I stripped the screw thread on my SME 30 standard screw down clamp.
I was always rather uncomfortable with the forces involved in forcibly screwing the record down like that, with a washer holding the record up at the center and the clamp forcibly bending the record into contact with the platter. It did cause stress fractures around a few records
spindle holes.
Working with materials in biology, even seemingly hard and resistant materials, hard force systems tend to succumb to stress failure routinely.
I am glad it was the puck and not the spindle that failed. I can't argue with the theory of hard clamping, I just think over time hard clamping generates too much physical stress on the spindle, clamp thread and record.
Anyway, it forced me to try an alternative, and I now use the puck as a passive weight system with a mat and the puck sitting on the spindle with a piece of felt under it. The milled cork surface is handled with a 1.5mm leather mat.
I like it better, more mellow and tone-ful but without loss of detail or sound staging.
The only generalizations I can make are that there are no generalizations, one must just fool around with at particular analog system until one is tired of fooling and wants to go back to listening.
I look at the stereo system as a musical instrument that plays other groups of instruments. In analog, the sky is the limit on the tuning paradigm, especially vibration detectors like turntables.
Whether you can get a gorgeous material such as teak to convey its essence to the overall sonic musical presentation is a speculation that is fun for driving objectivists crazy.
Materials do two basic things, they dampen sound by turning the energy into heat and they will turn particular frequencies into different frequency spectra at different energy levels. Every material will have its own damping/reassignment characteristic, so particulars will be experiment based.
The most straight forward thing is just to tap the surface of the record and listen to its ping, you can get a pretty good idea with a little practice as to its frequency spectrum and whether it is over or under damped. This is free, simple and requires a little bit of skill acquisition, so it seems to be dismissed by most audiophiles who would rather pay for a guru solution.
Materials do two basic things, they dampen sound by turning the energy into heat and they will turn particular frequencies into different frequency spectra at different energy levels. Every material will have its own damping/reassignment characteristic, so particulars will be experiment based.
The most straight forward thing is just to tap the surface of the record and listen to its ping, you can get a pretty good idea with a little practice as to its frequency spectrum and whether it is over or under damped. This is free, simple and requires a little bit of skill acquisition, so it seems to be dismissed by most audiophiles who would rather pay for a guru solution.
Agreed, but once you clamp the LP direct to turntable, no material or damping can stop the transmission of a noisy bearing/motor/environment from reaching the stylus.
tb1
TBone, How would you describe the case of the SME system (screw-down clamp to vinyl to isodamp bonded to the platter)? Is the LP clamped directly to the turntable or is this more analogous to a mat system? It seems to me that in the SME case, the LP is clamped directly to the turntable, but there is the benefit of a soft mat like material as an interface between the LP and the platter. It does not seem like internally generated vibrations from the bearing or motor make their way up to the stylus. I don't know if that is because this system is effective at dampening vibrations or if the motor and bearing are just unusually quiet.
ive owned three tables with vacuum hold down, others with reflex clamps and screw down clamps. At the moment i have a VPI classic (with ring and weight), TNT (screw-on clamp) and Rega P9 (nekid) in the house. If you put their respective designers in one room and asked David Fletcher, John Bicht, Harry weisfeld and Roy Gandy the same question you'd get 4 different answers. Me? I think vacuum hold down has the edge if implemeted properly.
Just to make matters worse. I find with my SME that the sound varies depending on how tightly you screw the clamp (my preference is for light clamping on my particular deck.) There are no 'definite' answers. All is confusion. Still, as long as we know what we like.....
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