BIG IMPROVEMENT
yesterday someone on What's Best indicated la platine and Kuzma Safir was a bad combo because of the moving feet on la platine and safir's need for stable level platform. they said one needed to use rigid feet but the downside of that was the combo "lost its soul".
i had been considering trying rigid feet again (have tried previously but didn't like sound and tended to agree with soulless sentiment).
but of course things change all the time. for example now i was truly floating on air. plus frankly my recent experiments with silk, silk with chalk (heard people do this somewhere or other, for more grip i presume), suture silk, linen thread, rubber belts - none of it was satisfying me somehow. now i had an instinct that double silk's "warmth" might offset the "clinicism" of rigid feet.
i use shaknspin2 to measure w/f and speed. typical measurements will be 0.07/0.03 for linen thread. maybe 0.06/0.02 for silk.
anyway i pulled platine apart so i had less weight to deal with then stuck the platine up on 3 CMS speaker footers (LS2.25). i got it level. i then put it back together, put my chalked silk double loop on and off we go.
so straight away the motor sounded quieter. i do measurements and i am getting 0.03/0.03. which is very low. frequency of interest has gone from 0.55/0.43 hz (which is around the frequency of the knot passing thru the spindle of motor) to 0.18 hz.
so then i listen to a record and lo and behold! a sea change. not a minor "is it this, is it that" type feeling. but a very big positive change. i could hear a tonne of atmosphere and i could hear swelling bass and harmonic overtones. it seemed like the noise floor had dropped quite dramatically. extraordinary nuance and information but very musical.
so much improvement that i have to say this is the way. there is no "oh i like the platine footers and will try them again". no. for me, from now on, its rigid footers on platine and motor. it is unarguably, to my ears, an order of magnitude better than anything i've heard before. i listened to beth orton's debut record hit "she cries your name". it was mental. i had never heard better in my house, on my system. the clarity of detail is unarguable. but more than that, the harmonic overtones, the improved "depth" to the presentation, the sheer scale and entertainment factor, i could not deny.
coming from the garrard 401 i had wanted a sound that had less bearing in it. so more depth, more nuance, more atmosphere. last night we got there. "mission accomplished".
now i have established this baseline i will no doubt still try different threads again. unwaxed linen thread is my next to try. because frankly the double looped silk only just makes 33.3 speed and won't make 45 rpm i feel quite sure. but if i have to listen to silk and only 33 rpm records for the rest of my days, i won't mind a bit.
i no longer have any interest in a new motor. it seems like the motor chatter pertained to the platine moving relative to the motor (something i couldn't see at all). it is much quieter now.
HAPPY DAYS!