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My 301 and a new timber framed house

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pqpq

pfm Member
I have a 1962 Garrard 301 in a very heavy slate plinth. Wherever I've lived, it's been on a very substantial shelf bolted to a brick or stone wall, and that, to my ears, has worked well.

I'm having a new house built and for various reasons it will be timber framed, the floors will be timber and the main structure will be fabricated in a factory and assembled on site. So that means there will be nothing truly solid to bolt a shelf to, and in any case, I'd need to be very careful about drilling holes in external walls becasue of the high spec insulation and airtightness the house will rely on. Internal walls are easier of course.

I mentioned it to the architect recently and she said it would be possible, and not too expensive to have a concrete floor or a part concrete floor where the turntable will be and that it wouldn't cost too much. I could then put the turntable on a table and it should be fine.

But this seems pretty insane, designing the house around a turntable, and maybe I'm trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. Never having lived in a timber framed house I don't know.

So what's the view on this? Is there really a problem here? Can I just bolt a shelf to the timber frame in an internal wall and not worry about it? Or do I need this concrete floor? The problem of course is that I have to decide this quite soon - once the house is built I won't be able to change anything that fundamental.

Any insights much appreciated....
 
FWIW my 301 in a slate plinth worked fine just on a standard wood table on a suspended wooden floor. No issues at all with either that deck, the Spacedeck that preceded it, or the TD-124 there now. By comparison a Linn would be bouncing all over the place every time you tried to change a record!
 
Thanks Tony, that's interesting. I've never experimented in that way, the first house the 301 was used in had such catastrophically wobbly floors that I don't think any TT would have been OK, so I bolted it to the wall and because it worked I've been doing the same ever since. I'm not much of a tinkerer unfortunately. My current house has some wooden floors which are pretty solid, so I could try it out. The TT has a trans-fi air bearing arm, not sure whether that changes things.
 
If you look at suspended toilets, they have a steel frame that bolts to the studding in timber framed properties and is then covered in plasterboard as normal.

If you know exactly where you want the turntable could you do something similar?
 
I don’t see why such a substantial TT would ever need to be bolted to a wall, surely the slate does all the isolation? LP12 is completely different though. Enjoy the new house.
 
FWIW I could stamp on the floor or thump the table with both the slate-mounted Garrard and the Spacedeck and they wouldn’t jump. The 124 is in a far lighter low-mass plinth so not quite as capable in this regard, but I still never need to be even remotely careful walking past the way I was back in my Ariston or Linn owning days. I remember chatting to Tom Fletcher (Nottingham Analogue) and he recommended a “nice and solid wood table” for his decks and to actively avoid anything metal or with spikes.
 
Some timber floors are bouncier than others. Some aren't bouncy at all. Victorian builders were very good at minimalist structural engineering and this - along with age related issues - is I suspect largely responsible for the reputation timber floors have for bounce.

My LP12 sounds poor and jumps in time with footsteps in my bouncy floored Victorian flat but works very well in a very non bouncy timber floored and timber walled workshop.

The structural differences are shorter spans for the joists - the workshop sits on a row of heavy paving slabs one at each end with a third row of slabs at the midpoint. In my case that leaves a maximum unsupported span of about three feet. I fitted a few noggins too before covering with 18mm ply, then a layer of Techsound 50 (a sort of rubber mat used for sound proofing) and finally floor boards floating on top of that.

Now I did all that having in mind using a heavy and noisy woodworking machine. That it also worked well for audio was a happy accident. There are likely other (possibly even better) ways of creating a solid feeling wooden floor but my experience suggests it certainly can be done.
 
Your issue might depend on your timber frame build method and whether that is traditional timber frame or a SIPs system? Normally, the main load bearing timber frame walls have vertical loading frame studs at 600mm centres with a 50mm service void on the internal wall side. Depending upon your services, it's normally quite easy to fit a thick plywood pattress in between the studs in this service void, before the final plasterboard goes over. This would allow you to easily fix and hang a solid turntable support off the wall if that's what you wanted to do. A SIPs system might need a bit more thinking to on this, but something is probably possible. If you are planning on siting the 301 within the ground floor accommodation, is there any reason you're not going with a solid ground bearing slab / insulation / screed? Fitting UFH in the screed is a nice way of heating that floor too. The slab should provide a solid vibration free floor.

An alternative is to plasterboard the intended room walls with something like Fermacell which can accept up to 150Kg / m2 when fixed correctly. It's much stronger than gypsum plasterboard:

Dry lining | James Hardie Europe GmbH (fermacell.co.uk)
 
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I wouldn't worry about it, I've just plonked a TD150 on the floor to test it and walked around with an LP playing and it didn't bat an eyelid, yes it is suspended but compared to the isolation of a heavy slate plinth on a decent stand I doubt you'll have any problems.

I think there is a certain level of OCD/paranoia around vinyl replay that has been amplified by the advent of internet forums, the same goes for digital and DACs etc where everyone is chasing minute numbers that stopped being audible about 20 years ago. Someone will always find fault with whatever you do or however you have it positioned so don't stress it.
 
Thanks all, this is really useful stuff. Thinking back, my aversion to putting the 301 on a wooden floor came from when I first used it and had it on the ridiculously springy floor of the Victorian house I was living in at the time. Any movement had it skipping around all over the show, it really was completely unacceptable. But reading through all the comments here, it seems that the problem was with that particular floor, not with wooden floors per se. I can double check in my current house which has several wooden floors, most of which aren't springy at all. I'll raise it again with the architect next time I see her, but I suspect the wooden floors she already has in mind will be fine. Certainly I'd sooner not have any concrete if I can avoid it and I'd prefer not to have my TT forever stuck in one place because of a custom shelving arrangement. Thanks again, this will soon be another job ticked off on the house build project.
 
Good point by messengerman re: why some floors are bouncy; current standards require things that will be rather 'stiffer'. Very, very probably just fine- for comfort reasons: all floors move, and there are optimal (low amounts, at very low frequency) that makes for economy on structure with minimised perceptible effects, and that's where current builds will fall .

Like the others above, I reckon a Garrard in a heavy plinth won't notice.

Worked qualitative example on one obvious answer: you stay with the timber floor design and simply consider closer centre-spacings for the joist design; usually these things are based on 400mm c/c; closing up to say 300mm c/c (if it suits the floor design overall) will naturally make it deflect less / the whole thing stiffer. Note though - this also means that what movement it does have (though reduced) will also happen at a higher frequency in proportion- which may not be helpful either. Esp if it moves up into the band that coincides with the arm/cart resonance ...as I suspect it would.



(let me go find my references on floor vibration! )
 
Tony L said:
FWIW my 301 in a slate plinth worked fine just on a standard wood table on a suspended wooden floor. No issues at all with either that deck, the Spacedeck that preceded it, or the TD-124 there now. By comparison a Linn would be bouncing all over the place every time you tried to change a record!
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That's rather interesting and counterintuitive. You'd think that a bouncy suspended turntable would cope better with a bouncy Victorian wooden floor than a heavy turntable coupled to it through a rigid stand. Unless of course foot-fall is such a low frequency that it excites a suspended table. I have (amongst others) a Royce Elega which sounded rather good through a headphone rig, but rather poor in the main system on a tall rigid wooden support, coupled to the underlying timber floor with spikes as it would be a bit precarious stood on the carpet / underlay. There's clearly more to this than meets the eye...
 
a.palfreyman said:
That's rather interesting and counterintuitive. You'd think that a bouncy suspended turntable would cope better with a bouncy Victorian wooden floor than a heavy turntable coupled to it through a rigid stand.
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Linns etc are notoriously hopeless at footfall, the deck’s centre of gravity is above the suspension, so the rotational movement a deck on a table sees as someone walks across the floor flings the deck sideways and the suspension actually amplifies this movement! It is vastly more effective at isolating from motor noise, airborne feedback hitting the plinth, but useless against impact.

PS FWIW and for clarity I’m very far from convinced high mass anywhere in the audio chain is a good idea, so I’m not recommending high-mass plinths etc. The LP12 jumps because of how its subchassis is designed, not its weight, a light unsuspended Rega would be fine (but obviously lacks the Linn’s isolation from audio-frequency feedback etc). If I ever returned to a Garrard it would be in some variation of the decoupled top-plate Loricraft idea, not high-mass. My TD-124 is in a very light and low-mass plinth. I also think mass is a very bad thing in speaker cabinets and is largely responsible for the hard, bright and dead in the water sound of a lot of modern high-end kit.
 
Tony L said:
Linns etc are notoriously hopeless at footfall, the deck’s centre of gravity is above the suspension, so the rotational movement a deck on a table sees as someone walks across the floor flings the deck sideways and the suspension actually amplifies this movement! It is vastly more effective at isolating from motor noise, airborne feedback hitting the plinth, but useless against impact.

PS FWIW and for clarity I’m very far from convinced high mass anywhere in the audio chain is a good idea, so I’m not recommending high-mass plinths etc. The LP12 jumps because of how its subchassis is designed, not its weight, a light unsuspended Rega would be fine (but obviously lacks the Linn’s isolation from audio-frequency feedback etc). If I ever returned to a Garrard it would be in some variation of the decoupled top-plate Loricraft idea, not high-mass. My TD-124 is in a very light and low-mass plinth. I also think mass is a very bad thing in speaker cabinets and is largely responsible for the hard, bright and dead in the water sound of a lot of modern high-end kit.
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OT, but I have noticed masses of audio feedback when I turn the wick up on my record room/office speakers with my 25kg acoustic signature turntable, but that is quite loud in a small room. I have bigger speakers off the same system in the adjoining dining room if I want to get properly loud.
 
Ah, yes a gyroscope mounted above a spring coupled with the effects of precession. If footfall tilts the rotation axis, the reaction is at 90 degrees. Makes sense.
 
foxwelljsly said:
OT, but I have noticed masses of audio feedback when I turn the wick up on my record room/office speakers with my 25kg acoustic signature turntable, but that is quite loud in a small room. I have bigger speakers off the same system in the adjoining dining room if I want to get properly loud.
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That’s quite worrying, I’d definitely look at your location options in that situation. I don’t play my system loudly and thankfully have no issues at all even though by necessity of available space the turntable is only a few feet from a 15” Tannoy!

PS Everything matters here, e.g. mass and resonance of the table, mass/compliance of the arm/cartridge, decoupling of the deck etc. You may just need to alter one parameter to remove or greatly suppress the feedback loop.
 
a.palfreyman said:
That's rather interesting and counterintuitive. You'd think that a bouncy suspended turntable would cope better with a bouncy Victorian wooden floor than a heavy turntable coupled to it through a rigid stand.
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The first becomes a system of coupled oscillators - which is analytically messy and tends to make for some really large displacements, esp in the range between the two principal resonances of each oscillator on its own, because each can 'force' the other. You can see this in all sorts of other everyday things - same reason you don't hang a loaded shopping bag off one side of your bicycles handlebar, for example (you'll know if you ever tried that...)
 
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