Albert Porters after market panzerholz plinths

Dbcooper and Mikelevine- good clean power is part and parcel to having great performance. Anything you can do to push the envelope is a net gain in micro detail and resolution. You can't have too much of a good thing. Unfortunately, the quality of our electricity is quite poor and to make matters worse communication signals are run by the power companies causing noise and intereference.

I have a dedicated transformer in my neighborhood just serving my home and it makes a difference. But when the grid is overloaded, I can hear a decline in quality and it makes me wonder, what things would sound like with a dedicated generator and power conditioner.

If you get the basics right, it seems to make everything else much easier.
Good resonance controll and clean power go a long way to lower the noise floor.

If I understand this thread correctly, neither Porter nor Dobbins actually remove the motor and platter of the SP10 from the chassis in their plinth designs, but instead remove the top of the SP10 chassis, and sink that into their plinths?

Mr Weiss lovely work you do. Your choosen plinth material Pennsyvinia soft slate did you select by scienctific methods or guessing this material maybe be good and simply trying it.

Jonathan,

i'll do my best to answer your question.

Albert does not do the 'nude' SP-10 Mk3 plinth. his Mk3 plinth design keeps the case-work on the Mk3. Steve Dobbins Mk3 plinth, which i own one of, does at least remove the top case-work. however; i do not know myself whether he removes anything else from the Mk3 before installing it in the plinth. my impression from my conversations with him is that the motor is secured directly to the plinth; but exactly what that might mean relative to your question i'm not 100% sure of.

A question about comparisons, based on the Walker-Technics comments posted here.

Many experienced hobbyists agree about the importance of component matching - speaker with room, amp with speaker, arm with cartridge. Raul was pretty specific when he suggested the importance of arm, headshell, and even platter mat for cartridge performance.

Why then would anyone argue that the only fair comparison of the Walker versus Albert's Technics should be made using the same or identical arms and cartridges? Who is to say the optimum arm for Albert's Technics would be the same as that used on the Walker? And even if the same (or identical) cartridge(s) was/were used in the comparison, what is the assurance it/they offer optimal performance when different arms are used.

This may not seem scientific but I believe music is an emotional experience. Therefore applying science-based tests may not always be most appropriate. For me a better test would be to optimize the Walker and it's arm with the best matching cartridge (obviously choices will vary but since the evaluation will be made on an individual basis I consider this OK). Then do the same with Albert's Technics, this time matching arm and cartridge. Then make the sonic comparison with EACH table optimized.

Your choices in optimizing each table may be different than mine and our respective conclusions may or may not agree. But each of us would have based our ratings on the best we felt each table could perform.

I trust this in not beating an old subject to death but in all my years in this hobby I've simply observed too many varying opinions about what is good and what is not so good to believe that rigorous "scientific" testing procedures (eliminate the variables) present any truth.