Help with a structural vibration issue in a rental home.

Chosemerv

New Member
EAA6694E-BA5E-4F82-BA57-93FAF1496055.jpeg B848AC5A-F74F-4E79-846E-D6D2C8243632.jpeg Greetings folks,

So I have an interesting issue with vibration and I'm looking for some possible damping solutions. So as you can see from the pics my Technics sl1350 is wall mounted in my front room. The room is about 25x8. In the room you can jump off the sofa onto the floor and the turntable never misses a beat. But if someone is walking down the hall from the back of the house (from the hall to midway into the living room is when this skipping occurs, so about 30ft in total length)on this floor the turntable skips bad. My partner and I rent the house, which is a duplex, so doing some type of structural mods to the house is out of the question. Right now the turntable is on a commercial wall mount unit, and I have a wood shelf directly under the turntable and 1/4" cork isolation pads between the wood shelf and the wall shelf. Budget isn't extravagant, perhaps $200 max. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as the turntable is essentially unusable when having people over for holiday and other gatherings.

Cheers,

Dennis
 
A glass plate with about 10 Vibropods under it or a sand box with another plank or plate of glass floated in it
Either or deployed on your wall shelf - trying not to reinvent the wheel here
Those wall mount turntable platforms when mounted to studs in today's crap construction homes can be a real mixed bag
What floor are you on?
 
A glass plate with about 10 Vibropods under it or a sand box with another plank or plate of glass floated in it
Either or deployed on your wall shelf - trying not to reinvent the wheel here
Those wall mount turntable platforms when mounted to studs in today's crap construction homes can be a real mixed bag
What floor are you on?
Second and third. This is the second floor. Interestingly enough this house was built in 1919, but the current owner had it completely renovated. Admittedly by some hacks. Not Hovnanian level rubbish, but you can come across more than a few things that demonstrate stupidity, greed, or a nice combo of the two.
 
Take it off the wall and put it on the floor on a sturdy table and see how it does.
Started off with a large teak table that I've used with my equipment for years in other spaces. Turntable was unplayable due to vibration basically all the time.
 
Trade it in on a SOTA?
Kinda partial to Pro-ject, and as of yet I'm not too familiar with SOTA. Wouldn't matter anyway because current funding levels preclude moving replacement of a perfectly fine sounding turntable past restoration of my Accuphase amp in cueue. But, I am open to turntable donations if you're offering...;)
 
Interestingly enough this house was built in 1919, but the current owner had it completely renovated. Admittedly by some hacks.
Clearly by the windows
Vibropods work wonders and you can easily order them on-line and are definitely within budget
Floating the table can be done with a credit card but it's a rip in my view - if you or someone close is handy it can be easily accomplished in an aesthetically pleasing way and still be just as effective as 'store bought'
Essentially all you are doing is using a shallow box filled with sand and floating a shelf in that medium
OR a child's inner tube works well too in lieu of sand and might be preferable with your specific arraignment
 
If you know the weight of the turntable, you can find a set of four Vibrapods to put under the feet (or as mentioned above, perhaps a sheet of plexiglass to put the TT on, and support the whole thing with Vibrapods). You want to know the weight because Vibrapods are available in different grades--less weight vs. more weight determines if you need the softer or harder Vibrapods. Too much weight on a soft Vibrapod will bottom it out; too little weight and they won't isolate like they are designed.

The sandbox idea would work, but it's a bit clumsy (especially on a shelf). Another effective but bulky method is to use two sheets of MDF and use a 12 inch bicycle innertube between them, partially inflated so it floats. At one point, I was really cheap here and used four rubber "super balls" resting on rubber cups to hold them in place. Weird, but it helped!
 
View attachment 1382187 View attachment 1382188 Greetings folks,

So I have an interesting issue with vibration and I'm looking for some possible damping solutions. So as you can see from the pics my Technics sl1350 is wall mounted in my front room. The room is about 25x8. In the room you can jump off the sofa onto the floor and the turntable never misses a beat. But if someone is walking down the hall from the back of the house (from the hall to midway into the living room is when this skipping occurs, so about 30ft in total length)on this floor the turntable skips bad. My partner and I rent the house, which is a duplex, so doing some type of structural mods to the house is out of the question. Right now the turntable is on a commercial wall mount unit, and I have a wood shelf directly under the turntable and 1/4" cork isolation pads between the wood shelf and the wall shelf. Budget isn't extravagant, perhaps $200 max. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as the turntable is essentially unusable when having people over for holiday and other gatherings.

Cheers,

Dennis

I know your deck is wall mounted. But bear in mind that many walls are affected by distant floor deflections, even sometimes exterior walls. If your residence has a basement or crawl space, you want to locate the deck outside the worst floor span deflection areas, or ideally outside the span altogether. Joist deflection tends to be strongest at the center third of the span, although all joists will defect to some degree across their entire span, causing some movement even to an exterior wall at times.

If you have a basement or crawl space, go down there and locate the support posts or columns nearest to a floor or wall above where you can relocate the deck. If you can locate the deck over those supported points, the nearby joist areas and walls should be the ones with the least deflection and bounce. If you have an open span basement or crawl (no columns or posts), you may be able to place a removable screw jack post directly under the area where you want to mount the deck. Because its temporary, it may not constitute a fixture or other structural repair, but you should check with your lease and get a qualified legal opinion to confirm before you proceed if you are unsure. If you don't know what you are doing in this regard, do not attempt it, as careless installation could cause structural damage. But once you control the deflection from below, the deflection and the bounce should mitigate in that area. If you don't have any basement or crawl area, then you should have a fairly stable floor structure, and the deck should be on the floor.

Otherwise, the exterior walls are often the strongest, and are often sitting on a strong rim-joist perimeter or on footer foundations. It looks like you are mounted on an exterior wall. So your existing problem seems a little strange considering where it is.

I'm not a big fan of wall mounts for turntables, as you have two planes of movement to worry about. But I know a lot of people that love them. It could be as simple as just getting it off that wall and down to the nearby floor.

Good luck to you. If it's any consolation, this is a common problem. In a prior house, my deck would bounce all the time, and there was not much that could be done about it. Now it sits on 6" of concrete and moves not one bit.
 
I know your deck is wall mounted. But bear in mind that many walls are affected by distant floor deflections, even sometimes exterior walls. If your residence has a basement or crawl space, you want to locate the deck outside the worst floor span deflection areas, or ideally outside the span altogether. Joist deflection tends to be strongest at the center third of the span, although all joists will defect to some degree across their entire span, causing some movement even to an exterior wall at times.

If you have a basement or crawl space, go down there and locate the support posts or columns nearest to a floor or wall above where you can relocate the deck. If you can locate the deck over those supported points, the nearby joist areas and walls should be the ones with the least deflection and bounce. If you have an open span basement or crawl (no columns or posts), you may be able to place a removable screw jack post directly under the area where you want to mount the deck. Because its temporary, it may not constitute a fixture or other structural repair, but you should check with your lease and get a qualified legal opinion to confirm before you proceed if you are unsure. If you don't know what you are doing in this regard, do not attempt it, as careless installation could cause structural damage. But once you control the deflection from below, the deflection and the bounce should mitigate in that area. If you don't have any basement or crawl area, then you should have a fairly stable floor structure, and the deck should be on the floor.

Otherwise, the exterior walls are often the strongest, and are often sitting on a strong rim-joist perimeter or on footer foundations. It looks like you are mounted on an exterior wall. So your existing problem seems a little strange considering where it is.

I'm not a big fan of wall mounts for turntables, as you have two planes of movement to worry about. But I know a lot of people that love them. It could be as simple as just getting it off that wall and down to the nearby floor.

Good luck to you. If it's any consolation, this is a common problem. In a prior house, my deck would bounce all the time, and there was not much that could be done about it. Now it sits on 6" of concrete and moves not one bit.
Thanks for the reply. The first floor and basement are the second unit so no joy on going down and doing anything. Our washer and dryer are in the kitchen at the back of the house, perhaps 50, 55 feet from the front room. When the washer is on rinse/spin cycle you can feel it through the floor all the way to the living room, but thankfully not to the front room. The front room was originally a screened in deck that was converted. Has a floating floor, so up until I do something like your concrete setup tabletop setup is probably a no go.
 
I'm not a big fan of wall mounts for turntables, as you have two planes of movement to worry about. But I know a lot of people that love them.
It does depend on the house also. My buddy used to have a Rega turntable, and no matter where he put it in his living room, he would hear footfalls when playing it. When he installed a turntable shelf on the outside wall, no more issues. Thing is, his exterior is brick, and quite a bit more solid than mine. I would not wall mount a turntable here for two reasons. First, my family room addition is on a concrete slab and is sturdy. And second, the walls are drywall, on wood frame, with only wood siding outdoors. We live about a mile away from a US Coast Guard station, and when their helicopter flies over, you can feel it throughout the house...especially in the exterior walls. So no, I'm not a fan of them either, but they are good problem solvers when all else fails, especially if a home has limited floor space, or limited options for placing a turntable away from vulnerable places in flexible suspended floors.
 
Hi again
For the sake of clarity what I suggest can/is to be used in conjunction with the shelf already set up you already have, just an amendment to complete your isolation challenges
 
I'm really trying to peel this layer by layer.
Are the screws on the shelf into structure (studs)? Or are you between studs and had to use anchors?
At night, when someone walks in the bad location to upset the tt, can you see the windows moving a little too?
What I am wondering is if you found a stud next to the molding of each window (there should be) and screwed a piece of wood to those spots, then mounted your shelf to that..whether that may do it.
Other cheap possibility (and returnable). though maybe not interior decoration friendly would be 4 or 6 cement blocks or bags of sand..something cheap and heavy, that you could try in different spots between the middle of the bad zone right to the tt. If the offending part can get loaded to stop the jounce of the offending structural piece that would be ok.
This is all food for thought on your part.. Its a question mark just how jinky the structure was to begin with, and what the last (or earlier) reno's did or didn't do. Only other thing I could think of is if you are mounted on the exterior wall of the porch, try remounting on the wall opposite, in other words the face of the actual house itself..you may have better luck there.
 
I'm really trying to peel this layer by layer.
Are the screws on the shelf into structure (studs)? Or are you between studs and had to use anchors?
At night, when someone walks in the bad location to upset the tt, can you see the windows moving a little too?
What I am wondering is if you found a stud next to the molding of each window (there should be) and screwed a piece of wood to those spots, then mounted your shelf to that..whether that may do it.
Other cheap possibility (and returnable). though maybe not interior decoration friendly would be 4 or 6 cement blocks or bags of sand..something cheap and heavy, that you could try in different spots between the middle of the bad zone to the tt. If the offending part can get loaded to stop the jounce of the offending structural piece that would be ok.
This is all food for thought on your part.. Its a question mark just how jinky the structure was to begin with, and what the last (or earlier) reno's did or didn't do. Only other thing I could think of is if you are mounted on the exterior wall of the porch, try remounting on the wall opposite, in other words the face of the actual house itself..you may have better luck there.
The mount is into studs. I thought about putting it on the wall between the front room and living room but the layout isn't really conducive to it. I'll likely be trying Vibrapods and perhaps switching to a glass shelf and will go from there. Thanks to everyone for your informative responses!
 
From what I can see, you have a non-suspended turntable sitting on a rigid shelf. I think your solution will come from trial and error, so why not introduce some de-coupling into the chain for starters and the easiest way to start is to use an inner tube under a sheet of board. You could even place a cushion or some thick foam between the TT and the shelf just to see/hear what happens.

A sand box is a good idea in the right situation, but I don't think it will solve your problem here, and they can be deceptively heavy too!
 
I like Vibrapods, have a few dozen around here for various equipment etc, they work great but they're not a panacea. If all else fails you could try suspending the shelf from the ceiling.
 
Thanks for the reply. The first floor and basement are the second unit so no joy on going down and doing anything. Our washer and dryer are in the kitchen at the back of the house, perhaps 50, 55 feet from the front room. When the washer is on rinse/spin cycle you can feel it through the floor all the way to the living room, but thankfully not to the front room. The front room was originally a screened in deck that was converted. Has a floating floor, so up until I do something like your concrete setup tabletop setup is probably a no go.

Ok. If that is what you have to work with, then the best approach should be a combination of mass-loading and isolation.

The mass loading will increase the inertial load and the amount of energy needed to move it. The isolation will decouple that mass from the surrounding oscillating environment. Something like a box of sand or a large block paver on vibrapods or other isolation barrier. But not so much that the vibrapod is crushed and the decoupling layer is defeated.

The other approach is a suspension arrangement, but I suspect if the walls are moving, then the ceiling is too. And a disrupted suspension coupling is the worst of all.

No matter what you do, it's going to be difficult. You are trying to hold something stationary when all points around it are moving. Good luck with it.
 
Perhaps see if you can figure out if the wall is moving in and out (likely), left-to-right or up and down (less likely). If you could suspend from the ceiling, would that help? (Depends on whether anyone is above you or not...)

Or float it in a Koi pond?
 
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