2020 update : JC Verdier La Platine

AC motor is a fantastic upgrade.  highly recommended.  this is now fantasy hi-fi.  listened to "tattoo you" by the rolling stones last night.  favourite record from when i was a kid.  haven't heard it in years.  shocking!  so much energy and life.  you hear the band playing and you think Bill Wyman was a great bassist!  they are a great band.  so black in the black and such great clarity across the frequency spectrum.  

the AC motor was only $100 USD.  the pulley/capacitor etc set me back like $30 USD.  the important part of it that is a bit exxy is the Long Dog Audio Speed Controller - which is quite excellent i think.  it is kind of weird how locked in it is to one speed as opposed to the Verdier motor which was sort of "where are we now then".

tried mylar tape yesterday.  very hard to get a nice skinny loop of it.  very prone to eccentricity.  terrible W&F figures.  very impressive drive!  back to suture silk for now which is pretty good albeit not as quiet as silk.  i'm going to give linen thread another go.  it tends to have a lot of drive and everything is so silent now i don't need more of that.  i need more clatter and surprise!  sometimes it feels like the drummer is in my room.  it is very good.  i will have furutech plugs put in my speaker cable soon.  i am told this is a huge lift in transparency.  i think the system will make my loungeroom sound like a rehearsal space for bands if this keeps up.  

@mr_gray , For AC motor, you may want to explore the possibility of using a dual-phase controller (if it is a dual-phase AC motor), it could perform much better than the single phase controller utilising the phase splitting capacitor!
 

The Sota Eclipse motor package, with its 3 phase AC motor and controller, would also be an interesting option! 

it is hard to imagine it being better.  the numbers are very good (W&F), the speed stability is excellent, i turn it on and it is at speed (like 0.01% out when it is cold, quickly warms up though).  i am going to enjoy where i am at for a moment.  however i have to admit if i was going to do anything it would be using the SOTA package.  everything else out there seems to be DC.  btw i did get an email from Mr Galibier.  he has a new motor coming out!

"I’m coming out with a new system which drives a 3 phase DC motor with 3 sine waves.  I’m about 2 months out from going live.

Estimated pricing is here (pending actual fabrication expenses – they seem to rise on a monthly basis):  https://galibierdesign.com/products/parts/tt-drive-retrofit/

This is a history of our drive systems – not yet having documented the new drive: https://galibierdesign.com/drive-system-timeline/

The new drive requires a larger footprint to accommodate the new circuit board and with it, a machining expense which factors into the pricing.  Yours will be considerably taller than my stock size."

@mr_gray 

My apologies for the late response, experienced repeated failed attempts to log-in to Audiogon for the past five days. A shout out to Tammy at Audiogon who helped resolve this.

I have been reading with interest your new motor escapade,  very exciting. Would it be safe to summarize that because of the better and smoother speed control of the motor / LPS, the flow of the music is enhanced? If you do decide down the road to employ the SOTA system, it includes the Roadrunner active monitoring device. A magnets has to attached to the underside of the platter to pair with a sensor. @lewn has questioned whether the magnet discs of the La Platine might interfere with the sensor of the Roadrunner. I never reached out to Donna @ SOTA. And you need to build a housing for the SOTA motor. The Galibier motor is passive and comes in a completed package. It also  comes with a Teddy Pardo LPS while SOTA sells its own LPS as an add-on. 
 

I think we have passed the point of arguing about the merits of the original motor. Like you , I will keep the original motor.  But deciding which new motor path to take is still elusive.
 

BTW, the elastic 2mm round belt I had been using on the Jasmine snapped. I have gone back to the double knotted silk thread. With passive motor and silk thread, there is quite a severe speed adjustment required. I did not get it right on my first try. But now it is playing at 33.33 rpm. I now understand why there is a toggle on the original motor to switch between belt and thread. And with the SOTA being an active monitoring system, it will self-adjust to whatever belt material being used. Donna confirmed that the SOTA motor works with thread. 
 

DC vs AC motor is an issue that was covered briefly in earlier threads, but why AC? And @thekong why dual / three phase AC controller? While SOTA uses a three phase AC motor, Galibeir uses a three phase DC motor. 

@ledoux1238 , as far as I understand, a majority of belt drive TTs utilising AC motors use dual-phase motors. As the name implies, these motors require two signals of different phases (90° apart I believe) to drive the motor. The cheaper way to implement this is to use a phase splitting cap to generate the second phase signal to drive the motor. While this works, it is less smooth comparing to a dual phase motor controller, which generates the 2 different phase signals separately! Some top belt drive TTs, such as the Rockport Sirius II, the Final using by Dover, as well as Basis’ top models utilise dual phase AC controllers. Basis also offers their dual phase controller as optional upgrades for their lower models.

The TechDas Airforce Zero, utilising a 3-phase motor, actually has a 3-phase controller and three 50W power amplifiers (one per phase) to drive the motor!