Motor Vibrations.....motor vibrations......

Vibration which comes from the ground, the air, the bearing and the motor itself is the greatest enemy of the turntables as many us would know. Great efforts have been put in by all manufacturers to isolate or minimize this problem which seriously causes deterioration in sound quality of the turntables.

The turntable motor itself also generates vibrations as it spins while driving the sub-platter or platter. This is unavoidable. If we let this vibration transmit freely to the record surface or the tonearm cartridge, we would expect poorer sound quality being produced and amplified.

Another undeniable fact is all motors vibrates whether it is high-vibration or low-vibration types or whether it is 220/110v or 24v types-it's matter of degree. There is no such thing as "no vibration motor". Any vibration, no matter how low, would cause a degradation in music quality as long as it finds it's way to the tonearm or record surface.

Is there a solution?

I think every turntable designer has this same headache when designing their fabulous turntables i.e how to mount this vibration generating culprit so as not to affect the performance of the turntable!

Can we isolate the motor "completely" so as to cut down the transmission of this motor vibrations to the plinth? And in order to experiment out, I removed the motor of my Rega Planar 2 from the main plinth. With the motor detached from the plinth, I could feel no vibrations on the plinth (where the motor is originally mounted). I tested the turntable immediately to prove to myself that the idea of "motor in isolation" would bring about very substantial sonic improvement to the turntable .

I was surprised to see the results. In fact the results of tweaking the Planar 2 from "motor isolation point of view" were much more effective than I'd expected!

I shall discuss and share with you in detail what I have done with my motor in my next post.

Stay tuned .....