As many of you know, I replaced the plastic motor pulley on my Rega P25 with a stainless steel pulley from LP Turntables. Since then, I let the turntable run for quite a few hours to see if the speed improves and stabilizes. Good news - the speed has improved and is very close to where it should be. The speed is now +.7%, down from +1.2%. The speed is also stable without any wandering up or down.

Right now, I am running it without the thrust bearing installed and I don't notice any up or down movement of the motor shaft while it's running. I'm surprised how much quieter and smoother the motor runs without the bearing. Until I figure out what I'm going to do about the bearing (replace it, reuse it) I'll just run it the way it is.

I also took a few minutes to fine tune the cartridge alignment. It was sounding so good, I thought I'd share a sample:   

Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Lucky Man (Greatest hits LP, 1980)

This was recorded @ 48k/24bit with my Apogee Rosetta, then encoded as a 320k mp3 file for streaming.

Later today I will try experimenting with the thrust bearing. I'll  give it a good cleaning, re-grease it and see how it runs with it installed. Who knows, maybe it will have just enough drag on the motor to keep the speed exactly 33 1/3rpm.  [/size]