Hi Andy, sorry for the late reply.

The short bolt hasn’t snapped off, it was cut off in the factory. We found that the turntable sounded better with only one bolt fully tightened so we made it so that you couldn’t put a nut on the second bolt.

Why is it better? The answer we gave officially was that introducing a slight lossiness into the cartridge/arm/board/bearing/platter system dissipates and damps down vibrational energy more effectively without compromising the geometry of the assembly, but in truth your guess is as good as mine!