Still on damping rings . . .

[CJSF]

I have spent a few hours to day with some different size O-rings. Things are getting complex, takes me back to my early trials on mass loading speaker stands, the total mass of the ring affects the sound produced as does the position on the valve. I moved from a very heavy twisted ring to one or two 2.5mm x 25mm, It seems that as with stands, the more mass the more the base is tightend and reduced, trebel frequancies are more forward. Initialy impresive but after a while those highly detailed upper frequacies become wearing, sound familier?

Curently working on splitting two light rings, even the position on the tube seems to have an effect! As I said, '1975 and all that', 5 years it took to nail it then, I may not have 5 years now? At present one center ring is a good compromise to my ears, but still waiting for some more size veriations to arive.

CJSF

 

[CJSF]

Yet another day working with the O-Rings, most of the day with Spotify as source. All working nicley, however I hit a brick wall when swithing to Vinyl, I just could not get the 'Foundation Sound' to work the way it had 48 hours ago?

Back to the begining and run through every thing I had done, all seemed correct, I even suspected my deck re-leveling, thats desperate. Remove the O-rings from the remote phono stage, a slight improvement but one was not convinced, I will treat that as a seperate item later on?

I still had this, 'found it lost it' problem to solve. In the process of ring swaping I had re set the tracking weight only by a fraction on the secondary trimming weight??? Bingo, a quater turn back, another quater, thats where it was originaly, what about a third quater turn lighter. I have 'found my lost chord', this is going exactly the way things did in those early days, the amount of mass was critical in the stands, it is proving to be so on the vale rings. The final piece of the jigsaw, because the improvement in sound was so reveling one could adjust the weights and measures on the TT becaus the small subtalties were now audible.

Obviously dependent on the quality of the system components over all, but its always going to be a plus experiance. I have not finished with the down force yet, but its very late, I get shaky this time of night. The VTA will come in for some scrutiny next, slip gauges to the fore noteing what the hight is now.

Its all looking a bit bizzar . . . but hey, this is where I came in in 1976, an off the wall idea that one refined. Looking at speaker stands now, many show a resemblance to the original 'Classic Designs', nearly all talk about mass of some sort?

I know, damping rings are not new. They need investigating fully, the raw item cost just pennies, the results are very encouraging, problem, its a very small market? So I supose its best individuals do their own thing, at less than £1 ago for ten off that well known net sight, its not going to break the bank and might ad a little interest to proceding of the listening sessions?

CJSF

 

[MajorFubar]

Interesting read as always. Certainly does not harm to experiment

 

[Al ears]

Interesting read as always. Certainly does not harm to experiment

No harm at all, unless the valves are still hot........