Motor Drive FAQs

Drive System
Introduction
This FAQ address our drive system design as it applies to Galibier turntables, as well as questions relating to drive system retrofit / upgrades for turntables from other manufacturers.
Pitch stability (wow and flutter performance) is only the first of many hurdles that a drive system design needs to clear.
The influence of the drive system on vinyl playback was perhaps best stated in this old review of the Rockport Sirius III turntable (opens in a new tab).
The review is rather long-winded, but the first 600 words or so should be required reading for anyone who's considering a change to their vinyl front end - whether it be a turntable, a tonearm, a cartridge, or any other element in the vinyl playback chain.
If you don't have time to read it, scroll down to the first FAQ on this page "Why Upgrade ..." (or click this link to jump down to it"), where we summarize the key points from that review.
Our Design Philosophy
- Our high torque motor runs at high speed, rendering better dynamic response.
- Drive belts matter.
- Decoupling the drive from the platter in any way (either via suspension or rubber belts) is the enemy of speed stability.
- We drive our platters with one motor, because if you couldn’t get it right with one motor, what makes you think you can get it right with two or three?
A few relevant blog posts:
Frequently Asked Questions
Some of these questions arose during conversations with owners of other turntables who were upgrading to our Galibier drive, but the same points apply whether you're considering purchase of a Galibier or are upgrading a turntable from another manufacturer.
Why upgrade? I have good wow & flutter readings
Suspended Turntables
Rigid Drive Belts
Why should I lock down my suspension?
Belt Height and Custom Motor Pods
International Voltages
Warranty and Unauthorized Power Supplies
Platine Verdier
Redpoint Turntables
Why upgrade? I have good wow & flutter readings
It’s about much more than pitch stability. In short, the enemy is distortion.
That cartridge you thought was a bit too edgy? It may well be the messenger you’re blaming. The true culprit may be your drive system.
In fact, we’d go so far as to say that until you’ve optimized your drive system, considering an expensive cartridge upgrade is a very risky proposition.
Good wow and flutter behavior is necessary, but there’s so much more to good speed behavior than perceived pitch stability. Wow & flutter readings are taken with a steady sine wave (typically 3150 Hz), and this tells you very little about the distortion spectra or dynamic behavior of your analog front end when playing back complex wave forms (otherwise known as music).
The next level of refinement brings with it a reduction in distortion and improved phase behavior (most noticeable in the treble because of the short wavelength at these frequencies).
This, in turn results in rich/lush tone which is most apparent in how strings and woodwind instruments are rendered. People associate lush harmonics with a “sluggish” rhythmic presentation, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth with our Stelvio-drive.
The improved phase in the treble region builds more accurate overtones which is is how we distinguish two different instruments from each other when they’re playing the same note (i.e. double bass vs. organ).
Better speed control means better tone. Is accurate rendering of tone important to you?
The improved phase behavior also results in better note definition, reproduction of leading and trailing edges of the note (along with less harshness), improved rhythm/timing, as well as delineation of musical lines.
In short, the music makes more sense.
Low-loss drive systems (idlers and rigid belt drive) contribute to this next level of speed stability. If you’re used to a rubber belt-driven turntable, this will be immediately apparent. String drive? This is another lossy system – perhaps better than rubber belts, but that sets a low bar to clear. Scroll down this page to the “Rigid Drive Belts” FAQ for more information about drive belts.
Our most recent drive update brought the rendition of transients to be so close to that of our idler drive prototype that we began to question the reason for continuing with the Savoie project.
Interestingly, the audible improvements in this recent update showed only minimal improvement in measured wow and flutter readings. We believe in measuring, but this is yet another case of the industry not measuring everything that’s relevant.
Suspended Turntables
Our rigid drive belt system will not work with a suspended platter.
The platter must have no rocking or vertical play of any sort in order for the belt to track on the pulley.
Rigid Drive Belts
Quite simply, they render better speed stability and improved transient response. As the stylus traces the groove and imparts drag on the drive system (yes ... even with a high mass platter), a rubber belt stretches and relaxes. When you consider the short length of a high frequency note on an LP, this wavering compromises the phase performance of your playback system.
Rubber belt driven turntables are a key reason why individuals have been flocking to idler and direct drive.
Rubber belts are a filter and they do their job well - isolating the platter from a motor's vibration. Everything has a price however, and (like suspended subchassis), the price is speed stability.
The next FAQ (locking down your suspension) carries this concept a bit further.
Why should I lock down my suspension?
It goes deeper than the ability of a rigid belt to track the motor pulley.
Consistent with our design concepts and musical values, we’re firm believers in improving drive system coupling whenever possible, and we wrote the following comment in a forum post about Platine Verdier turntables:
My comment about locking down all suspension related to the resonant loop comprised of the motor drive, the “belt”, and the base/platter. Subtle relative movements between the drive components can affect speed stability on the “micro” level I described earlier.
In this sense, any suspension in the loop, whether it be some “squishy” footers under the drive system, or springs under the turntable base/platter will have similar effects to that of a rubber belt.
The good news is that suspension under a fairly massive base like that of the Verdier is likely to have a smaller effect than that of a rubber belt due to the platter/base assembly being high mass, and will “jiggle” quite a bit less (much less so than for example, a Linn turntable).
It will still “jiggle” however, and when you consider the minute wavelength of a 10 kHz signal in a record groove, and then take into account that any error more than zero will introduce phase anomalies, you’ll understand why we take this so seriously.
You may well find the solution for your turntable to lie on a continuum – that a bit of compliance will be the best compromise in your system. In general, I fall into the camp that less (suspension) is more (fidelity).
Some of this has to do with musical values – your perceptual framework and what in a musical performance your attention is drawn to. We’re all different in this regard. I tend to listen to a lot of rhythmically complex music with interleaving musical lines, so dynamic behavior (and unraveling these musical lines) is important to me. Of course, benefits like lowered distortion are a universal value.
My take is that when the urge to experiment strikes (and we all know that it occurs frequently with Verdier owners <grin>) that you play with eliminating as many “springs” out of your drive system as possible – as long as it’s reversible.
Belt Height and Custom Motor Pods
This question relates to individuals who are performing a drive retrofit / upgrade to a turntable from another manufacturer, or in the unlikely circumstance where they have installed custom footers under their Galibier turntable base.
Custom height motor pods are impractical to manufacture in advance (by brand and model) as the height permutations vary too much. We can however, manufacture motor pods of almost every height.
It’s the rare platter height that we cannot accommodate. Typically, this involves an extremely short turntable, with the belt center-line being lower than about 4 inches above the shelf. Of course, you can raise your turntable base with custom footers to circumvent this limitation.
As far as specifying the "ride height" of the belt on a non-Galibier turntable, we recommend that your new motor pod position the belt at the same height as the “stock” design.
Belt "ride height" is a key part of any turntable design, and since we have no insight into either the design principles or execution of your turntable, we recommend that you don't change it.
Our Galibier turntables are designed to locate the belt height for theoretically maximum stability (minimizing rocking).
If you're interested in reading more about the theory, we cover this in our bearing FAQ.
The short story about this is, that in our experiments, we found the level of precision to which our bearings are executed, renders our platters immune to any rocking. Having said that, our platter and bearing design still follows design principles to mitigate this effect.
International Voltages
We specify the Teddy Pardo power supply which is made in Israel, and can be specified for either North American voltages (120V / 60 Hz) or for 240V / 50 Hz.
If you live outside the United States, we recommend ordering your power supply directly from them. This will save you on international shipping charges. We can instruct you on the details of selecting the correct plug as well as custom umbilical cord lengths.
When you order your power supply, we’ll apply a credit to your order.
To receive both your credit and to maintain your warranty, send us a copy of your purchase receipt from Teddy Pardo.
Warranty and Unauthorized Power Supplies
We will not warranty a controller which has been used with a power supply we have not certified for use with our drive circuit. Currently, the Teddy Pardo 12/4, the discontinued Tenma, and the current Astron RS-7A supplies are certified.
Contact us if you have any questions, and if you purchase your power supply directly (not through us), forward us a copy of the receipt to keep your warranty in effect.
In 2018, we eliminated on-board regulation from the controller circuit. Tests with the Teddy Pardo supply (as well as the Astron and Tenma units) showed that it was not only unnecessary, but that it degraded the sound.
These onboard (3-pin) regulators are compact and useful in many situations, but they cannot compete with a dedicated linear supply. Parenthetically, these regulators are key elements of both the Redpoint and Verdier drive modules. Me mention this in the “drive history” link (thumbnail photo, link above).
The single benefit given up by eliminating the onboard regulator is that it protected the logic module and motor from inferior supplies. In practice, no one investing in a drive system like this should be skimping, especially considering that even the reasonably priced supplies Tenma and Astron are of sufficient quality to render additional protection unnecessary.
In short, there is a sonic and reliability penalty for using dirty power. You would never knowingly put dirty gasoline in your Porsche, so why would you feed your Galibier controller dirty power?
Regarding the benefits of clean power (as well as upgrading to the Teddy Pardo), we have one customer who asked us what to do with his old supply (after upgrading to the Teddy Pardo). I commented that he can keep it on hand in case his Teddy Pardo ever needed servicing. He replied: “if I can’t use the Teddy Pardo I won’t listen to my turntable until it returns”.
Once you’ve heard our controller with the “Teddy”, you’ll understand what he was talking about.
Platine Verdier
To implement a rigid, “tape” drive belt on the Platine Verdier, the suspension must be locked down so the platter does not rock. Any slight rocking or vertical movement of the platter will result in the belt jumping off the drive pulley.
The most frequent Verdier height dimension we’ve encountered positions the center-line of the drive belt so it is 7.5” (190 mm) above the turntable shelf.
We have seen a variance in this number due to the wide use of aftermarket footers under the base and motor pod, however. The reported belt height (to position it at the same height as the “stock” turntable) has ranged from 7 to 8 inches.
We can accommodate any height, but because of these variances, Verdier motor pods cannot be inventoried, and require a custom height motor pod.
Refer to the “Belt Height" question on this page.
Redpoint Turntables
Of course, we have a history with Redpoint, although our physical implementation has diverged slightly over the years.
Our standard height motor pods have increased in height by .670” to accommodate the footers we specify for our turntable bases. Redpoint has changed the top (control) plate thickness and internal cavity dimensions of their motor pods.
The majority of the Redpoint upgrades we’ve performed involved re-machining the existing Redpoint motor pod, by expanding the control cavity to accommodate our control plate and circuitry.
Re-machining your Redpoint motor pod is the least expensive option, and it maintains the cosmetics of your Redpoint turntable. It is, however, an irreversible change which you may not want to make.