I've tried various vibration suckers under my turntable; a granite slab, a 4" thick maple platform on cone points, an aluminum/foam/aluminum Symposium clone, and a sandbox, all on top (or in place) of my stock Zoethecus shelf, and I've noticed a definite pattern: The more massive the support, the more bogged-down the music becomes. IME, mass-loading seems to help with frequency extension, but it can smear fine detail and sap the forward drive and flow out of the music, making it sound listless,analytical, and "hifi."

Since light and rigid seemed like the way to go for me, I gave Ken Lyon a call (this man is an absolute pleasure to deal with, BTW), and a custom-sized, handmade "beta hybrid" Neuance shelf (matched to the weight of my Gyro SE) arrived at my door exactly thirty days later. I installed the feather-weight support on four threaded, upward-pointing 8mm spikes (supplied), carefully leveled it, setup the turntable, and put on some musically and sonically familiar LP's.

With the Neuance in place, it's immediately apparent that the music feels lighter on its toes and has an effortless, agile quality that's difficult to describe. Both the attack and decay edges of the notes seem more distinct, and as a result, the music is more expressive and dynamic. Complex passages are easier to sort out, and vocals and acoustic instruments seem more intimate and palpable. There isn't a trace of the dry, enervated, mechanical feeling I've learned to expect from massive supports. Everything feels vigorous and organic; the music has real blood pulsing through its veins.

There's more subtle detail as well; a singer's breath that I'd never heard before, quiet acoustic guitar muting techniques, the vibration of the springs in a snare drum, more bark and grain from a sax reed, a tapping foot - but it's all cohesive and musically relevant. The physical, tactilequality of bass, percussion, and even vocals seems more pronounced; you can really feel the notes in your chest. The detail derived from mass-loading seems disembodied and dissected by comparison.

As for audioweenie visual effects; the soundstage "looks" as though an extra light has been turned on; you can "see" the edges of the performers, their instruments, and even the recording space boundaries more clearly. The Neuance tweaks the focus knob slightly, contrast improves, and everything seems to snap into place.

I've had the shelf in my system for a little over a week now, and because of the added frequency extension at both ends of the scale, I've been able to move my speakers forward another 6" or so and decrease the toe-in a bit as well, without any loss of low frequency oomph or image focus.

You really need to take your time leveling and "tuning" the shelf so that all four of the spikes it sits on make equal contact, and Ken says that it takes around a week for the loaded platform to settle in. If you don't get the spikes dialed-in, I imagine it could take even longer. During the break-in, Ken warned that it could be all over the place sonically, but aside from one evening where the highs seemed to roll-off briefly, I found it pretty stable from day one. The shelf is fairly nondescript looking, so it's unlikely to attract much attention from your audio-tweako buddies. The logo stickers are okay, but some kind of embossed logo would look much nicer. Quality of construction is flawless, with nice uniform edges and corners all around, and dead-nut flat and level surfaces. The finish is dull satin and cleans up easily with a soft cloth and furniture polish.

The Neuance shelf unfetters the music from the machinery better than any tweak has a right to, especially for the pennies-a-serving asking price (comparatively speaking). Short of a serious equipment upgrade, this is the most pronounced improvement, both musically and sonically, that I've heard in my system. Its effect on the music is more apparent than any cable upgrade I've tried and is probably more in line with the changes you'd expect from a TT power supply upgrade. If it's this effective with a suspended 'table, I imagine that it would kick some serious butt on something like a Rega or Nottingham deck (or most any component for that matter, even a lowly CDP!). If you're using a massive support, you owe it to your music to give one of these things a listen.