Verdier with or without the steel ball

My Platine is set up without the ball bearing. Without it, the platter can be bounced up and down on the supporting magnetic field (the field acts as a spring). The platter does not rock in any way, it rotates absolutely flat. When playing, there is no up and down movement of the platter.

To me, the bass is great, but I haven't tried it with the ball in place. I may someday, but basically I'm too lazy to bother. Verdier told me in an e-mail that they recommend trying it both ways to see which you prefer. I was surprised. I thought they would have had a preference since it was designed with the ball in the first place.

One potential advantage of the ball is that it provides a 'better' mechanical ground of the platter to the spindle. But the platter/spindle clearance is pretty close, so there may be sufficient grounding at that interface?

The other BIG advantage I see is regarding set up. If you DON'T use the ball, you need to set your arm's VTA with EVERYTHING in place (platter/mat/record/clamp), since the height of the platter is weight dependent, whereas with the ball in place it isn't.

Maybe that is/was your problem?

"For the spindle you also have to find the exact limit height where the magnets don't support the platter anymore and where the effort is done by the ball itself."

This is not the correct procedure for using the ball according to Verdier. The ball should not be supporting the platter, that defeats the intent of the magnetic suspension system, and results in a very high load on the ball with resultant drag/rumble. The idea is for the majority of the load to be taken up by the magnets, with only a very small portion carried by the ball itself. You adjust the spindle height until you can just feel the ball touching the underside of the platter, no more than that. In this way, you maintain contact from the platter through the ball to the spindle/bearing support, yet there is very little actual load on the ball. What you describe, would certainly overload the ball over time, it seems to me.

Cool stuff you made, Tuboo.

I've got a friend with a complete machine shop. Maybe I can talk him into making a similar set of hardware for my Platine.

On the other hand, taking the platter off to make adjustments isn't that difficult.

Thanks for the idea!