Fantastic Turntable Isolators...cheap!

I have acually had good luck using pucks.

The pucks are a hard elastomer that goes thud when you hit it (or drop it) so I thought it would be good. I do also have a maple Boos block on top of the pucks that my SL1210MK5 sits on. Seems to work out fairly well.
 
A month or so ago, before I got the 3BX and the DAK-1, I had a problem with a very low frequency 'howl' at high volumes. After I added the 3BX and the DAK-1, the howl was partially suppressed in an odd manner. It almost sounded like it was a rotational issue with the platter, but it didn't coincide with the actual rotation. What was happening is the howl would start to develop, then the combination of the processors would quell it, then it would start again and cycle like that at high volume. I also noticed that tapping on any part of the very long piece of IKEA furniture that the turntable sits upon would 'ring'. So I got to thinking, "Ok, we have the big piece of granite underneath the turntable so that it has lots of mass and isn't susceptible to footfalls, but this low freq howl is coming through, how do I further isolate?" And so I dug in my junk drawer and my garage and came up with this solution. Ringing gone. Howl gone. Tight, low bass. All is good with the world! The only pitfall is that the turntable is slightly more susceptible to big footfalls, so I have to be careful that I don't dance like an idiot right in front of the turntable. I can live with that.

One thing I've have seen cause the howl sound is playing music loud, with the dust cover on (especially opened and hinged to the base) and the speakers are close by.
 
Maybe a moot point with those vibration pads being so cheap, but I was thinking two hockey pucks with a layer of butyl damping material in the middle would work quite well.
 
Apropos of nothing -- eight surplus hockey pucks that I had under the Duplex cabinets for a while have gone missing in the rubble that is my hifi room. If anyone sees 'em in a photo I post, please let me know. They're around here someplace...

;)
 
One thing I've have seen cause the howl sound is playing music loud, with the dust cover on (especially opened and hinged to the base) and the speakers are close by.

I have a small home, and dogs that shed, so the dust cover stays on and closed.
 
Hmmmm, that DIY tonearm looks like it could be a fun project... :thumbsup:

The whole thing looks fun. It made me think that aside from the spindle bearing, using today's servo motor and rotary encoder technology it'd be really easy to DIY a pretty badass turntable if you were okay with dealing with a fully manual design.

Spindle wise I'm sure there's ways to fab up something good. It'd just be more work than the electronic side (depending on your skillset of course).

The real trick would be diy auto-return.
 
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