Once upon a time many years ago in a land far away, there lived a king in a large castle which had a great hall. Every month, the king would invite his nobles to a big ball.
As it became popular, attendance grew. That’s when the problems started. The floor of the great hall was made of wood, and when too many nobles were dancing, the arm of the royal turntable would dance also, which upset both the music and the nobles.
The king was also annoyed, so he called in the royal furniture maker. “Build me a stable table!” he demanded. So, he built a heavy table with thick legs and a marble top. But that only mitigated the problem, it didn’t stop it.
"That’s because the floor still shakes, my Lord, and the table along with it,” the furniture maker explained.
Then the king called in the royal architect. “Fix this floor!” he demanded.
"To do that, I would have to support the floor joists with posts going to the ground underneath,” he responded, “which would make it impossible to park the royal carriages there.”
The king was frustrated and called in the royal carpenter. “Build me a shelf secured to the wall,” he commanded.
The carpenter built a beautiful shelf out of polished walnut and secured it to the wall with decorative iron brackets obtained from the royal blacksmith. That seemed to do the job and the king was jubilant.
During the next royal ball in the Great Room, everyone else was jubilant too. But then a new problem appeared.
On certain passages, the cartridge would distort as if it wasn’t tracking properly. He recalled the royal carpenter and demanded, “What the hell is going on now!”
He calmly explained that with all the people filling the room, the royal disc jockey had had felt it necessary to turn up the volume. That made the walls vibrate, which transferred the vibration to the brackets and back into the turntable.
Now the king was apoplectic. “What a royal pain in the ass!” He exclaimed, and offered a 1,000 guinea reward to anyone who could solve the problem. No one responded for fear of failing and incurring the wrath of the king.
When the royal shipwright heard about it, he approached the king and stated, “Your grace, the royal sailors sleep soundly even when the sea is choppy.” The king didn’t know what to make of this, so he asked, “What are you suggesting?”
“If you suspend the turntable from the ceiling instead of the wall – like a sailor’s hammock – you’ll have the heavy roof trusses to support it instead of the wooden walls.”
“Build it!” the king ordered. The shipbuilder built a platter of 4-inch thick hardwood, the same material used for rudders, and suspended it from the ceiling using chains from the blacksmith shop and straps of elastic material the Spanish called latex, which they had brought over from the New World. Then he placed a soft damping pad between the platform and the turntable.
At the next big ball, the music didn’t distort no matter how loud the royal disc jockey turned it up or how many danced. Everyone was astonished.
If you build it, they will dance. Courtesy of Pexels.com/Oswaldo López.
The king was delighted, and promoted the shipwright to the position of Royal Minister of Big Balls.
And that’s the allegory of how I stopped feedback to my Thorens TD125 turntable, SME arm, and Grace F9E cartridge with a ruby stylus.
However, I wasn’t able to stop feedback from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during big balls.
A Thorens TD 125 MKII turntable with SME 3009 arm similar to B. Jan Montana's. Courtesy of TONEAudio.
Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/Alhim Hossain.
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