Does any Audiogon member have a Holbo air-bearing turntable?

@lewm 

$160,000 for shipping!!!! Even in AUS dollars that seems impossible

Based on the cost of the DHL Express shipping charge for my 18-kg Holbo package, my first guess was A$40,000, but Troy said double my guess and double again!

As far as I know there are no import duties on cars into Australia, but there may have been a luxury vehicle tax.  My understanding is that the A$160,000 was just for the air freight.  Troy was not a happy man - he had been quoted A$80,000!

We are a big country (about the same area as mainland USA) but we are a very small market, less than the population of Texas. Someone once commented that Australia is characterised by distance the way Switzerland is characterised by mountains.  I like to point out that we do have snowfields and they are bigger than Switzerland.

It is a sweltering 40-degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Sydney today, but snow is forecast today on the Snowy Mountains to the south, still in the same State.

Yesterday I bought two sandstone slabs to go under the Holbo when it arrives.  I will separate the slabs with constrained layer damping.  Each slab is 600-mm x 400-mm by 50-mm and each probably tips the scales over 20-kg.  Under A$40 each.

My partner has banned scales from her pad in Sydney!  I will weigh them properly when I get them home to Canberra.

I am likely to buy an Italian Solidsteel S3-3 rack to go under the slabs.  The maximum shelf weight is 60-kg so should just squeeze in under that!  That model in the Solidsteel range does not have much in the way of vibration absorption, but I figure there's no substitute for mass.  At least it is reasonably affordable

I don’t know why the high line cars in AUS were so expensive back in the day but they were. 

As to mass loading, I found that better than just beneath the table as a plinth, the mass loading worked well on the table on which the turntable sat - a heavy antique mahogany prayer table. 

I eventually went to a big Minus K.

One thing I did do more as a precaution than anything, is clean the rail on which the air bearing travels- I use a non-shedding individual isopropyl lab wipe to do that before each play. Franc K thought it was unnecessary, but I don’t want the arm to hang up and torque the cantilever of my cartridges. 

Just my observations- I’ll be interested in your take once you get the unit set up. 

Dialing these in is far different than a pivoted arm. I don’t know what Holbo recommends, but the Kuzma likes to see a very tiny uptilt in the front right corner- beyond any measurement by "level"-- it is based on how the arm behaves at different intervals along the disc surface. There are not "null" points as such- I assume the mfr supplies a template and you can adjust the feet or plinth to get it to travel properly without worrying about "anti-skate" as such. It’s such a small adjustment, a slight turn of wrench is all it takes. I can adjust the stand, the Minus K and even the HRS platform to a degree. Get it right and it sings!

@whart 

I don’t know why the high line cars in AUS were so expensive back in the day 

Back in the day, Australia had several mainstream brands manufacturing cars locally, including GM, Ford, Chrysler and the infamous British Motor Corporation. 

Local manufacturers were supported by high tariffs or duties, which allowed them to become very uncompetitive on price.  At the same time, car-mad Australia was fixated on racing, especially between cars you could actually buy from a showroom. Australia produced the world’s fastest four door saloons, which were also tough enough to survive rough roads, heat and wet.

Then a Labor government decided that the car industry needed rationalising and to help, they decided to progressively reduce tariffs to zero.  BMC folded, and Mitsubishi bought Chrysler’s factory.  Toyota moved into local manufacture.  Rationalising included encouraging manufacturers to use the same suppliers and even the same parts, like washer bottles. The local GM design team became so efficient, they used CAD / CAM to build Australia’s most popular car, without going through a prototype stage.  This was exported to the USA as a police pursuit vehicle.  The Aussie dollar rose to parity with the greenback, and GM got A$250-million from the government to stay in manufacturing.  Unfortunately they sent the money to Detroit and pulled out anyway.  Without GM’s volume, parts supply became an issue and the other manufacturers also pulled out.  Australia is now a highly competitive test market, tariff-free, for the world’s car makers.  We still have a luxury car tax though.

Dialing these in is far different than a pivoted arm

It seems critical to get the Holbo level, both front to back and sideways  It only has three feet, which makes adjustment easy using a decent spirit level.  It is also critical to get the stylus to follow a radius line from the spindle.  A simple template with a radial line fits over the spindle and you adjust the overhang so the stylus exactly touches the line in two places with the platter stationary.  Azimuth needs setting at the same time because it relies on the same lock screw.  The final adjustment is to precisely level the cantilevered rod that the arm glides on.  A screw at the base does this.  I would like to try this with a blank section of a test record, and get it so the arm stays put!

I’ll let you know!

Richard, I actually did own a 67 Duetto in red, virtually the same car later depicted in The Graduate, except mine had real Minilite magnesium wheels, not the stock steel wheels with hubcaps seen on Dustin Hoffman's car. I bought it when it was already one year old, and I was a medical student in NYC.  I drove it throughout med school, even in horrible weather and traffic in NYC. Parked it outside at all times, and it never let me down. In those years, of course, I was not a collector owner; the Duetto was my only car.