Vibration and Isolation at a budget?

Audiofeil,

I believe I made that clear. My above post and this one are relevant to defending a well intentioned and exceedingly generous man and his work from illconsidered smear. It is also an attempt to inform similar situations. Neither Pierre nor myself are likely to get rich any time soon on the profits of IsoBlock sales.

Output,

cynicism is, by definition, in the interpretation of the facts. It is all too easy to assume an attitiude of distrust of those in business. If you ponder the economics you might find cause to reconsider. If the cost of four V Pads is $8, $24 is actually well below the typical 5 to 10 times parts cost markup enabling a product to be made availabe through normal distribution venues and for a company to stay in business and continue to provide a service.

The fact that you choose Pierre, who abhors inflated pricing, as your example of PT Barnum's edict, is inappropriate, to say the least. Pierre goes out of his way to come up with cheap and elegant answers to the challenges of music reproduction, cuts his prices in deference to the customer and to the exclusion of the usual profit reserved for dealers such as myself let alone distributors, fills his catalogue with free tweeks, makes himself available for questions on the phone, and offers a 30 day money back guarantee to top it off.

The following is a quote from his catalogue:

"After lots of tests with flexible suspension islolation mounts, I evolved the IsoBLock specifically for our maple platforms." ... " IsoBlocks are a rubber/cork/rubber laminate whose size and number of laminations I tuned by ear to give just the right vertical, horizontal, and torsional resonant frequencies for best isolation."

I find no misrepresentation in that statement. Those interested can judge for themselves. Certainly, there is nothing stopping someone from driving to their nearest HVAC supply store, buying some V Pads, cutting them up (assuming you have a band saw) and gluing them together. Just be sure to keep track of your gas, driving and work time, and figure in a little something for Pierre for taking the time to optimize the configuration, and then tell me $24 is exhorbitant.

I hope I've made it clear that, for me, this is not just about Mapleshade. They just happen to be a partcularly ironic example of this syndrome.

Mapleshade uses two, glued double decker but crossways, for heavier units, and the same but cut into 2" blocks for lighter units. If you do the math you'll see their mark up is only normal amount necessary bring anything to market. It is a testimony to Pierre's commitment to offer real world improvements for reasonable cost, that he goes to the trouble of exhaustively researching cost effective tweeks that work and marketing them for the benefit of you and me. It is also a testimony that he believes in his products that he offers a 30 day money back guarantee. He is also VERY generous with his time helping folks on the phone. Projecting cynicism on him and others like him is unfortunate, unnecessary.

Dealer disclaimer.

On a slightly different note. There are two different issues with vibration control. One is to isolate components from externally generated vibrations such as airborn music sourced vibrations and foot falls with turntables. The other is evacuating subtle vibrations generated within the components by the circuitry itself as well as any vibes taken in from the outside. Many people believe that the priority is to evacuate with rigid cones rather than isolate with soft material and that the latter traps vibrations within the component, muddying the sound. The ideal seems to be a combination of evacuating with brass cones such as the Mapleshade Heavyfeet or Walker Valid Points, into a massive platform such as hardwood or granite, etc. which in turn is suspended by soft material such as sorbothane, the above mentioned Isoblocks, or a sand box arrangement such as Brightstar offers. This effectively evacuates, dissipates and isolates and can be quite affordable. At the least, experimenting with cones will yield surprising results if you've never tried them. There seems to be an advantage in bigger cones, thus the Mapleshade Mega Mounts.

Michael Percy also sells Audio Points which I believe are the cheapest good solid brass cones and a bit cheaper than the Mapleshade and Walker cones. If cheap is the goal, any cones will be better than none and there are cheaper ones.

Feil,

Evidently, not everyone follows my ads as closely as you do. ;-)

Put your brass cones on the TT and four soft mounts like Sorbothane, Vibropods or IsoBlocks (in order of soft to not so soft) between maple and Salamander. At those prices you can experiment. Brass cones under Era with a weight on top. Remove sand from stands and put in a bag of the largest lead shot you can get from a gun supply shop in each stand before replacing what sand will fit. Put cones between speaker stands and floor. Be sure that cones pierce carpet if you have any. Ditto for sub. Get rid of the amp and buy a guitar. ;-)