Will a record weight harm the motor in a direct drive turntable?

Here is some new information for all of us to chew on.  I recently acquired Analog Magic software which is used for turntable set up.  I am just learning how to use it and am probably dangerous.  Just for the heck of it I wanted to see if adding weight affected distortion.  I added weight at the center and at the perimeter on my VPI and the short answer is yes adding weight increases distortion (a wee bit).  On my Technics I comppared adding weight to using a KAB clamp and the answer is yes adding weight adds distortion, but the clamp did not.  So there you go.  If your record is warped, add the weight as the lesser of evils, but otherwise you are better off with naked records.  Remember you heard it here first and you only get this sort of useless trivia here on the Audiogon Forum.

I have used record weights on both my VPI HW40 and Technics SL1200GAE without trouble.  However I have also found a KAB record clamp to work as well or better for a lot less money and frankly prefer it.  

Well whether there is any benefit to weighting or clamping is definitely record dependent.  For perfectly flat records, I agree that there is little or no benefit and in fact a weight can actually dampen or choke the sound a bit.  A clamp has no deleterious affect on the sound that I have been able to detect, however.  On records that are not perfectly flat, a weight or a clamp helps to bring the record more firmly into contact with the platter and that does two things:  It makes it easier for the arm/cartridge to track the grooves, and it dampens resonances in the record itself.  So saying they are snake oil is over stating the case.