Technics SP-10 Tonearm Pod instead of Plinth/Base

Dsa, Jim is making the layered plywood plinth with aluminum for me at this time.

Guys, If I am wrong about Raul's rig, I stand corrected. It means that I have been under the wrong impression for several months. In fact I thought Raul agreed with me when in other places I had stated my case against having separate arm pods. Nandric, I know Kuzma does do it that way in their top line product, so evidently Mr Kuzma does not agree with me that it is a bad idea. He is probably smarter than me, too. But there is a difference between a minimum plinth SP10 and the Kuzma table you own in that your table AND your outboard arm pod have enormous high mass. Also your table does not potentially suffer from being spun on its own axis by its motor (due to Newton's 3rd Law of Motion), as could happen with an SP10 chassis that is just sitting on a set of Audio Technica feet, a la Raul. (I have seen this happen with my own SP10; it does not actually spin around of course, but it twists at start up, if you just sit the chassis on a table. Eventually after several start-ups, it will move across the table top. This would tend to screw up geometry.) I also would point out that there are other smart guys (turntable designers and builders) who agree with my opinion on this matter. Eventually, Raul will see this thread and trash me. In fact, if he likes his SP10 set-up, it probably sounds good. This is all meant in good fun.

I have such a setup, I got an Sp10, I took out the plinth, given a cheap one, but it was like taking the bell out and leaving only the little metal ball inside it.
I made a pod for the tone arm with 3 different metals and it is pretty heavy, trust me it wont move. The Sp10 is sitting on its own with no plinth at all, I have cones holding it from the original chassis, we actually discussed even taking the chassis off.
The improvement was impressive, in micro-level detail and air around the instruments.
Isolation is very important and the cones that support the SP10 can change the tone of the setup, for a tubed Phono preamp I like solid steel cones, for SS I use the famous Audio Technica Support Isolators with metal cones. Actually my favorite sound came from a combination of cones.

The Pod base stands on cones also, that improved the sound a lot also.

I dont want to rub the people with plinths the wrong way, this is my private setup and I like it, my system consists of triamplified 5 way horns.

Check out theanalogdept.com/stefano_bertoncello setup, he uses a Garrard with a Pod also.

Dear Dsa: The plinth or not plinth subject is so controversial because no one of those plinth advocates guys never test/try the SP-10 non plinth alternative ( at least I never read that any one of them tested. ), so they don't know for sure which approach achieve better quality performance.

Well, I did and that's why I support the non plinth in the SP-10 and with a tonearm separate tonearm pod.
How anyone can talk on the subject if never has the opportunity to hear it?

Dsa, if you care mainly about quality performance more than how it looks my advise is that you try it ( it is inexpensive to do it. ) before pay a lot of money for the plinth solution and then decide about.

I'm not against any SP-10 alternative on the subject, my clear and precise position here is: how to achieve the best quality performance, that's all.

Regards and enjoy the music,
raul.

Raul has a point; I have never heard an SP10 sans plinth. Really, there are two issues here: (1) plinth vs no plinth, and (2) outboard arm pod vs mechanical linkage of the tonearm mount to the tt chassis. I feel more strongly on the latter subject (pro-linkage) than on the former. It would be simple to take a piece of plywood to form a skirt fastened to the underside of an SP10, with enough area beyond the boundary of the chassis to allow for mounting of a tonearm. Then you could put the chassis on feet like Raul has done, and you would have no-plinth but with linkage. I may try that. But you guys can keep your outboard arm pod. One other issue that comes up whenever Raul gets into this subject; who else has a set of those Audio Technica feet? Since they are rare, what else would do as well? I could imagine that the no-plinth SP10 might have a nice open sound quality, or it might not.