Questions Regarding Installing a Wheaton Triplanar On A SOTA Cosmos

And yet there are those devoted to mats that barely make contact with the LP, like the Resomat or certain cork mats. There’s no accounting for individual taste and rule making is futile.

@lewm , @mijostyn was spot on with his comments about the platter pad. I’ve been telling people exactly the same thing for years. I didn’t make it up either :)

Its not a taste thing as well, since its very easy to know if the platter pad is doing its job as laid out in mijostyn’s post. There’s not taste associated with that, more of a ’yes’ or ’no’ thing. Platter pads cannot be made to favor a certain genre of music any more than a loudspeaker or an amp can.

The Tri Planar will not fit on a Cosmos, not even close.

I know Tri Mai and he’s told me that people do indeed install Triplanars on the Cosmos (I had one myself) so it can be done, albeit with a few spacers.

If I am remembering the spatial relationships correctly, you would need a spacer wide enough to bring the base of the TP up to the level of the top of the square escutcheon that surrounds the platter (on Technics SP10 mk2, mk3, and R). 

@lewm The problem with those turntables is they don't have a proper plinth, being designed for radio station use. What this means is you can't really hear what they are about unless you fix that problem. A proper plinth will be something that rigidly couples the base of the platter bearing to the base of the arm, that is also acoustically dead. To my mind that would take a bit of machining and a good solidworks drawing of the new plinth as it should all be the same material.

If you have something like a panzerholz aftermarket base, it may well be more dead than the vestigial plinth of the machine itself. As a result if there is vibration in the platter, the tonearm will be able to pick it up as a coloration or signal. If the plinth was properly designed that would not happen. For this reason I think the SL1200G is a better bet as it has a proper plinth. Its also easy to mount a Triplanar to it with a proper arm board.

Ralph, if memory serves my TP would not fit properly, which is to say so that the arm wand would not overhang the platter when at rest using a plinth where the Technics chassis sits above the plinth surface.

Just looked at my Tri-Planar. If you had enough slack in the tone arm wires where it comes out of the arm tube, you could use a spacer to elevate the tone arm wire retention screw so the wires clear the well the tonearm sits in.

@lewm @elrod @neonknight I think you can get 1/4" spacers from Triplanar. I've used them and didn't get them made (so I think I got them from Triplanar). If the arm board is sunk below the plinth the spacer can solve that problem along with tonearm cable issue.

@lewm I've seen plenty of Technics machines with the Triplanar, one of them being owned by Tri Mai of Triplanar.

@neonknight You'll need a new arm board of course. Why are you concerned about the cable routing? Is it a cosmetic thing?