A Copernican View of the Turntable System

Hi all,
One suggestion for an arm pod that I am about to fabricate from a proto-type that I designed. I purchased a solid brass pivoting arm board manufactured from tw acustics of raven tables.
Using a pivoting arm board will allow you ease of flexibility during set up especially with 9 inch arms and any tables with a chassis top deck like the Technics SP 10 MKII.

Also if desired the added use of a tone arm heavy nut as used with some models of Micro Seiki, Fedility Research just to name a couple.
i plan on using laminated layers of B-25 panzerholz and a 30 mm thick length of brass tapped and threaded for the arm board.
The feet I have not settled on as of yet.

As for the platform which all this will rest on will have to be inert. I can forsee problems with out door variable climate change/ house hold humidity, the platform will expand and contract enough in some cases to throw out the tone arm and cartridge set up.
This is just my 2 cent contribution.
Cheers

Dear Nicola, The British TT manufactures says "there is no such thing like mass damping". But the high mass of Brass is indeed very good for this purpose (arm pod) because of it's stability. The "damping" properties of Brass realised by Goldmund on their Steel/Al/Brass chassis construction because of the synergistic differential inherent molecular structure between them, that resulting to the decreased speed of resonances when collected from Steel and directed through Al to the final lower lever platform of Brass and from there to the ground. The Goldmund's material sequence is a way different approach than Vidmantas'. He is looking to provide a clean upper level for the armboard by progressively decreasing the incoming resonances from floor & air. The cork decoupling level is used as an isolation point between the materials. Critically examination of these 2 different solutions opens up many queries concerning the natural predisposition of metals, transmitting energy with different speed and also ringing on a different frequency to each other in order to weak the intruder resonance. I used to have many top range Goldmund products and I could not verify the validity of the Steel/Al/Brass for a general purpose, not even for component chassis construction that Goldmund claims successful results. If this approach works, depends by other things of major significance like the matched coupling to the matched shelf of the matched foundation rack. And because life is too short (Thank you Chris for this I always tend to forget it) I think I'm gonna take a second thought to Vidmantas' outlook as I'm starting to feel more close to the "isolation" idea as the most capable & effective if one wants to arrive in time (and catch up the limited time that left), and listen some music instead of argue endlessly for the imaginable ideal. After all the result is what counts. But I have to get over the cork thing first. Perhaps it can provide a torsion breakdown moment. (although I know first hand it is effective)

Dear Banquo - my comment was a general one to anyone reading our thread and to those that have emailed me for a copy of my guide. Thank you again for reviewing it.

Since your feedback - I also sent a copy to Raul, Halcro, Nandric, and Lewn for their comments late yesterday. Again if anyone else wants to see it just email me.

I have had a number of people request copies of the guide already. Some in Malaysia and the UK. I do say in it to use aluminum and not steel as it is magnetic. My first one was steel nice and heavy but it is now a bookend. I will be adding more pictures to the guide.

Dear Nandric - I have already posted a link to my set up in an earlier post. The armboard can be seen closer here.

http://www.canuckaudiomart.com/view_userimages.php?user_id=5181&image_id=41886

Note: This guide is strictly to help those that may want to try this out and not a professional document. It is just the way I chose to do it and it worked for me. I am one of those people that like getting to the point and not making things more complicated than they need to be. This was the intent in my approach.

Dear Geoch - it was my intent for the next project to replace my solid aluminum armboard with a brass one and maybe add a panzerholtz tonearm plate on top. From your last post - do you feel this would be worth the expense and effort?
Pictures of my setup were in my link in my last post.

Appreciate any thoughts on this ?

Cheers Chris

Whilst Chris' Guide to making your own armpod is admirable, he appears to have concentrated on his ET parallel-tracking arm which I feel is different to the majority of pivoted arms?
When I designed my armpod, I attempted to make it 'universal' in that it could accommodate all the vintage pivoted arms I could find and all the modern ones as well.
The major differences between the vintage arms and the modern ones are most likely to be the fact that vintage arms have a bottom plug-in din phono cable which needs to enter the armpod.
There is also the 'barrel' of the arm-base to accommodate the rising VTA mechanism and this varies in diameter for all arms.
Some modern arms have this 'barrel' as well although their wiring usually exits the arm on top of the arm-base rather than under it.
The largest diameter 'barrel' I could find was that of the Copperhead arm and a hole of 55mm diameter could accommodate that.
I later found that the VTA barrel of the FR-66s arm was exactly 55mm diam so I'm not sure if this would easily fit?
To accommodate all the different diameters of the arm bases available, an independent top-plate is used to 'attach' the arm to the pod.
HERE