New Teres Direct Drive Motor Available as Option

Jeff, I don't know what the force is on the o-ring but it's more than a gram.

We use a very simple but effective method to keep even pressure on the o-ring. The motor pod simply leans against the platter. There are two small rubber feet under the motor pod that are offset from the center that causes that pod to tilt. The pod stands straight up and rests on three points, the two feet and the o-ring. really easy to setup. No springs, pivots or hinges, just gravity.

Chris

To be clear we have a no time limit full refund policy so trying out a Verus motor is a low risk proposition. We are encouraging Teres customers to keep their existing motor for a week or two so that they can do side by side comparisons.

The Verus motor came from our attempt to make our Certus direct drive technology available at a more reasonable price. After careful evaluation we decided that a lower cost direct drive implementation would be too compromised and didn't make sense. We think that the direct coupled topology is the next best option to direct drive and can be implemented for a fraction of the cost.

Wilster, we sell components to DIY'ers but we don't sell kits of any kind. So it's interesting that you consider Teres turntables to be DIY and therefor expect lower pricing. We are a manufacturer with overhead and expenses and are in business to make a profit. Because we sell direct we are able to operate with lower profit margins and can offer correspondingly lower prices. But this has nothing to do with DIY. The downside is that as you pointed out most buyers are not able hear our products before purchasing. So as a generalization buying direct saves the buyer money but at the same time the risk is a bit higher. There's no free lunch...

Chris

Johnbrown, contact from the o-ring will cause some wear on the platter, but so do belts and strings. It seems that the amount of wear would be proportional to the size of the contact area. So the amount of wear would probably be about the same as with a narrow belt or a string. But the forces involved here are very small so this is not a big issue.

I have no concerns about the o-ring damaging wood platters. Cocobolo is very hard and is considerably more durable than PVC and would have about the same durability as aluminum. Cocobolo is quite unlike common north American hardwoods. It is one of the few woods that sinks in water and has rigidity and hardness that approaches brass and aluminum. So there is no need to add a contact surface.

Chris

Pauly, Your stylus drag experiment is interesting...
Physics dictate that the uneven forces from stylus drag will modulate the platters speed. What can be debated is if the effect is large enough to be audible. Our ears are remarkably sensitive to errors in the time domain. Far more so than would seem logical and far more than most would expect.

Contrary to popular thinking platter mass only changes how stylus drag affects speed but cannot eliminate it. A massive platter will reduce the magnitude of the variation but extends it over a longer period of time. A light platter will conversely allow a larger speed variation but it recovers more rapidly. Most, but not all, prefer the shallower variations from a heavy platter but it is a compromise, not a fix.

The Verus motor does show greater improvement (compared to our belt drive) when coupled with a light platter. But there is no evidence that using a heavy platter with a Verus motor is detrimental. We have used the Verus motor with platters up to 70 pounds and as with our belt drive motors have consistently preferred the heavier platters. What we have found is that with the Verus motor platter mass seems to be less important. For example we recently did some comparisons between a 14 pound solid acrylic platter and a 27 pound lead/acrylic platter. With the Verus motor the difference between the platters was about half of the difference heard with a belt drive Signature motor.

So does the Verus motor with a light platter surpass our heaviest platter with a belt? I have not done that comparison but suspect that the answer would be no. But there is much more to the story than mass. The materials used in our 360 platter (brass and cocobolo) sound a lot better than acrylic.

Chris

The manual has a link for a down loadable strobe disk. Any florescent light will do the trick. Easy if you have a florescent lights in the room. Otherwise a florescent bulb in a regular lamp will also do.