Set-Up Tips

That's a great piece of advice and just might solve the problem.

Once again, makes it worth looking by analogplanet while procrastinating before starting to practice a presentation for this week....

I have exactly this problem, I live on the third floor of an old building, constructed around 1900 - 1905. The floors are actually suspended. In my living room where my system is set up, just walking around can get the stylus jumping (and the woofer baffles pumping in and out). Not good for expensive stylus, so I try to limit the amount of dancing about in the room... 

I've tried all sorts of things to try and weight the floor down to stop the bouncing around, but nothing has really worked.

Will be interesting to see how well this solution works.

Time to go yell at them.

Back in college we suspended our TT from the ceiling.  2 or 4 eye bolts, a wooden shelf and fishing line were all that was needed.  Worked like a charm.

If you floors are too springy, remove any contact with the floor.  Several makers produce a sturdy wall bracket for turntables.  I made my own with double-layer MDF shelf about 2' x 2' with 18" MDF brackets below (right triangles -- mine had circles cut out to give it a Buck Rogers spaceship look).  Make sure to mount it securely to either studs (via lag bolts) or masonry (via heavy-duty molly bolts or lag anchors).  I thought I was still getting some subtle LF rumble so I added a second 1.5" platform and put a 20" bike innertube between the two thick MDF slabs...I put nice roundovers on the MDF slabs and gave them a faux-granite finish....best TT arrangement I ever had...

I just put two turnbuckles between the rack and the wall.

Hey, problem of my bouncing stylus seems to be mostly solved. I can walk around now pretty much normally. Great tip. Works well.

Wall mounting for me is not an option, it's an old house and there is a door, locked, but a door right behind the rack. Door mounting the turntable is just not an option.

This is a problem I have encountered frequently, and I think it's useful to understand what's happening.

A suspended floor does not move up and down vertically like a piston when you walk around, it tends to move more vertically towards the middle of the room, with far less movement where it meets the wall and the floor joists are attached to the supporting wall studs. Most people position a turntable stand near the wall, and the result is that the rear legs move very little, while the front legs which are perhaps two feet away from the support of the wall connection move vertically more.

If you imagine a stand where the rear feet remain still, but the front feet are moving up and down vertically, the result up at the top of the stand is lateral movement towards and away from the wall. The rear legs act as a fulcrum, with the front legs rotating about that point. The taller the stand, the more pronounced the effect, because the amount of movement at the top is based on the ratio between the distance from the rear feet to the front feet, and distance from the bottom of the stand to the turntable mounting surface. The taller the stand, the more small amounts of vertical movement at the front feet gets translated into larger front to back motions up at the top of the stand where the turntable sits.

Lateral motion is a real problem for most turntables. A suspended turntable can usually handle pistonic vertical movement pretty well, but lateral movement will provoke the suspension in unpredictable ways, and can shake the stylus right out of the groove.

A really simple solution is to use a lower stand. Try putting the turntable directly on the floor if you don't believe me, I promise the problem will be reduced.

Mikey's solution is a good one, and I have often done something similar by wedging a wood block between the back of the stand and the wall to short circuit the lateral motion at the top of the stand. I usually position the stand so that I get a good tight fit with whatever block I'm using, but the adjustable turnbuckles Mikey suggests make that unnecessary. One advantage of a wood block is that you can usually add some duct tape to hold the block in place against the stand, eliminating the slip out problem.

A more elegant solution can be used if the room under the listening room is an unfinished basement. Install a builder's adjustable prop jack in the basement, so that the top of the jack supports the ceiling/floor above at a point directly under the front legs of the turntable stand. It helps to use a length of 2x4 between the jack and the ceiling/floor, to spread the support across both legs of the stand.

The widely suggested wall shelf works well too, although I take issue with the way many wall shelves are designed.

In my experience, adding lots of mass only makes the problem worse. A really heavy stand seems to pre-load the floor in a way that gets it moving more easily.

This worked for me. I purchased shelves from Ikea I used to store lps. I placed my components on it, incl TT.  The shelf was heavy with vinyl, but it would move if someone leaned against it. I used 2 turn buckles to couple the shelf to the wall. It works great. Thanks for the useful tip.