. Flutter is simply the same phenomenon at a higher pitch.

Your issue is with the usual suspects: belt and or motor, assuming the LP itself is not grossly off-center (all LP's are to some extent). You may just need, as others have pointed out, to lubricate and replace motor and belt, respectively.

I would not replace the platter first.

In relation to the last 2 posts there are two fixes for a Rega Planar 3 that is not running at speed.Firstly check your running speed either with a strobe or stopwatch.You can get a downloadable strobe from the Vinyl Engine library.It will usually be 2% fast if not on speed.The first fix is the official Rega one and you must clean your bearing well and parts out thoroughly and then add 2 DROPS ONLY of 80w/90 Gear Oil.The second fix is the one I use and that is usually 2(3) spliced,not wound lengths of black electrical tape around the edge of the sub-platter to widen it sufficiently so that it slows the table down.You can use oil of your choice here so that it does not evaporate quickly as in the first fix.I can get dead-on speed(playing a record to account for stylus drag) this way.

The turntable was purchased second hand, I cleaned the belt as recomended but it has a little slack in it. Are the new belts a tight fit?. I presume the ac motor is the ultimate cause, there appears to be some caps in the power supply, can changing these make any diference and will the dc motor upgrades (ie origin live) eliminate this distortion or do they merely reduce it.
Thanks for all your replies, I am enjoying my sojourn into analog, just trying to optimise my equipment.

New belts are not tight, but neither are they expensive ($20). It would be worth trying.

If the turntable has the original belt-mounted motor then the rega motor upgrade kit will improve speed stability. After that the Heed Orbit power supply is reputed to improve speed stability. By the time you have purchased both of these you might be better off selling the rega and getting a better deck.

However to really crack speed stability you need a better turntable. At it's price point the rega has fundamental limitations. The platter is too light, with not enough peripheral mass. The bearing is not designed for extra mass, so carefull with adding mass to the existing platter. And an acrylic platter will have even less mass.

Look at the design of the Teres and Nottingham decks for examples of how to build belt drive decks with speed stability.

Oh, and make sure the deck is absolutely level, so that the bearing shaft is not rubbing on its housing.