The latest arrival from the creative minds at Tiger Paw is called Tranquility. It’s an LP12 turntable upgrade that, as with the sKale replacement weight, end users can safely install an even trial themselves.
Essentially, Tranquility is a levitation device to ease the job of the bearing. By reducing noise that you didn’t know was there, it also trikes us as doing the sonic business too.
For a proper description, let’s do the lazy thing with some cut & paste 🙂 :
“More music. The Tranquility bearing support significantly lowers friction which in turn lowers the amount of residual noise transmitted by the bearing. You basically get more from your LP12.
Magnetic levitation has been used before, and is currently used, by a small number of exotic turntable manufacturers; however our application does not actually raise the spindle from it’s contact with the thrust pad but it does dramatically reduce the force and friction between the two surfaces. We basically reduce this by around 90%.
Tranquility has taken a considerable amount of time to develop and draws upon a broad range of specialist experience in turntable component development, and utilizes a unique array of high quality rare earth magnets in a specific arrangement to ensure that the fields are perfectly aligned in order to deliver precisely the amount of force required. In particular we’d like to thank Mark Holterman for his contribution and collaboration along with his original work with magnetic systems.
Tranquility does not require any modification or dismantling of your LP12. Simply remove the outer platter, belt and inner platter, place the lower assembly over the lower bearing housing, place the upper ring on the underside of the inner platter and reinstall the platters and belt.
Not only will you experience a new level of musicality from your LP12 but your bearing assembly will be subject to dramatically less wear. Tranquility is compatible with both pre Cirkus and Cirkus bearings along with standard sub chassis, Kore, Keel and of course our own Akula sub chassis.
Two commonly asked questions;
1. Will the proximity of the cartridge to the magnetic field affect its performance? Short answer, no. Why not? The magnetic field is highly localized and due to the nature of using the magnets in compression the fields are further reduced. Similarly the platter material also acts in a way that limits the magnetic field.
2. Will this affect the speed of the turntable? No, the magnetic arrays have been specifically designed to ensure that they cannot cog or find a ‘favourable’ position. We have measured the drive pattern of both the AC and DC (Radikal) motors and they show identical behaviour with and without Tranquility.”
Price £399. Yes you can try it!
