Suspended vs. nonsuspended TT?

if you are considering spending that kind of dough on a turntable, do investigate the basis debut. it is a real turntable, not an erector set. it is flawlessly reliable, is not tweaky, and requires no maintenance. furthermore, the debut fulfills your criteria of great bass extension better than the tables you are considering and maybe better than any other table.

going the debut route enables using the money that you would otherwise spend on isolation devices on LPs!! consider that a friend purchased a basis ovation a long time ago. no longer in production, that table had a suspension similar to the debuts. as the ovation's footprint was bigger than the vpi it replaced, there was no room to locate it where the vpi was positioned. the dealer's solution was to place the ovation on top of the subwoofer where it remained for a year. my friend listens to lots of classical with fair amounts of low end. the ovation had no problem tracking his albums. footfalls? you got to be kidding! dynamics? no problem.

i own a debut and highly recommend it! i do not have any tracking problems due to footfalls or airborn vibrations from my speakers.

Ejcj, I sympathize with the problems that you and your friend experienced with turntables that have suspension systems. And I agree totally with your approach to acquire the best sounding least tweaky table there is.

I disagree with the idea that all turntables with sprung suspensions require adjustments that are a major pain in the butt. This reminds me of the a car ad years ago, maybe it was Ford talking about the Escort. They said their car handled as well as a BMW as their car, like a BMW, had a McPherson struts. I guarantee that the Escort could not approach the handling abilities of a BMW. Likewise, not all turntables with spring suspensions act and perform in the same manner. The specific design and implementation of the design affect performance and long term stability. Some tables are designed by serious engineers, whereas other tables are designed by people who tinker at engineering.

As mentioned, I use a Basis Debut which has a spring suspension, actually it is a hydraulic spring suspension. When installing the ‘table, I adjust the springs in order to level the table. There is no tweaking or adjustments required after this point. Period. I just spin LPs. Due to the well engineered suspension, footfalls are thing of the past. In fact, while an LP is spinning, I can hit the platform that the Debut is on as hard as I can without causing any mistracking. Being immune to vibrations from the outside enables the Debut to focus solely on what’s in the grooves. Thus one gains very quite background, lots of low level details and delightful low level dynamics. Most other ‘tables cannot reproduce these things. Yes, tonearms are important also. But without a stable ‘table, using the best tonearm is a waste.

So I would circle back, Ejcj, to your sound approach to acquire the best sounding, least tweaky....’table. Let’s just not assume that all sprung systems act or perform in a similar manner. I qualify myself as not having any experience with non-sprung ‘tables. Though I’d have to believe that they are susceptible to structural and airborne vibrations and the problems that those issues cause.