[Zero One]

Now it has been some time since I added any tweekies but that doesn't mean I've been asleep and this one is a real good one providing you can put up with the low WAF.

My sacrificial Pioneer TT is now sitting a good 6 inches above the concrete slab base (which has a sandstone finish)  I previously had used squash balls and other little ideas to isolate the TT from the worlds and this worked well but being a complete tweek I thought "well what if I did the opposite" what if I used mass instead to damp things.  Basically I wanted to try some ideas in preparation for buiding my ultimate TT based on the mighty Australian Commonwealth Transcription TT  (if your interested you can have a look at the beast on my web page for such items) http://homepage.mac.com/braddles/Menu2.html.  There is also a before and after pic of the Pioneer, though quite a bit has changed since the pics were taken.

Here is what I have done.

I took 6 lenghts of PVC pipe 90mm dia, I cut 4 to 12cm and 2 to 9 cm, each pipe then had a capping plug glued to the end.  Next I removed the feet from the turntable and replaced these with rubber door stoppers, which are much harder than the original feet.  Next I took the PVC pipes and filled 4 of them with coarse sand up to about 10cm and then placed a round piece of non-slip rubber matting on the top.

I then put 4 spiked plastic castor pads on top of the sand/matting

Next I took 4 glass coasters, the type that have the little clear rubber pads under them and I put the PVC pipes on top of those roughly in the spots to line up with the feet.

Now wait, I know what your thinking but there's more and this is the tricky bit.

Previously I had cut a hole in the cover that goes over the motor housing under the turntable and glued a little bottle with oil in it to the bottom of the motor, to act as a type of hydraulic damper, it worked but I always felt I could do better! This is where the other two two tubes come in.

First I glued a short lenght of hard 25mm PVC pipe to the bottom of the centre bearing housing under the turntable and I left the bottle in place, before I glued this on I filled it with coarse sand and capped the end with a cork. So now I have a turntable that has two rude protrusions from the bottom and 4 stubby rubber feet. I then took a few circles of thick non-slip rubber matting and placed these on the slab roughly underneath the motor housing and the centre bearing housing.

Now the tunrtable is placed on top of the PVC tubes, (which I think is similar to what someone else did around this forum recently though I couldn't find the post) and I levelled things up by tapping on the corners of the TT which works surprisingly well.

Once all is levelled up I put a tube under the bottle below the motor and under the tube bleow the main bearing. carefully I then filled the remaining two tubes with coarse sand using a tablespoon until the bottle and 25mm tube are embedded nicely, please note you can't just drop the whole lot down into the sand as it would cause all sorts of problems.

Now I have to say it looks a bit rough at present but I will sand and spray paint the tubes black or brown this weekend and then it should look pretty smick.

But what about the sound!

Well the bass is much better, pretty much idler drive like, much of this I think is because the motor cannot rock about any where near as much so it is less effected by belt movement etc, but everything is just that little bit clearer but that isn't the best bit.

The best bit is that the TT is impervious to outside vibration and noise, but it is also totally dead in itself, for example surface noise etc is virtually zero, I imagine largely as a result of the bearing tube sinking away the vibration into the sand (path of least resistance and all that).

The motor was always quite but if you got close enough you could just hear it and a very light touch on the body of the TT would reveal very small vibrations.  Now nothing, it is utterly quite and has no vibration at all...none.  In fact even putting my ear hard against the turntable reveals nothing, so this means that the interaction between the motor and bearing  and the music is probably about as low as I can get it short of using a different motor.

I am excited, this really has iced my pioneers cake and as my wife would say I am not easily excited!

Now I know you want more, I have done one other tweekie, I got to worrying about the tone arm wires, but I couldn't bring myself to pull the TT apart to relpace them so I made some out of winding wire from a midrange driver.  I wrapped the wire in teflon plumbers tape and then made them into twisted pairs which I wrapped around the tonearm and joined to the cart.  I then fed them over the top of the centre pivot and supported them on a little wire frame, finally taking them down to a pair of sockets on the back of the TT.

This is not a chalk and cheese mod, but it did give a nice boost in clarity and especially bass, which seemed to be tighter ( sorry can't tell you why). There are no problems with RF at all, though I thought there might be.  It is a fiddly job but far easier than an internal rewire.

[beachbum]

i use mapleshade products and they have added a super quieting touch to my analog rig, thick maple platform, triplepoint heavy feet, isoblocks,

[Listens2tubes]

Very interesting, how about some pictures of the tubes in place under the table. The plinth looks great.

[Zero One]

Hi Listen2tubes

Yep I will post some on my webpage as soon as I get a chance to shoot some, could be tomorrow, I will post here to indicate when its done.

[gooberdude]

Just read this, a very cool idea.   Sounds like this tweak took a while to morph into its present state!  you thought of everything.

i played around with all sorts of mounts for a year or so before 'caving in' and going
the Mapleshade route.    Their Ult Triplepoints under my rigid TT are the shizzle, and the suspended tonewood boards sound amazing.   Been listening to a 4" thick plat of theirs lately, its expensive but 'oh my gawd' is it fun....

our spinning bundles of joy are so tweakable...



 

[Zero One]

Just a little follow up, after listening to this setup for a few days now I can conclude it is utterly the best TT mod I have tried, the effect of total system silence is quite amazing and is surprising considering it was pretty good before this.  I have added a little tweak in that I have now taken a few small snap lok bags and half filled them with sand and placed them around the inside of the TT near the main bearing and motor housing plate.  This further lowered the noise floor.

Now I have a dilema as I think I have reached the limit of development for my much modded $10.00 carts, there is a little grain up high that is now irratating me that was previously masked, I will keep tinkering, may be a loading issue or cables.

I have one other mod I am planning and that is a sand filled platter surface, basically I want to fill the gap between the platter and a thin cork mat with 2mm of very fine sand, not as easy as it sounds but it is worth a try I feel.

[TheChairGuy]

You are the vinyl tweekmaster, Zero One, I bow to your ingenuity and pluck 

More pics would greatly help visualize all these tweeks you do.

If you have any issues loading them (after you create a gallery here on AC), just give me a shout for help.

Thx, John / TCG

[Zero One]

For all spinners as promised here is a link to the pics for the TT feet, I have just finished painting these and reassembled the TT, sounds sweet, doesn't look much like the original Pioneer PX 513 any more, and sounds nothing like it.  This has been a nice cheap project, still under $200.00 Oz including DIYed pre-amp, cables, cart and clamps.

http://homepage.mac.com/braddles/PhotoAlbum8.html

[TheChairGuy]

Splendid, Zero One 

I did much the same...I used 4 string bean cans (wrappers removed....only organic type..ha) and wrapped black electrical tape around them to damp them and make them look nicer.  Then, I filled each with about 8 lbs of steel shot and laid a squishy pud (from LAT International) on top in contact with table body.  It's all sitting on the topmost shelf of my Target rack....which had submitted a marble cutting board in place of the (standard) mdf fibreboard that it came with.

Not a dang bit of rack feedback making it's way to the table now I'm pleased to say.  I can pound pretty hard on the table during playback without skipping or audible sound thru the speakers. The 9lbs. of Plast-i-Clay within the TT helped a great deal with this, too 

I got my idea from the Basis line of tables.

As it raises the table up about 7" now, there is all kinds of room underneath for outboard phono stage, power supply, or in my case, half-pint CD player that is relegated to secondary/background music duties now   

[Daygloworange]

TCG,

Did you receive the "Quash" panels I sent you yet?

Cheers

[TheChairGuy]

DGO,

Nope - was gonna' PM you shortly on that.  It's like 2 weeks now, eh?

I have had a few things take that long from (Eastern) Canada, tho.  I'm really looking forward to making use of them.

I'll let ya' know when/if they arrive - can you PM me what I owe ya' in shipping costs?

Thx, John / TCG

[Daygloworange]

I sent it on the 9th. They said 5 to 7 days service. I guess that's BS. I'll try tracking it.

Cheers

[BobM]

any pictures of this little device yet? They say 1000 words!

Thanks,
Bob

[TheChairGuy]

Blame the less-than-stellar pics on the lousy 4mb Kodak camera  Black is also inherently devoid of light, so it's the hardest color to shoot with great detail. This stuff is inky black in color.

It's about two inches thick and resembled recycled corrugated plastic made with proprietary bubbles throughout.

Listening to it for the past two hours in this position shone, the results are inconclusive. It does seem that the noise floor is lower overall, but it also (paradoxically, I think) seems the music is a little more distant, less sharp and striking.  The transient snap sounds a bit dulled.

So much of this is trail and error - I've gone thru some pretty extreme lengths for isolation and it works, perhaps adding this last piece (Quash) is a bit too much for it's own good.  It is worth a try from others to hear if the same thing is noticed.

[Daygloworange]

No, no, no! Your supposed to sit on it while listening! 

Just kidding. I thought it might be worth a shot. It's meant to be a sound absorber first and foremost.

Maybe try it between the TT and the shelf minus the cans? Just to see what it'll do.

Cheers

[TheChairGuy]

Yeah, perhaps without the cans might be best.

It did seem to lower the noise floor, but it created a certain blurring of notes - most noticeable hearing Vladimir Horowitz playing Chopin and Rachmaninoff.  The man plays with so much vigor, on one of the hardest instruments to reproduce correctly/accurately, that any blurring is noticeable to me.

Apparently, lowering of the noise floor isn't the only thing one seeks to achieve with isolation.  I would have thought that was the be-all and end-all of isolation - lowering the noise floor.  But, there is something more to it than that, apparently.

It does get me off my smug ass, thinking I had achieved as much isolation as possible, to a more questioning attitude regarding my isolation work with my TT 

[Zero One]

Hi Chair Guy
I know what you mean about lowering the noise floor and inducing other short comings, that was the issue with my squash ball isolation set-up I had before the sandy big feet, very low noise floor and terrific isolation but the attack on bass notes and the clarity of the highs was no where near as focused as they are now, this set-up has lead to much greater ambience to the music.

I suspect it has to do with the TT not being able to sink the mechanical energy that is produced when playing the disc out of the system and it feeds back in after travelling a fair way from its original source and then muddies up the sound, I imagine the longer it takes for the reverberation the more noticeable the result, well that's my reasoning anyway, but whatever ears say this is a great set-up.

One side issue is that adding the sand foot to damp the main bearing via the tube under the TT has meant that I could go with a much firmer platter material without causing any rumble or noise issues at all.  At the moment I am actually using an old 78 shellac sitting on top of a very thin piece of sorbothane that neatly fits into the well in the platter, the VTA remains the same overall.  This gives a very dynamic result but still very very low surface noise, and if I get a nasty noisy record I can always add another thin layer of non slip rubber matting on top of that or even a thin cork layer, these all work fine to tune for individual discs.

THis neatly solves what I feel is the shortcoming of very soft platter mats, that being they allow the LP to flex a bit to much under the weight of the stylus (it must be a small amount though) and this robs the resulting sound of dynamics.

So what now, well I am experimenting some more with cables, which I think I have nailed tonight but thats another story, and a few other very minor tweaks, but overall I can feel a few good long sessions with some cold beers and a pile of black discs and a good book coming on!