Dear Vertigo, Due to your rigorous requirements, the only opinion you are going to come to respect is your own. So try it both ways. I owned a Lenco L75 in a giant Jean Nantais wood plinth. I used it for more than a year and then switched to another Lenco L75 with only the bearing, platter, and motor from it re-mounted in a PTP top plate (see Lenco Heaven under Peter Reinder), which is sitting in a slate plinth that was cut by a waterjet to accommodate the PTP exactly. Thus the PTP is firmly bolted to over most of its surface area to an 80-lb slate slab, and the motor hangs out in space, well isolated from the bearing. When you use the PTP, you discard the Lenco chassis with all its switch mechanisms and brake entirely, in favor of a 4-mm steel plate. My entirely subjective impression is that much of the improvement I hear is due to that simple fact, rather than to the difference in plinth materials. I like the Lenco/PTP better than the Nantais Lenco, but it's not a night and day difference. And I never auditioned them side by side with the same tonearm and cartridge, and I never did ABA them, so you may justifiably disregard my opinion.
The merits of slate plinths or not
Hi. Well, i have a lenco 78 that i refurbished and placed in a birchply/mdf plinth. Prior to this turntable i was using a systemdek table with a profile arm. I am using the origin silver mk3 with a denon 103 cartridge with the lenco. I find it to be very dynamic, good in speed, musical, natural and detailed. All in all i am very happy and satisfied. I would like to hear some dialog on whether slate would be superior to the wood plinth i am using. If someone through experience thinks they know what slate "sounds" like i would like to hear from them. I would especially like to hear from people who have tried slate plinths and have gone back to wood or some other tables. Slate is sediment compressed. If anyone has gone from a highmass wood plinth to a slate plinth , with everything else in the system remaining the same and preferred the slate, can you tell me what the improvements were and was the difference minute or quite significant. I have talked to people who have done some comparisons but havent been totally persuaded by their tests as it seems it wasnt a very controlled comparison.