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High mass vs Low Mass Turntables - Sound difference?

As I am recently back playing with analog gear after some 15 years away, I thought I would ask the long time experts here about the two major camps of record players -- high vs low mass-loaded-type tables...

For example, an equivalently priced VPI table (say a Classic, Aries or Prime) versus a Rega RP8/10 or equivalent Funk Firm table...  the design philosophies are so different ... one built like a tank, the other like a lightweight sports car...

Just wondering if the folks here have had direct experience with such or similar tables, and what have been your experiences and sense of strengths and weaknesses of these two different types of tables.



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bdp24's avatar
bdp24
4,908 posts
 
Well Tempered designer Bill Firebaugh states that at music frequencies, the silicone fluid in the cup provides a high degree of rigidity, but at very low frequencies (where LP warps live) a desirable amount of freedom of movement. Townshend Rock turntable designer Max Townshend claims the same for the similar fluid in his tables damping trough. Friction from the silicone? Not much I'd wager, especially in comparison with ball bearing-on-ball bearing in captured-bearing arms. 
13blm's avatar
13blm
47 posts
 
I'm just saying there are plenty of arms with less friction, which of course is only one criterion. I think UCLA? came up with the Townsend design and he marketed it. 
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
4,908 posts
 
The research whose findings ended up being incorporated into the Rock turntable was done at the Cranfield Institute of Technology in England. Max Townshend licensed the rights to the design and ran with it, incorporating his own ideas into the different versions of his Townshend Rock. Max has done far more than just market the Rock! He has also designed and manufactured a passive pre-amp, loudspeakers and an add-on super-tweeter, inter-connects and speaker cables, and various versions of his brilliant Seismic isolation products. A very clever fellow!
avanti1960
225 posts
 
personally my no. 1 design criteria for selecting a (belt drive) turntable is that the drive system uses the outer rim of the platter as the driven pulley.  i will not purchase a turntable with a sub-platter as the driven pulley.  
there are too many engineering advantages to a motor pulley / platter rim pulley system such as speed stability, resistance to stylus drag, motor life, bearing life and belt life.  
all things being equal if a platter is 3X the diameter of a sub platter (for example), the above attributes are 3X better.   
lewm
6,770 posts
 
Apples and Oranges.  The Townshend damping trough is a whole different thing from the bearing at the pivot of the WT tonearms.  I think very highly of the Townshend idea, but it is a bit clumsy in its application. Nevertheless, the principle makes a lot of sense.  You might say it's the only right way to dampen the energy developed at the headshell properly. As to the WT use of silicon damping at the other end of the tonearm, at the pivot, the damping per se may be a fine idea but in the case of the WT, the pivot is not otherwise fixed very tightly in space. It's a golf ball in a trough.  That's my beef.
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