Fantastic (upgrade-tweak)for spindle

[StanC]

Hello fellow Techies,
I'm new here and this is my first post.I've been following this forum for about a year now with much admiration for all your passion and enthusiasm for the hobby.
I want to share a significant upgrade with the community, which I learned from Kevin of KAB.
The tweak involves damping the spindle and coupling the thrust plate to the plinth. This is done by using a small cube of collapseable wax which is inserted between thrust plate and plinth. The results are fantastic! Images float farther out of the speakers, the sound is more relaxed without any loss of dynamics. I honestly had to check to see if the speed was correct.
Kab feels the stock bearing is fine by evidence of its test of time. I'm sure there will be a great new bearing developed soon , but for now this is a no brainer must do.
Kevin says this wax can be found at a graffic arts store. He thinks it's called stationers wax. Brilliant!

Stan

[Marco]

Hi Stan,

Welcome to AOS! Where are you from?

Thanks for sharing the tweak. I can't comment on its efficacy as I haven't tried it. If Kevin recommends it though it must be worth doing.

It'll be interesting to hear what Dave Cawley thinks - particularly as he has a bearing mod all of his own which I believe is imminent for release

Marco.

[jonners]

Hi Stan. Any chance of some pics of this tweak? Could you describe it in more detail?

[DaveK]

Wonder if a little blob of BluTac would serve the same purpose? - less messy, less likely to break up into the bowels of the Techie and much easier to put in and take out.
Easy to try.
Cheers,

[jonners]

Wax is slippery, BluTac sticky - not a good idea I think

[StanC]

Hi guys,
thank you Marco. I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Sorry no pictures, should have taken some. What I meant to say is that the wax is a compressible type. I used an approximately 1 by1/4 inch square in the well, finger seated it and alternately screwed down.
Kab will have some announcement of this soon.

Stan

[Dave Cawley]

I think this is likely to damp the bearing and blu tack would be probably better?

Stan, have you performed the modification yourself ? and exactly what material did you use ? and where did you get that material from ?

Regards

Dave

[Ammonite Audio]

This sounds perfectly logical to me, and I would not be surprised if Dave Cawley has already been looking at ways of securing the bearing assembly more firmly to the alloy chassis.

In my professional world, we used to use beeswax for securing accelerometers to equipment for vibration measurements. Beeswax has a very benign resonant characteristic, unlike blu-tak, adhesive tape and that sort of thing which act as the spring in a good-old-fashioned mass-spring system. I have a block of beeswax somewhere and feel a bit of an experiment coming on! It will make the Techy smell nice, if nothing else!

[DaveK]

Wax is slippery, BluTac sticky - not a good idea I think

Hi John,
You may well be right - I assumed (always dangerous ) that both bits rotated so 'sticky' would not be a problem - silly me!!! .
Cheers,

[jonners]

Hi Dave

From reading Stan's second post I would conclude that the wax is not in contact with any moving parts (is that correct Stan?), in which case BluTac would do no harm. However Shuggies beeswax idea sounds convincing and I've got some, but maybe I'll let him try it first...