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Why turntable bearing shaft and spindle machined as one piece?

Posted by caligari (A) on October 23, 2016 at 10:16:12

I tried in other forums but no one seems to be interested in such topic so I will try it here.

Having seen so many so called high end turntables that a majority of them do not separate or decouple the bearing shaft from the spindle. I strongly believe separating the record spindle from the bearing can reduce noise significantly. At an audio shows I encounter a turntable designer and he agreed with me and said it is understandable in manufacturing budget turntables to reduce the cost. But when it comes to high price turntable exceeding $10K there's really no excuse.

Turntable with sub-platter should not be that hard to have a top platter with a separate spindle. Many small companies are founded by machinists who are not designers themselves and just keep doing the same thing over and over with added blinks to the appearance to justify the high cost. I keep seeing thicker and thicker platter and yet the bearing shaft still protrudes all the way up to be the spindle. Make no sense to me...

At least some designers pay attention to this issue. In a Stereophile interview, Spiral Groove designer Allen Perkin, formerly Immedia, said this: "People assume that a lack of friction means a lack of noise, but I've found that most noise comes through the spindle. The part of our spindle that touches the record isn't even part of the bearing, which makes machining quite difficult."

In another interview has this introduction: "he believes that his platter bearing is very different from those used in other turntables in that the spindle and platter bearing are decoupled yet precisely aligned."

Even if the precision of the alignment can be an issue, the tolerance of eccentric record is still greater than that!

I have seen some examples like GrooveTracer subplatter using a decoupled spindle. But the spindle is still touching the bearing shaft though. I would prefer it to be completely detached from the bearing and to be part of the platter. But I understand it's sold as a Rega accessory so it has to be user friendly to existing Rega users.

Another concern is the use popular use of inverted bearing that the thrust pad distance is very close to the record surface compare to the conventional "stick in a hole" approach.

By the way, we are talking about bearing and bearing only. I am not implying all the other things such as tonearm, plinth, suspension, etc... are not important. I am not talking about those things, only bearing design and its interaction with the platter and record. When you design or build a bearing for a turntable, these things do come to mind.

I have experience with noise before when a record clamp is used, hence my question.

Again, I am mainly talking about high end or expensive turntables not the type that has limited budget.

Any thoughts?

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