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

@frazeur1 

I find these tweeks interesting, and sometimes difficult to know initially if improvements are brought about or not

I have not even fitted a cartridge in it yet, so not really tweaks!

I decided it would be good to keep my Garrard 301 operational for comparison, so I had to find somewhere to put the Holbo, either a cabinet or a rack. The Solidsteel S3-3 is among the cheaper audio racks sold in Australia, but has nothing special to absorb vibrations.  I like your BASE platform but it is quite expensive so for under A$200 I thought sandstone blocks with constrained layer damping would not do much harm.  The Sorbothane concept came from Bostjan and then it was a matter of getting the right shape and quantity.  There's lots of tuning I could do, but probably laziness will win!

You’re on the right track with your stand. I don’t know whether you have Home Depot in Australia but any big box hardware store has stuff from which you can create an excellent stand. A box of sand on top works fine for isolation. I use industrial type styrofoam panels, made to cushion heavy yet delicate objects in shipping, under much of my gear. Very low density and does not store energy.

An update on siting my Holbo: Still on the dining table, but now sitting on a Yamamoto B-45 cherry board on 3 carbon blocks for feet (a la Audio Tekne). This improved the SQ but don't remember in what way now.

@lewm 

Thanks again Lew

We don't have Home Depot, but an Australian institution called Bunnings Warehouse, which has a stranglehold on hardware and owns half of our grocery duopoly.  Aussies love Bunnings, while being ripped off mercilessly,

I have a homemade stand under my Garrard - just 4 Bunnings steel legs and a thick MDF base.  Then two sandstone slabs separated by damping layers and an internal MDF structure inside the plinth, supported on three IsoAccoustics OREA pucks.

I have the woodworking gear to make a cabinet from scratch (er, from a log) but laziness stepped in.  I bought the SolidSteel rack but have yet to get it home for assembly.

SolidSteel is a bit of a misnomer these days.  The legs are aluminium and the shelves MDF.  Only the spikes and bolts are steel!

My guess is that Sydney sandstone has many of the acoustic properties of loose sand but it is easier to seal - the Holbo comes with a warning to keep dust away from the cantilevered rod the tone-arm slides on.  A white cloth is provided!

For what little it is worth, I am not a fan of MDF in speaker cabinets or in shelving or probably in plinths. Based on personal listening experiences but not done in a "scientific" way.