Verdier with or without the steel ball

Dear André: My experience about was with Micro Seiki TT: I owned an air bearing model and now I own a non-air bearing
one.

Are there any differences?, yes there are and specific on bass the non-airbearing has a tight bass that the air bearing one, this one has a very good bass but it is a litle on the " soft " side.

For what I read ( and hear for one time ) the Verdier is very good on that subject.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

My Platine is set up without the ball bearing. Without it, the platter can be bounced up and down on the supporting magnetic field (the field acts as a spring). The platter does not rock in any way, it rotates absolutely flat. When playing, there is no up and down movement of the platter.

To me, the bass is great, but I haven't tried it with the ball in place. I may someday, but basically I'm too lazy to bother. Verdier told me in an e-mail that they recommend trying it both ways to see which you prefer. I was surprised. I thought they would have had a preference since it was designed with the ball in the first place.

One potential advantage of the ball is that it provides a 'better' mechanical ground of the platter to the spindle. But the platter/spindle clearance is pretty close, so there may be sufficient grounding at that interface?

The other BIG advantage I see is regarding set up. If you DON'T use the ball, you need to set your arm's VTA with EVERYTHING in place (platter/mat/record/clamp), since the height of the platter is weight dependent, whereas with the ball in place it isn't.

Maybe that is/was your problem?

Bigbucks

Whatever the VTA is , it sounds much leaner without the ball.
It would be interesting that you try it..the difference between the two options IS VERY AUDIBLE ( at least in my system).
Better to be helped to maintain the ball while putting the platter back on the spindle)
For the spindle you also have to find the exact limit height where the magnets don't support the platter anymore and where the effort is done by the ball itself.

And of course don't forget the warm up before doing it...

André

I own a Platine Verdier with a Schroeder Model 2 and Allaerts MC1B. Mine was setup by the UK Verdier distributor (Graham Tricker from GT Audio). He never uses the steel ball, but makes sure that the oil reservoir is kept topped up from time to time (through the small allen grub screw next to the spindle), as the sound gets lean without oil. I'm very happy with mine. Buying a battery PSU, however, transforms the PV even further. I use the GT Audio battery PSU made in the UK (for all voltages), but I'm told that the Galibier one is also very good (but haven't heard it).

"For the spindle you also have to find the exact limit height where the magnets don't support the platter anymore and where the effort is done by the ball itself."

This is not the correct procedure for using the ball according to Verdier. The ball should not be supporting the platter, that defeats the intent of the magnetic suspension system, and results in a very high load on the ball with resultant drag/rumble. The idea is for the majority of the load to be taken up by the magnets, with only a very small portion carried by the ball itself. You adjust the spindle height until you can just feel the ball touching the underside of the platter, no more than that. In this way, you maintain contact from the platter through the ball to the spindle/bearing support, yet there is very little actual load on the ball. What you describe, would certainly overload the ball over time, it seems to me.