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What wood has the best properties ?

acass

pfm Member
I am about to make a Turntable from a Connoisseur BD1 Kit I salvaged from another turntable. I want to mount the motor, platter and SME 3009 S2 Improved arm on the same piece of wood so I would like it to have musical properties. I have heard that Maple is a good choice and also Bamboo is a 'dead wood'. I will use 3 feet on it to give it ground clearance of at least 2 inches so recommendations for these will also be welcome.

I don't expect this deck to be a world beater just an enjoyable project that may make good music that makes me smile.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Alan.

P.S. And yes I have tried searching but perhaps I didn't phrase my search properly.
 
Actual, real, solid wood has numerous problems/limitations if you are looking at constructions that are commonly made from ply - in other words "lumps" several inches thick and up to a couple of feet square.

First is cost, you then have dimensional stability problems and also potential for cracking.

If you are looking to construct a frame/box type of plinth, if you look around, the number of different hardwoods in use is considerable which implies that any furniture grade hardwood is likely to be suitable.
 
I am about to make a Turntable from a Connoisseur BD1 Kit I salvaged from another turntable. I want to mount the motor, platter and SME 3009 S2 Improved arm on the same piece of wood so I would like it to have musical properties. I have heard that Maple is a good choice and also Bamboo is a 'dead wood'. I will use 3 feet on it to give it ground clearance of at least 2 inches so recommendations for these will also be welcome.

There is nothing musical about adding the vibrations from the motor to what is recorded in the groove of a record if that is what is being suggested.

If the record player is designed to keep the vibrations of the motor out of the platter and out of the arm then the mechanical properties of the base will not matter much. Go for what looks good. What will matter is the effectiveness of the isolation between the arm and motor and the platter and motor. This is a more a question of design rather than the use of materials with exotic properties.
 
A thick HDF (at least 1 inch) is dead and several layers of Russian plywood glued together is the most rigid you can have.
Solid wood can get warped over time and has its own natural frequency that may be difficult to deal with sometimes.
 
Panzerholz is widely recognised as being the ultimate material for plinths, arm boards etc because it has the highest damping factor - way better than anything mentioned here. See my ad in DIY classifieds.
 
"Dead" materials are what you want. So bamboo, ply, Panzerholz, they all work. The last thing you want is to build a guitar that rings away in time with the motor.
 
All rigid materials can vibrate / resonate. It's a question of amplitude (Q) and frequency. Stiffness may be desirable structurally, but higher resonant frequencies may not. The other approach to get both stiffness and low Q is constrained layer construction, e.g. sandwiching sheets of lead or similarly dense material alternately with hard and stiff materials like hardwoods.
 
All rigid materials can vibrate / resonate. It's a question of amplitude (Q) and frequency. Stiffness may be desirable structurally, but higher resonant frequencies may not. The other approach to get both stiffness and low Q is constrained layer construction, e.g. sandwiching sheets of lead or similarly dense material alternately with hard and stiff materials like hardwoods.
And this is exactly how these speakers cabinets are made :

http://www.artistcloner.com/speakers.html
 
I've often mused about layering rubber sheet material between layers of thin ply, similar to a cricket bat handle, it seemed to absorb a lot of transmitted energy. Then again I muse about a lot of things.
 
Mapleshade make very inert platforms, and used to make a turntable. Not cheap. But rock maple very pretty.
 
I haven't seen any BD1 kits that have been put together sans the included metal top plate.

I'd go with ply, myself. After all, this is a form of constrained layer damped wood, with the added advantage of the grain of each layer being placed at 90º to previous, making it a highly stable choice in the construction of all sorts.

If my mate James had asked me first, before having his final BD2 to BD1 conversion plinth done, I'd have suggested ply over MDF, and for him to have decoupled the lower plinth frame; a la Revolver, but with the motor hanging off the metal motor board as standard. As things stand, apparently James 'had done a bodge', sticking the motor on with silicone adhesive rather than following up on the source I provided to him for the last of the revised motor suspension parts (he also completely botched the rewiring of his 3009 SII Improved, despite my offering to do a full rebuild/rewire, but we won't get into the stubborn bastard's rigidity, vs. that of his plinth).

Considering that this started out as a BD2 (with SAU2) , the end result certainly looks the part (that arm hums along like a whore though :eek:)...

DSCI0084.jpg


The lower board is tapered at the bottom front and sides, so overall looks a bit 'sleeker' (he hadn't yet finalized the positions of the feet at this point)...

DSCI0070.jpg
 
CLD is widely misunderstood. Might I suggest a bit more research before concluding that you have implemented it . . .
 
CLD is widely misunderstood. Might I suggest a bit more research before concluding that you have implemented it . . .
If you were referring to me then I don't recall suggesting, let alone concluding, that I had implemented CLD anywhere.

The plinth pictured above was designed by my mate James, with the bits of MDF having been cut and glued together by his cabinet maker friend, Steve.

James liked the look of a late version SEE Revolver deck that I have here and went about copying the visuals on his own.
 
Loose phrasing on my part. I was referring to a couple of references in this thread to things being examples of CLD. I’m not being arsey, just trying to be helpful.
 


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