Cheap turntable tweak

strider

Last night I sprayed the underside of the metal platter on my Debut with Duplicolor UC102 undercoating. I did 3 light coats, in different directions, to ensure as uniform a coating as possible. I'd say it gave a blacker background, as well as an increased definition of the instruments. I'm not running around doing cartwheels, but at $6 and a half hour's labor, it's a good cost/improvement ratio.

hypertone

That's a pretty good idea, it would dampen the resonance of the platter. I wrapped a fat rubber band around my tonearm to make it less resonant.

hearingimpared

strider wrote: »

Last night I sprayed the underside of the metal platter on my Debut with Duplicolor UC102 undercoating. I did 3 light coats, in different directions, to ensure as uniform a coating as possible. I'd say it gave a blacker background, as well as an increased definition of the instruments. I'm not running around doing cartwheels, but at $6 and a half hour's labor, it's a good cost/improvement ratio.

Cool idea. I've been kicking around Dynamating the underside of my platter as well as the underside of my sub-plinth. The only thing keeping me from doing it that if it muddies up the sound Dynamat is a **** to remove. I think I may have enough sorbothane sheets to do the job like I did on the one I sold Dave. Atleast that is removable.

Decisions, decisions.

I don't think putting a rubber band around a tone arm is a very good idea. If it is a precision made tonearm you are messing with the design which could screw up the bearings or just the smooth swing of the arm arc across the record. Just a thought.

strider

hearingimpared wrote: »

Cool idea. I've been kicking around Dynamating the underside of my platter as well as the underside of my sub-plinth. The only thing keeping me from doing it that if it muddies up the sound Dynamat is a **** to remove. I think I may have enough sorbothane sheets to do the job like I did on the one I sold Dave. Atleast that is removable.

I was hesitent at first about the process; the undercoating is rubber based and kinda soft, so sanding wouldn't have been a viable option. There were also no directions on any chemicals to use for removal after the stuff dried. My biggest concern was getting uneven application resulting in variances in the speed of the table.

read-alot

hypertone wrote: »

That's a pretty good idea, it would dampen the resonance of the platter. I wrapped a fat rubber band around my tonearm to make it less resonant.

Back in the day I've taped a penny to the arm.


It was just a cheap record player.;)

strider

hypertone wrote: »

That's a pretty good idea, it would dampen the resonance of the platter. I wrapped a fat rubber band around my tonearm to make it less resonant.

The next thing I'm going to try is a damping trough. There's a write up on it at Audiocircle, which is where I got the idea for the platter. Basically, it's a small trough near the pivot of the tone arm filled with silicone damping oil. You put a small bit of blue tack on the tone arm above the trough, with a small piece of paper clip hanging from the blue tack into the trough. The theory, far as I can tell, is that the vibrations that would normally go up the tone arm to the cartridge are instead transmitted into the silicone oil via the paper clip. I'll give it a try; this one won't be more then $15.