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Turntable cones/spikes or shock absorbing feet?

How about both?

I've dorked around with my turntable (SL1210) feet various ways over the two years. Recently I tried something that turned into a real keeper:

I had been using the Parts-Express solid brass Dayton speaker cones as the threads fit the Technics. They were seated directly on a butcher block turntable and were noticeably better than what I'd had before.

What I tried was taking a set of "floor savers"--those flat metal discs with an indentation in the center for protecting floors and shelves from spikes--and placing the cone points on the floor savers, and placed the floor savers on top of a set of weight-matched Vibrapods.

Voila! This made everything better--no tradeoffs. Lower noise floor, better imaging, better dynamics at both ends, better inner detail.

The problem is that it's hard to come across floor savers of sufficient diameter to perch on the suspension doughnut of the Vibrapod.

But there's another way: Herbie's (maker of the Way Excellent TT mats) makes these cone/spike grounding bases, which combine floor savers of various sizes with an underlayer of his dBNeutralizer(tm) pad.

The Vibrapod website also mentions this type of arrangement, but as I said, the challenge is finding a floorsaver big enough to use with Vibrpods.
johnnyb53

Showing 1 response by hevac1

hevac1
812 posts
 
I would think it would depend on the TT.

When I had my Micro Seiki BL-91 I used Audioquest sorbothane feet. The TT had no suspension or isolation. Sounded better with the feet.

When I had my VPI HW-19 Mk4 with SAMA motor I used spikes on the TT and sorbothane for the motor, to stop motor vibration. Sounded better with tweaks.

With my current Basis I use Sobothane for the shelf, but nothing under the TT.

I think am going to get a TT shelf from HTS but I want to try it first, it may not make much of a difference with my setup. Everthing in my system besides amps and speakers are in a closet on the other side of one of the houses main carrying beams so don't get much if any vibration or feedback from the speakers.
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