Turntable isolation bases

If you hear yourself walking on the floor when playing a vinyl record, what's the cure?

[Aswaguespack]

In my limited experience I
used layers of materials of contrasting densities to isolate my turntable from whatever surface it needed to sit on. Most important is to insure that the platter surface is perfectly level. One particular damping material that seemed to be effective in one of my previous setups was thick cork. Without any means of conducting scientific measurements and relying only on audible observations, the cork seemed to be effective and cost efficient. While cork does not have the properties of a medium like sorbothane, it is less costly and I did find that using a sandwich of sorbothane and cork was pretty effective in one of my setups (nothing involving anything approaching real high end quality gear)

Great stuff Paul ….. as always.

[twopedal]

Back in the mid 70's a local audio dealer in Miami had a return and swap policy second to none. Having bouncy wooden floors and 4-5 turntables later(with a lawn mowing budget), I settled on a Phillips 212 electronic with it's internal suspension set up that wouldn't skip even if you tried. Funny thing, my older brother now in his 70's reminded me just the other day of the time my cat walked right across the disc while playing and it only slowed down momentarily as he moved on, friggin hilarious memory. I still have that very turntable, maybe I need to get it plugged back in.

[davidster]

I took a marble cutting board and placed it on two small bicycle inner tubes that fit 1 inside the orher. The stone floated on the tubes. Then put my vpi turntable on top of the stone with diy pucks made of a sandwitch of balsa, dynamat, and cork. This was in a very old house with springy floors. Worked great.

[martiny]

I had that problem in our old house so I did something very out of the ordinary. I hung my turntable off the ceiling off an old light hook. Worked the charm.

[stephen]

A simple method that is quite effective is to use a child's bicycle inner tube between two pieces of board.

[BonJohnvie]

I just use a bunch of those inflatable play balls that you find in the toy section of any dollar store. They hold up my entire equipment rack.

It looks rediculous but they completely eliminate any vibrations especially vertically.

Best $10 I've ever spent.

[doylewayne]

When i was a boy my favorite record store in Downey ca. was Licorice Pizza. They installed there turntable on a platform from the ceiling and would hang suspended off the floor. It was well isolated and worked great. Just a FYI. Thanks Paul ;-)) 😄

[stephenstevens]

You can build a floating platform down from your ceiling. Right through your joists. Not difficult to do....allthread works great, you can sleeve it with anything. Inexpensive solution!

[georgeanastasopoulos]

Very good, practical advice, and explanation. Myself, I put a plate of 1/2 inch MDF board on top of my stereo cabinet belt drive turntable. Board was a bit short of width, so I have another slim MDF at the back.🔉🎵🎶

[royli]

Hi - greetings from the UK. Interesting experience outlined. I have somewhat springy floorboards to my house. I resolved the issue using a "Council" concrete slab (extremely heavy) on four large Michell (as in the Gyrodec turntable) aluminium cones (point facing down like a spike). I placed my rack (Townshend Audi seismic sink stand - the older pneumatic type) on top and I can (literally) jump up/down without my cartridge skipping/being affected in any way (to my ears). I have thought of placing a layer of inert/dense rubber (think "Deadbeat" sheets used for car audio insulation), but never pulled the trigger on that.

[ThinkingBetter]

In the 80s I bought some turntable platform with springs to isolate vibrations between my speakers and turntable. Instead of isolating the vibrations it amplified at some resonant frequency to cause an acoustic feedback and destroyed my speakers (woofers hit the magnet repeatedly and damaged the voice coil) as I was too slow to get the volume cranked down when suddenly the system became one big oscillator. Without that silly vibration isolation platform, I had zero actual audible problems, so I got rid of it.

[jeffchevrier]

Many good (some crazy) ideas here. What I did for my 80's Denon was buy soft safety matting for walking on, cut it into the right size squares for under the feet. Works for me and cheap.

[clips]

Ran into this problem years back as i like big bass and large volume and cant afford any of the units i looked into. I went to a marble and granite company ( counter tops )and bought a scrap of granite about 20 x 20 . It weighs around 10 - 15 lbs. I then traveled to my nearest Big 5 and bought a pack of racquet balls and cut them all in half. I placed them under the flat stone cut side up ( round side down ) making sure the turntable was level. The base floats about 1/8 above my lp rack and works fantastic and only cost me about $20 U.S. dollars. 😎😎

[nyrlive]

I knew a DJ that used many rolls of toilet paper under his dual turntable setup, sideways of course to absorb vibrations, there could be 30 people jumping and dancing right in front of the tables and never a skip

[barbaroja.mp]

the base the MasterSounds and TPI do is quite good to alleviate that issue with my Technics. I used them with Isonoe feet too. My floor in Berlin is quite bouncy. On the other hand, my Thorens 126 doesn't care at all...because of its design it works like a charm on a bouncy floor

[michaelmasztal]

Yes, Paul, there is something out there. The Minus K isolations base. Used mainly for electron microscopes and other vibration-sensitive devices, it will isolate down to 1-2 Hz in both vertical and horizontal planes. Not cheap, but it works wonders.

[martinfox]

If there is a basement, put a 4x4 with a floor jack under the 2 or 3 floor joists beneath the TT.

[djnorm]

As an old DJ we had platform floating on large elastic bans that was great

[garyausten]

I don't really have a bouncy floor, but I built an isolation base for my Rega P2 for less than $35 using 2 Walmart bamboo cutting boards and 2 packages of Home Depot rubber bumpers sandwiched between them...seems to work out fine - I saw something similar on You-Tube.

[glenncurry]

Two Ikea Aptitlig cutting boards. One upside down. They are bamboo which has good resonant properties. They have a groove routed around the edge. Then use 4 nice spongy rubber balls (depending on turntable weight), one in the middle on each side in the groove. You can even spike the bottom one to the table it's on. The top one will float.