Butcher Block Acoustics


I wanted to give a sounding shout-out to Butcher Block Acoustics. I placed an order Saturday and expected to receive the turntable isolation platform in the next few weeks due to some of the lingering shortages. Nope. Same day shipped and pickup by USPS (on a Saturday!). Item arrived in two days as being in the same state and safe as can be. I can't believe I was looking to upgrade my cartridge and preamp before giving turntable isolation even the slightest of a shot. I figured my Solid Steel S3 rack had things handled... I was thoroughly wrong. Absolutely 100% wrong. Isolation is such a fantastic upgrade and the  3" Butcher block with simple rubber isolation feet have gotten me to where I need to be.  Thank you Butcher Block Acoustics crew!

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@clearthinker , I hate to be a stick in the mud (not really) but the earth moves, all the time. Try putting your stylus down on a stationary record and turn the volume all the way up keeping your eye on your woofers.  The best isolation is spring loading with a very low resonance point. You need to stick your turntable on a MinusK stand.

As for these butcher block isolation platforms it is unlikely that the rubber feet are going to have a resonance frequency low enough to do the entire job. Lower frequencies are going to get through such as foot fall issues. 

@mijostyn the rubber feet seem to be blocking more frequencies than the mass loading spiked feet on my turntable as well as the solid steel rack. Works for me!

@mijostyn 

Not a dickybird I'm afraid.  You are underestimating the mass of the Earth.  In the 17th century Newton coined the Law of Conservation of Momentum.  Put the mass of the Earth in that equation and there is little room for movement.

And on my concrete slab footfall has no effect on the record player.

@clearthinker , the earth is not a solid ball. In actuality is is more like a pile of sand, water and molten rock. Sound waves travel right through the ground and your concrete slab. As any New Yorker what happens when the trolley passes by. You can feel an earth quake miles away from the epicenter as it travels in low frequency sound waves right through the earth. Put your stylus down on a stationary record, turn the volume up and watch your woofer. Jump up and down and see what happens. Hit the cabinet your turntable is sitting on with a soft mallet and watch what happens. Have somebody open and close your garage door while you watch.

"Assumptions are the mother of all F--K Ups." 

I am far from the only person who understands this. Standout personalities that do were/are Edgar Villchur, Mark Dohmann, David Fletcher and A.J. Conti. Suspended tables are inherently more complicated, engineering intense and expensive. Throwing a lot of mass at a turntable is the dirty way of going about things and it does a good job placating lay intuition. I know a gentleman who had a footfall problem with a Kuzma Stabi XL DC. He cured it by placing the rig on a MinusK stand. My guess is you do not have a foot fall problem but plenty of other low frequency rubbish is getting through. Anyone with sub woofers playing vinyl knows this for a fact. Most of the rubbish is on the record but, some is not. Very little is coming from our modern belt drive and direct drive turntables. 

My former house had suspended floors and I had terrible footfall problems. The only way I got rid of them completely was with geoffkit’s Nimbus system with springs. He is a nut of sorts, but damn if that thing didn’t work. Footfalls were gone, absolutely gone. I still have the springs but don’t currently use them.