Hi Guy,

Marco it would be interesting to hear what differences were audible between the two approaches. On the one hand extra mass and a bi-metallic construction. On the other, presumably a lighter platter, more under the control (perhaps) of the motor circuitry with the supposedly advantageous properties of a closer acoustic impedance match to that of the vinyl.
Indeed it will. My only comment so far on the 'Timestep' platter is that, aesthetically, I'm not a fan of the 'frosted plastic look', whether it's acrylic or Lexan. For me it looks quite cheap and has been done to death by the likes of Clearaudio, and many others. But I guess it's partly a 'fashion' thing at the moment.

Therefore the combination of the (to me) rather ugly plastic platter on the (to me) rather dull looking MKII 1210 (sorry folks!) is rather an exercise in blandness. It just looks somewhat too 'sober' for my liking.

Perhaps I'm biased, but I much prefer the appearance of Mike New's platter, when suitably polished, on a nice shiny black MK5 Techy:





For me, that looks far nicer and classier than the 1210 pictured on the Timestep forum, shown earlier

Sonically, as yet, I've no idea which platter is better. All will be revealed in due course. I certainly won't let the looks of the acrylic one put me off.

One question I'd ask, however - is the acrylic platter a bigger size than normal? The reason I ask is that it appears to dwarf what looks like a normal LP....

I suppose a like for like comparison might be difficult unless both platters can be used with the same bearing?
Don't see why not. What difficulty would you see the acrylic platter presenting an MN bearing? Also, when I spoke with Arthur, he never indicated that the platter required the use of a certain bearing.

Btw, on a totally unrelated matter, since I've got your attention.... When you do needle-drops with your SP10, using your Io (and matching SUT), how do you overcome the issue of overloading the USB device/sound-card with excessive gain (presuming that this is the case)?

Chris (Stratmangler) and I tried doing some needle-drops at the weekend with my Techy, and with my SPU and A23 SUT, through the Croft and into the EMU USB device, we were unable to adjust the recording levels to anything like normal, due to the excessive gain being produced by the A23.

I presuming that with your Io being even lower output than my SPU, the SUT you use will be very high gain, and thus will present the same difficulties as we had in my system? Or if not, what's happening at your end that isn't happening at mine? Any advice would be appreciated!

I'm planning to buy a pair of 6db in-line attenuators to try and solve the problem, but if there's a better solution, I'm all ears!

Marco.