Lenco plinth? How big is too big?


I have an L78, upgraded Origin Live One arm, Empire MC-5 moving coil cartidge, and access to a sawmill with lots of prime cherry wood. I was thinking of a cherry plinth, 17 inches wide, 24 inches long, and six inches tall of cross layered one inch cherry. Then cut off the rear corner where the tone arm is mounted, in a sweeping arc of about 10 inch radius, and mount the tone arm on that detached corner. Use 1 inch thick isomolded graphite disks of 2 inch diameter topped by one 3/8" tungsten carbide ball, and resting on three such balls. Use three of these ball/disk combinations for each of the main plinth and the corner with the tone arm. What do y'all think? I would appreciate any suggestions before actually putting it all together. Thanks. Ralph
ralph1223
Sounds great to me: too big means only more than you can actually carry, so bear this in mind, as you don't want to have to resort to a hoist every time you want to dust! I just finished a plinth which measures 22" x 23" x 6", so your plinth is actually quite small ;-)! To enact the principle of contrained-layer damping (CLD) in order to ensure there is no single dominant resonant signature, you might want to consider jamming a layer or two of some other material in there, but some materials, like maple for instance, sound great on their own. I have no experience of cherrywwod. Have fun, it sounds beautiful!
I made one slighly less than the size of Jean's and it tipped the scales at 65 lbs (plinth alone). Yer fine.
Good. Thanks. I'm looking forward to a big ole plinth. Now that I know it's ok, maybe I'll just make mine even bigger. :) I got the idea of cherry from a Garrard 301 article that mentions Shindo plinths: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/garrard/301.html
I've read that maple is the most musical wood, but just have a feeling that cherry would have a darker richer sound, that might nicely complement my RD75 ribbions and Berning EA2-150 amp, which are very slightly on the lean side. I'll post pictures when it gets done. The sawmill guy is just now putting the wood in the kiln, so it will be a while. Thanks again, and I'm thinking on the CDL thing...
be careful about the glue up of the wood. Thick alternating layers of wood can set up internal stresses that may result in warpage. That is why plywood layers are thin.