Trans-fi Terminator T3PRO opinions please...

Hello Spirit.

Yes, he suggested that I post photos and suggestions. I will probably do that at some point, but I am working on an air bearing turntable at the moment, so ...

Terry & Spirit, Funny coincidence as I´m working on the final stage on levitating my TT and I have no time to tweak the airflow of TA but I will try a large (20 litre perhaps) tank later with my Sera 275 R. Actually I´m testing an uber rare vintage MM cart at the very moment as well so I need to complete 2 studies first.
2 years ago after the latest tweaks the Tom2 wand I really thought that I don´t need to improve anything in my system because the overall sound was so good. Boy how wrong I was.
With an indispensable help from Vic himself I have managed to vastly improve my TT, first the direct rim drive, then removing suspension... And now there seems to be a way to improve TA´s airflow and get even better sound quality. Fantastic is this hobby of ours, isn´t it.

Re levitating/air bearing tts, Vic has just released a second major mod of his Salvation rim drive tt on which I run his Terminator. The first was a magnetic bearing, and now magnetic feet to isolate the tt further - aiming to fit the latter soon, but if the effects of the mag bearing are anything to go by, I'm expecting a lot.
I would still love you guys to run your pump mods by Vic and get his response to your ideas.
Terry9, schematics/photos would be great, I'm all fingers and thumbs w/such things.

Changed the mounting options on my turntable. On the turntable itself I changed the sorbothane pads to aluminum spikes resting on aluminum pucks. The shelf which supports the turntable is now supported by hardwood pillars all the way down to concrete.

Took a tip from TMS and used a Starrett level, another improvement.

Results are good. Soundstage focus is improved and so is accuracy, without deleterious harshness. An old angel recording of Satie has the introductory percussives which are not too far off the piano upstairs (which some more modern piano records cannot match, which is interesting).

Dgarretson, I noticed that you posted on the stability of the Terminator saddle, and that the stability decreased with increasing air pressure. I noticed the same thing, even with a highly filtered and regulated air supply. In my case, it seems to be a vertical movement rather than horizontal. What were your observations?

Again in my case, it seems that the trade-off is saddle stability vs lateral friction, as the latter clearly decreases with air pressure. And this is where we find an interesting benefit of the Terminator design, that the cartridge is almost immune to vertical saddle movement, because of the point bearings which support the wand, leaving wand inertia to filter out the saddle movement.

Lateral friction, of course, will affect trackability, and so higher pressure will tend to reduce that distortion component. The sweetest spot for me seems to be about .3 to .4 psi, measured according to the pressure in the line, just past the regulator.

Have you had any more thoughts? And thanks for posting about the saddle instability.