[Brandon B]

Point of curiosity.  Nearly all highend turntables seem to choose acrylic as their base platter material, with various embellishments.

The reason cited is its excellent damping of resonance.

So anyone seen data or have an opinion on why a 3" thick block of MDF or even HDF would not be better?  

In other words, is sexiness of the finished product playing a big part here?

BB

[JohnR]

I don't know about MDF, but Chris Brady of Teres does have a solid hardwood platter in the works. Or maybe he had a prototype but decided to not manufacture it, I don't remember. At any rate he said it sounded fantastic.

JohnR

[Bill Baker]

I am personally experiencing with MDF platters, both on a few of my vintage tables as will as a Musih Hall MMF-5.
 Time is tight right now but I should have a few done late March.
  I'll keep you posted on my finding as I don't see any reason why MDF would not work. Maybe I will try a solid hardwood in the near future also. Just something different.

[Tonto Yoder]

Point of curiosity.  Nearly all highend turntables seem to choose acrylic as their base platter material, with various embellishments.

The reason cited is its excellent damping of resonance.

So anyone seen data or have an opinion on why a 3" thick block of MDF or even HDF would not be better?  
BB

While there are a number of acrylic-based tables, "nearly all" seems an overstatement; personally, I have a Nottingham table which is MDF-based.
In a recent TAS review, the Spacedeck bested the acrylic Michell Gyrodec.
TY.

[Brandon B]

While there are a number of acrylic-based tables, "nearly all" seems an overstatement;

OK.  I was going by several catalogs I looked at, where out of maybe 20 turntables over $1K, 15 or so of them had acrylic platters.  But I am not very familiar with a lot of equipment in this range, so extrapolating that to "nearly all" may have been out of line.

As I said, I was curious as to how much appearance plays into this choice, or whether acrylic is really better.  With the nice hardwood, the same question might apply.  A good defect-free piece of premium hardwood 3" thick is going to run a small bit of money.  A 3" piece of laminated MDF would run $5 and the number of people able to turn one out would be large, but would not be the most elegant looking platter.  Is that a contributing factor?  Just seems like MDF should be a good choice considering its prevalence in speaker cabinets.

Since I am making an acrylic platter myself, I'm assuming it is a worthwhile choice, just getting opinions.

BB

[JoshK]

If you want to read an immense discussion about platter material look at teresaudio.com and browse the teres project archives for platter construction.  They pretty much go through all the advantages/disadvantages of materials.

[Brandon B]

OK.  Thanks.

BB