Outer ring - who uses and what are your findings

I use a TTWeights TTMega 1.2kg ring weight in addition to a 1.4kg "Nugget" centre weight, for EVERY SINGLE record that I play. The innovative way that the TTWeights ring is centred, makes it a no-brainer to use it. The difference with mildly warped records is nothing short of miraculous, but the audible improvement with normal flat records is profound! I have several thousand vinyl records.

I cannot attest to the performance of this combination on other turntables, but it categorically improves the musical reproduction on mine from excellent to exceptional.

For the record, pun intended, my vinyl system is as follows:

• Once Analog Mk 2 belt drive turntable with fully upgraded spindle and bearing and top-of-line DC motor / electronic speed regulator
• Audio Origami PU7 tonearm
• Lyra Kleos LOMC cartridge
• JLTi-reengineered (Custom Analogue Audio) Eastern Electric MiniMax tube phono preamp with NOS Mullard 12AT7, 12AX7 and 6X4 tubes
• Interconnects and power cables by AntiCables

I did that ritual for 5 years on my Classic 3 and it became so routine I didn’t really think of it as a chore after a while.

I use a TTWeights TTMega 1.2kg ring weight in addition to a 1.4kg "Nugget" centre weight, for EVERY SINGLE record that I play. The innovative way that the TTWeights ring is centred, makes it a no-brainer to use it.

I should explain that the TTWeights ring is placed on the record by means of a positioning cover which is so fast to use that it takes about a second to remove the ring and about 2 to 4 seconds to put it on! It takes me as long to put on the centre weight as the ring weight. Putting a record away in its sleeve and jacket and taking out the next one takes far longer than putting on the weights. It takes me about 10 seconds to take off the weights, flip the record, and put the weights back on. Given that I brush away static from the record and treat my stylus, every side change, the placing of the ring weight is a trivial proportion of changing record sides.

Here’s a two minute YouTube video by TTWeights, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOwvm_cuytc, showing an extreme example of a warp being totally flattened, but notice that the time it took to place the ring weight on the record was about the same as placing the centre weight on it - less than 2 seconds all up. I believe that the same is true of the techne-audio ring mentioned above. My understanding is that positioning the VPI and Clearaudio turntable-specific rings is more involved.

An important comment about centre "weights" vs centre "clamps". 3-point/5-point centre clamps and tight full circle centre clamps act in a fundamentally different way on the vinyl record, compared with centre weights and gentle clamping mechanisms. All centre weights and clamps have the desired effect of coupling the vinyl record to the turntable platter. However tight active clamping has the undesired side-effect of stressing the vinyl, which audibly negatively affects the sound during playback.

Those clamps which have you spin the clamp until it gently grips in position do not tend to have this problem, but those which you push down hard and manually clamp tight are not recommended. The 3 or 5 pressure-point tight clamps are particularly bad in this regard. A centre weight, no matter how heavy, is not going to cause this problem. It is pretty easy to hear that my records sound better with my 1.4kg Nugget centre weight, while my Audio Technica 3-point clamp actually makes the same record sound WORSE than no weight/clamp at all!

This regardless of whether a ring weight is also being used.

Another important point about adding a centre weight OR a ring weight, specifically to a SUSPENDED SUB-CHASSIS turntable such as a Linn LP12 or Sota Sapphire.

These suspensions are tuned to the weight of the platter and everything which sits on it. The difference between the weight when playing a 200g or 120g record is not going to make an audible difference, but adding a 1.2kg ring weight or centre weight will, on many such turntables, be too great an additional weight to be able to compensate by tightening the suspension. In these cases, a LIGHTER weight needs to be used.

Just as importantly, if you tune the suspension to include say a 400g centre weight, then you MUST use that weight EVERY time you play a record, or the suspension will FAIL to do its job, with a much worse result than any gains you achieve by weighting the record.